AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘I do,’ she said, and it was hard to hear her voice over the clattering of her heart.
He touched her cheek near the hairline. ‘You were right earlier. About me. I did make assumptions. About what would happen. Because I’m used to people falling in line with my wishes. But also because I wanted you. Always. Right from that lunch meeting when you gave me such a hard time.
‘I know I’ve hurt you, and I regret that more than anything, but I can’t regret bringing you here, Lily.’
The softness in his voice made her name sound like a poem and she wanted to bury her face in the crook of his neck.
‘I can’t regret being with you, being inside you, because it’s real. What happened in that wood was real. And what we have together is the simplest, realest part of me.’
It was too much of a risk to tell him she felt the same way. It would be an act of wanton recklessness and she opened her mouth to tell him that nothing had changed. That what happened in the wood should never happen again. But she couldn’t somehow. It was as if something had changed between them. It wasn’t only the sex. It wasn’t even his apology.
It was him. And she didn’t want to think about what that meant. She just didn’t want to lie to him.
‘For me, too,’ she whispered, and his pupils flared, and when he slid his hand along her cheek she leaned into it and then he was pulling her against him and his mouth found hers and he took, and took and kept taking as the light turned to darkness around them.
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘GRAZIE, VALENTINA. I’ve got it from here.’
Smiling easily at the housekeeper, Trip closed the door. He deposited the tray on the chest of drawers and then picked up the remote control and watched the curtains slide apart fractionally.
It was morning, and outside it was looking as though it was going to be another perfect day of clear blue sky and bright sunlight, made all the more perfect because Lily was in his bed, her long hair fanned out against the pillow, her eyelashes fluttering in her sleep.
He gazed down at her small oval face.
He still couldn’t quite believe that she was here. But when, finally, they had stopped kissing, she had taken his hand and led him through the house and up the stairs as if it were something they did every night. On the top step, she had turned to him, her pupils flaring as he’d stared down at her, and without speaking, without needing to speak, he had scooped her into his arms and carried her to his room.
Not to sleep. His body tensed, remembering the splay of her limbs against the white linen and the curve of her throat arching beneath his lips.
It had felt like a miracle so that he had been buzzing, but in a good way. All the tension and obstacles of the last few weeks dissolving into the certainty of their desire, so that, waking this morning, he had felt smooth and ironed out in the way that only sex with Lily could make him feel.
But that had all come later.
Before, while he had still been reeling from that feverish encounter beneath the trees, she had told him that what had happened in the woods was a one-off, not quite a mistake but a misstep, and it had punched a hollow in his chest, just like when he had found those letters. There was that same feeling of powerlessness and panic, and he’d had to walk away. Only he hadn’t got as far as Ecuador this time.
And it wasn’t a phantom Lily who had come to find him.
His chest felt tight or full, as if something were pushing against the ribs.
She was real, and this time when she’d taken his hand, she had led him out of the jungle inside his head, where instead of twisted tree roots and slippery rain-soaked ground there had been dark, tangled memories bookended by that expression on his father’s face.
He still wasn’t entirely sure why he had opened up to her. Or why it hadn’t been the sky-falling-in-on-his-head moment that he had imagined it would be, because somehow, despite everything he had done to her, Lily had made it easy for him to talk about himself, about the diagnosis that he had kept hidden for so many years.
She had listened in that careful way of hers and asked some questions, but she hadn’t tried to make out ADHD was a superpower or that it was something that needed fixing.
She had simply accepted it. Accepted him.
Chosen him.
An unfamiliar feeling pulsed across his skin, vivid, blazing gold and, suddenly needing to reassure himself that she still felt that way, he reached out to stroke her face. She shifted in her sleep, eyes blinking open, and he felt his body tense, nervous suddenly that the sunlight beating through the window would break the spell that had brought her to his bed. But then she gave him a small, sleepy smile.
‘Hi.’
‘Hey,’ he said softly as she looked up at him. ‘I hope you’re hungry. I had Valentina bring up some breakfast.’
The pastries were delicious, buttery and still warm from the oven and Lily ate appreciatively and with an appetite that surprised her. For weeks now it had been a struggle to eat anything, but all those knots in her stomach had simply disappeared.
Trip seemed easier too. There was still that pulsing energy humming beneath the golden skin, but the edginess that had seemed to cling to him like a shadow was gone.
