by Serena Grey
I turn back to Landon, and he’s looking at me with a mixture of surprise and pleasure, and something else too. Apprehension maybe. I swallow the annoyance on the tip of my tongue, the jealousy boiling in my stomach, and the questions. What was she doing here? And that hateful, mocking wink? If I never saw that woman ever again, it would be too soon.
Landon is walking toward me now, and I try not to get distracted by how immaculate he looks in his suit, how perfectly the waves of his hair frame his heartbreakingly beautiful face. He reaches where I’m standing and drops a kiss to my mouth, and once he’s standing so close, and I’m surrounded by him, his scent, that slight hint of cologne, it’s hard to keep thinking of Ava. “I didn’t know you were coming,” he murmurs, taking my hand. “Come into the office.”
I follow him, giving Sharon, who has gone back toward her desk, a smile as we go. I wait for the door to close behind us before I face Landon. “I didn’t know you were still seeing Ava.”
“Seeing Ava?” He looks slightly amused, which, given the circumstances, is infuriating. “I saw Ava this afternoon because she arrived here and wanted to discuss an issue pertinent to the Gold Dust.” He draws me into his arms. “I’m seeing you.”
“Yes, but…” I sigh, wondering what I was going to say. I don’t want her around you? I don’t like her? She still wants you? They were all ‘jealous girlfriend’ things to say, and I didn’t want to play the jealous girlfriend, not when… Not at this point in our relationship.
I search his face. If she asked to see him, then it wouldn’t have made sense to turn her away, not when she wanted to talk about the hotel he bought from her family. And yet, I can’t forget the things she told me in San Francisco, her certainty that Landon would always come back to her.
“I thought she lived in San Francisco,” I mutter.
“She does.”
“Then why do we keep running into her here?”
Landon lifts my chin, so I’m looking at him. “Forget Ava. She’s a part of my past that doesn’t matter at all.”
I look into his face. He loves me. That was what mattered, more than anything Ava Sinclair had said to me.
“I was about to have lunch,” he says, dropping a small kiss on the top of my lip before releasing my chin. “Will you join me?”
“Of course.” I force Ava out of my mind and smile. “What are you having?”
THAT evening, I leave my office early and get to the apartment before Landon. I couldn’t stay long after having lunch with him because I had to get back to work. He’d let me go with promises to ‘make me moan’ as soon as he got me alone again.
As I let myself in, I realize how much I’m looking forward to the fulfillment of that promise. I’ll never get enough of him, of his touch, of his love.
I order dinner before going upstairs to change. I’ve become so used to being here, in his apartment, that it has started to feel like home. It’s almost disloyal, how much I don’t miss my own apartment. No matter what my misgivings were about moving in with Landon, I can’t deny even to myself, that there was everything to love about the idea, especially knowing without any doubt that every day, I would come home to him, or him to me.
I fall asleep on the living room sofa, my ereader in my hand. When I wake up, it’s to Landon’s lips on mine in a tender kiss that goes straight from my lips to my heart.
“Hey, sexy,” I whisper, my nose filling with his scent.
“Hey, baby.” He’s squatting beside the couch, his eyes on my face. He’s still wearing his suit, though he has loosened his tie, and the top buttons of his shirt are open.
The endearment gives me a strange urge to curl up in his arms. “I dozed off,” I say softly, reaching up to touch his cheek.
He kisses me again, and his lips are soft and warm. “Have you had anything to eat?”
“No, but I ordered dinner.” I glance at my watch. “It should be here soon.”
Rising to his feet, he shrugs off his jacket then sits beside me on the sofa. His firm muscles stretch out the crisp white shirt he’s wearing, and I wriggle onto his lap so I can run my hands over his arms and feel the hardness beneath. “You’re so hot.”
He laughs. “For you.”
Take that! Ava Sinclair, I think triumphantly, lowering my head to cover his lips with mine. Our kiss is soft and sweet, and much too short. The arrival of the food interrupts us and I moan my annoyance before wriggling off Landon’s lap to take the delivery.
Later, when we’re in bed, naked and he’s kissing a path down from my neck, over my breasts, and down to my navel, his lips linger on the sensitive skin of my lower belly and he raises his head to look at me, his gaze strangely troubled.
“Do you still have doubts?” he asks. “About me?”
I shake my head. “No,” I whisper softly.
His eyes stay on my face. “If you hadn’t come by the office, I would have told you as soon as I saw you tonight that I met with Ava. You have no reason to be suspicious.”
I sigh. I wasn’t suspicious of him, but Ava was another story. How could I explain to him that regardless of my best intentions, every woman, especially one like Ava, who had so obviously expressed her interest in him, became a reason to worry. Wasn’t that normal, when one was in love?
“I’m no longer thinking about Ava,” I reassure him, unwilling to let her ruin the rest of our night.
He seems to accept that, lowering his head and resuming the slow trail of his lips down to the juncture of my thighs. Once his tongue touches me there, I stop thinking at all. He uses it with a wicked expertise that borders on diabolical. Soon, I’m mindless, sweaty, moaning, and calling out his name.
