Angela Knight - Unbound

He leaned forward. “So what’d you tell her?”

“That I wanted you. No one else. It had always been you.”

Wes’s punches had never struck him this hard. They’d never been this thrilling either.

“I didn’t tell her because of the alcohol—well, maybe that helped—but because it was the truth and I knew I wouldn’t get you anyway. If I could never tell you , I could tell my mom, right? Then the next week she came to me and said that the Board had approved the match. You remember what kind of pull she used to have with the Board?” He nodded. “Well, it turned out she went to them and asked for the two of us to be matched as a favor to her, and for the daughter who would take her place as the head Ofarian doctor. They agreed.”

David could only stare. “No one ever got to pick their mates.”

She shook her head, her brow furrowing. “And I felt horrible about that. Why should I have gotten the person I wanted when so many others had to marry who the Board told them to? It didn’t seem fair. I was sick with guilt.”

“That was such a weird time,” he said, his faraway gaze drifting out the windows to the tall buildings just outside.

“But the worst part was,” she went on, “I’d wanted you for so long and I was ecstatic at finally being able to be with you. And then at our matching ceremony you looked like a ghost who’d been dipped in bleach. Like you were caught in a mass of gears and would never be able to get out. I’d done that to you, I realized. I started to panic, worrying that if you’d ever found out I was the one who’d asked for us to be matched, who’d essentially tricked you into marriage, you’d hate me.”

David fell to his knees in front of her before she could say another word. His hands slid up her thighs, his fingers digging into the crease of her hips. “You want to know why I looked like that that night? Because I felt guilty, too, that I’d been given the woman I wanted. And because I was so happy, and you looked so trapped. I assumed you’d been roped into marrying someone below your class, and that you were upset about it.”

“But that wasn’t true at all!”

His cheeks hurt he smiled so big. “See? We both suck because we made bad assumptions. We both suck at showing how we feel.”

She exhaled. “I’m done with sucking.”

He laughed, leaned forward, and brushed his stubbly cheek with her smooth one. “God, I hope not.”

To his delight, she shivered but didn’t pull away. Instead her arms slid around his waist. He almost shouted in victory as she tugged him tighter into the cradle of her thighs.

“You want to know the day I fell for you?” she said against his neck.

“You know the actual day?”

“I know the actual moment.” She drew a long, slow breath. The words trickled across her skin. “‘There is no surprise more magical than the surprise of being loved.’”

He took her shoulders and pushed her back to search her face. “Are you serious?”

She was smiling now, that smile he remembered from that day in class. She nodded and reached for her purse. She pulled out the most incredible thing he’d ever seen: one of those slips of paper from Creative Writing. Laminated.

“And it’s the truth, isn’t it,” she murmured, her focus dropping to his mouth and awakening a pounding in his cock.

“Amen to that,” he growled, and consumed her mouth with a hard, wet, driving kiss. Her tongue tasted even better than it had that night in the hotel. The emotion that fueled him burned even stronger than the moment right after they’d defused the bomb.

Because she loved him.

That knowledge made his dick hard as a spike, and he ground into her. When she wrapped her ankles around the backs of his thighs, pressed herself even harder against him, the sound that came up from his throat didn’t even sound human.

At last he pulled away, stunned to realize he’d lain himself across her, his weight pressing her into the cushion, her penny-colored hair spraying out with static across the back of his favorite chair.

He struggled to breathe. “We’re so pathetic. Why didn’t you say anything?”

“The same reason you didn’t.”

He pushed her hair away from her face. “How could two smart people be so dumb and insecure?”

“It’s one of the world’s greatest mysteries.” Her hands slipped beneath the waist of his pants, grabbing his ass, and he groaned again. “It should have been you to speak first.”

“Me?” he said drowsily, because her hand had traveled to his front and now stroked him over his underwear.

“You’re the motormouth. You gave me that string to hold. You kissed me first. You—”

“Kelsey, shut up,” he murmured, his eyes closed against the slide of her hand. “Unless you want to tell me to come.”

She froze. His eyes opened. They smiled at the same time. And suddenly they were teenagers, the twelve years between them vanishing. They were messy and fumbling and giggling, grappling awkwardly at each other’s clothing, shivering in anticipation. He couldn’t steady his fingers to undo her buttons, so he just ripped off her shirt. He’d been dying to see what she looked like in one of his anyway.

He pulled off her jeans, paused only half a second to appreciate the gold lace of her underwear, and then those were gone, too. The sun shifted, coming through the window to hit her body perfectly, all spread out before him.

As he draped himself over her, kissed her, then entered her body in one smooth thrust, she said, “I want to start over. With us. Only this time I know how it’s going to end.”

“How?” he asked, pulling out slowly, making her gasp.

“With you marrying me.”

He kissed her again, pushing back into her heat. “I thought you’d never ask.”