Page 96 of His to Love
Chapter 22
The smell of freshly brewed coffee assaulted my senses before I fully awoke.
Rolling over, I cracked one eye open only to find a dark brown coffee mug, with the words “Keep Calm and Drink Coffee” printed in white ink, inches from my face.
“What’s this?” I asked, my voice still hoarse from sleep.
Tyson set it down on the table next to my bed and took a step back. “Made you coffee.”
I narrowed my eyes, flickering my gaze from the mug and then back to him. I sat up in the bed, bringing the covers with me. Memories of last night flashed in my mind, and I remembered Tyson showing up outside Fireside and driving me home. “You stayed.”
He crossed his arms over his chest and backed up until his hip rested against my dresser. I followed his movement only to notice that he was wearing different clothes than he had been wearing last night. In lieu of the faded jeans and gray shirt he had been wearing, he now had on black dress pants and a cleanly pressed white shirt.
“You went home and came back?” One eyebrow arched in question.
“Found a spare key in one of your drawers and took it with me so I could get back in.”
I reached for my coffee, needing the caffeinated fuel to wake me up.
“How very creepy of you,” I replied once I had my first hit of caffeine.
I looked at the clock and saw that it was still earlier than I usually woke up. Since he probably knew that, with his FBI superpowers, I didn’t bother with an excuse of running late.
He stood still, watching me sip my coffee, and I stopped looking at him. It was too confusing. My body responded to his presence, my heart beating a little faster, even as a warning blared in my head telling me he was nothing but a liar.
“How long are you going to stand there and stare at me?” I asked when my coffee was almost all gone.
“As long as it takes for you to be willing to talk to me.”
I rolled my eyes and set the mug down. “I don’t think I have anything to say.”
“Maybe I do.”
His words from last night flickered through my hazy memory.I can’t. I love you too much.
I muffled a gasp and looked away.
“There she is,” he said. “Now she’s remembering.”
“It would have helped to have heard that before.”
“While I was still lying to you?” he pressed. “Would you have believed me then?”
“You’re assuming I believe you at all,” I snapped, glaring at him.
He pushed off the dresser and stalked toward me, not stopping until he reached my bed and sat down on the edge.
I wanted him gone.
I wanted to pull him down to me and see if his full lips were as soft as I remembered. As if he knew what I was thinking, his tongue slid out and licked his bottom lip.
“Blue, I can’t begin to describe how difficult this was for me.” He leaned forward as I tried to scramble away, but he held me in place with one hand on each side of my hips. I looked away from him even as a blush hit my cheeks. He was too close and smelled too good. Even beneath his white dress shirt, I could see the muscles of his biceps flex.
“Do you think I care right now how difficult it was for you?” I asked, feeling my emotions begin to bubble. “I was nothing but a pawn, and you took away my family.”
“I helped incarcerate a man who belonged in jail.” A muscle ticked in his jaw, showing his tension. I looked past it.
“And do you feel your own father’s death has been avenged now that you finally put mine away?”
