Page 81 of Maid of Dishonor
His actions are doing what his words can’t right now. Every pass of his lips, every stroke of his thumbs along my cheekbones—they’re coming together to tell me one thing: he cares. He cares for me as much as I care for him.
Slowly, his kisses change, turning lazy, teasing—no longer devouring but savoring. Sweet as sugar and even more potent. “Sam,” he murmurs as he presses his lips to the corner of mine. He skims his nose along my jaw, and I shiver.
“Hmm,” I say, because I need to say something, and this doesn’t require eloquence or brainpower.
“You were right,” he says, leaning back to look at me. His eyes skate over my face. “You were right.” He swallows as my already-unsteady breath hitches in my throat. “I don’t want you to be with anyone else. I want you to be with me.Me,” he repeats, his voice hoarse. “Someoneelsewill babysitourchildren whilewego on dates. Just you and me.”
My jaw has dropped, because while his kiss got his message across, my brain is still having trouble believing his words. Some of them get through immediately, though. I stop myself from pulling back or stepping away, but I do address his words.
Shaking my head, I say, “No—it can’t be like that.” Am I just the lesser of two evils? Does he think being with me is the only way to stop me from being with anyone else?
“Like what?” he says, a frown creasing his brow.
I take a deep breath, trying to calm my insides, but it doesn’t work. It’s complete chaos in there—Black Friday in a fine jewelry store. So I just try to ignore it.
“You can’t be with me if you’re only doing it because you don’t want someone else to be with me,” I say. I have to force myself to keep going, because it’s tempting,sotempting, to just let Carter keep kissing me and ignore all the talking we need to do. “I’m not going to do that. If I’m with you, it needs to be because you want me there, not because youdon’twant me somewhere else.”
By the time I’m done speaking, Carter is shaking his head. “No. It’s not because I don’t want anyone else to have you,” he says, his thumbs stroking their gentle path over my cheekbones. “Although I don’t,” he adds, frowning. “Not Jeremy or Vance or some green-eyed husband or a weird neon-green-eyed baby—”
“What?” I say, because he’s completely lost me. A neon-green-eyed baby? What does that even mean?
He shakes his head. “Never mind. It was—yeah. Never mind. The point is,” he goes on, his focus back on me now. “I just want you, period.” He hesitates, but he’s not done. He shakes his head, looking vulnerable in a way that makes my heart swell. “Andman, Sam. I can’t even believe I’m saying this, or that I’m feeling it, but…living without you would be worse than being scared you’ll…I don’t know.” He shrugs self-consciously. “That you’ll break my heart or something.”
“I will break your heart,” I tell him honestly, squeezing him a little harder around the waist. “We’ll hurt each other, Carter. It’s unrealistic to expect otherwise.” I hesitate. “But I’ll also put you back together again, and you’ll do the same for me. If we do this, that’s how it will have to work. You’ll have to know, going in, that things won’t be perfect.”
“I know,” he says, nodding and tucking some hair behind my ear. “I know they won’t. I’m okay with that.” He pauses, his blue eyes still drinking me in as though he can’t get enough. “Here,” he says after a few seconds. He drops his hands from my face and tugs at his wrist. It takes a minute for me to figure out what he’s doing, until he holds up the rubber band he always wears.
I cock one brow at him, smiling. There’s nothing particularly funny; I just can’t keep the smile from curving my lips. I think it will probably be there for the next year at least.
“Right. Okay. So,” he begins. He takes a deep breath before exhaling loudly. “I wear this so that every time I find myself thinking about you in a more-than-friendly way, I can snap it. I’ve kind of tried to…train myself out of thinking about you like that.”
My jaw drops once more as I look down at the little band—the evil little band, as it turns out. “Are you serious?”
He rubs the back of his neck, looking sheepish. “Yeah. But,” he says, “it didn’t work very well.”
“It better not have,” I grumble. “I’ll take it, then.” I slide the rubber band around my wrist. “And every time you notice me wearing it, you can be reminded of how you tried to live in denial and it didn’t work.”
“Yeah, yeah—rub it in,” he grumbles, but he’s smiling. He wraps his arms around me and presses a kiss to my forehead.
“Carter,” I say quietly, looking up at him. I’m scared to even say it. “Is this real? Is this actually happening?”
He gives a wry laugh. “Yeah, I think it is, amazing as that sounds. I wasn’t going to do it this way, actually,” he admits. “I wanted to give you space this week like you asked, but I was going to come kidnap you early tomorrow morning—”
“Kidnapping, off to a good start.”
“And then I was going to blindfold you—”
“Good, good, not suspicious or sketchy at all,” I say.
“And I was going to take you—”
“To see the sunrise?”
He rolls his eyes. “Let me finish, would you? But yes. I was going to take you to see the sunrise. And then I was going to give you a speech about how you’re my favorite person in the world, and then I was going to ask you out on a date.” He scowls. “But then Maya called and said you were talking about dermatologists withdreamy eyes—”
I burst out laughing, cutting him off. “That was a joke!” I say.
“Well, joke or not, I had to skip a few steps.”