After he makes me come with his fingers and tongue, he rears up over me, kneeling between my thighs as he lifts one of my legs over his shoulder. I’m wet and slick from my orgasm, and he enters me easily, stretching me with a sweetness that brings tears to my eyes.
“Landon,” I moan his name, almost breathless with pleasure.
He doesn’t move. “I love you, Rachel,” he says, his voice husky. “Only you, tell me you know that.”
I nod. “I do.”
He drops my leg and lowers his body to rest on his elbows so his face is hovering over mine. “You have to learn to trust me.”
I bite back a moan. “I trust you,” I whisper.
He moves, once, pulling out of me and thrusting back in with a sweet, sure stroke, so deep, I let out a weak groan.
“Only you.” His voice is a husky murmur. He rises back up to his knees, pulls my hips toward him, and really starts to move, stroking his hard length in and out of me with ferocious intensity. Everything about him is arousing, the raw hunger on his face, the sheen of sweat on his skin, the hard bunching of his chest muscles, the flat tightness of his stomach as he moves his hips, flexing, thrusting so deep inside me, that I feel as if I’m melded to him.
“Landon,” I moan, about to unravel. “Landon.” My voice is tight with desperation.
In response, he picks up his pace, his increased thrusts sending me over the edge. I cry out as my body tightens, spasming with the force of my orgasm, and he’s right there with me. He thrusts deep, shuddering as he spills himself inside me, my name a soft whisper on his beautiful lips.
Later, when I’m wrapped in his arms, recovering from the haze of pleasure, I hear his soft whisper in my ear. “I never want to be without you. I’ve felt what that’s like, and I never want to return to that dark, lonely winter. It’s okay if you don’t want to move in, as long as it’s not because you think I’d hurt or disappoint you. I won’t. I’d die before I hurt you, Rachel, trust me.”
“I do… I’m just… I’m afraid,” I admit softly. “I’m scared of changing anything about us. Everything feels so perfect. I’m just so afraid of doing something to ruin it.”
“I won’t let anything ruin this,” he promises. “Do you believe me?”
I breathe in the scent of his skin, the slight hint of sweat. “I do.”
<
br /> I feel his chest rise, and his arm comes around me to pull me closer, holding me like that until I drift off to sleep.
IT’S the thrashing that wakes me up, and the sound of my name, like a garbled plea on Landon’s lips.
“Please,” he’s saying, his voice muffled yet somehow desperate. “Please. Oh God! Rachel.”
I put on the bedside lamp, my heart breaking to see the tears on his cheeks. “Please,” he moans, his body tight with the struggle in his nightmare. “Please.”
I hold on to one of his thrashing arms, trying to keep him still. “Landon.”
He wakes up immediately, rising from the pillows, his eyes fixing on the arm I’m holding in my two hands. I release it and he raises it to dig the fingers into his hair in a sad gesture of frustration.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t… I was planning to get up.
I sigh. “You’re not supposed to get up at night, Landon. I hate it that you can’t sleep through the night.”
He is quiet.
“Are they getting worse?” It’s a hard question for me to ask. I’d hoped that being with me would make his past easier to bear, that I would make him better, not worse.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he mutters. “They’re just dreams.”
“You were saying my name.” I frown, unwilling to let him dismiss it. Not again. “Was it like that night in San Francisco? Was it me again, in the accident?”
“It was just a dream,” he says, getting up from the bed and reaching for his robe.
“No.” I protest. “Don’t you think it matters if you’re still dreaming of trying to save me and being unable to? If you’re still afraid of hurting me? How can I…”
“How can you trust me, when even in my subconscious I’m struggling with the certainty that I’m somehow going to cause you pain?” Landon shakes his head in a silent gesture of denial and frustration then shrugs the robe on over his naked body. “Look, Rachel, I think we’d both be better off if you didn’t try to analyze me. My dreams have nothing to do with you. I’ve dealt with them almost all my life.”
“And you’re still dealing with them,” I point out. “And I’m dealing with them too.”
His eyes close, but he stays silent.
“Fine,” I say, raising my hands. “I’m not qualified to analyze you, but I think you should see someone else. I know you’ve had therapy, but remember what you told me in Newport, about how you thought, how you felt it was your fault… You said you’d never told anyone about that. Maybe…”
“Nothing…” Landon interrupts. “Maybe nothing.” His voice is suddenly hard and impatient. “This is me,” he mutters. “There is no guarantee that anything will ever be different. I try to be in control, but sometimes, especially when I’m with you, I get comfortable, and I forget to manage the memories I’ve carried around for more than half my life. But this is me, Rachel. My memories will probably haunt my dreams forever, and if that’s the reason why…” he stops.
“Why I haven’t said I’ll move in with you?” I shake my head. “You know it’s not.”
“Why don’t you go back to sleep,” he says gently. “I’m going to try to get some work done.”
I watch him leave. Not sure what to think. On one hand, I understand that he’d had to build his own defenses against the horror of watching his mother die, and that unraveling those defenses now would go against the steely control he has grown used to. But I can’t continue to watch him come apart every night and not feel that we should at least look for a solution.
I sigh and lie back on the pillow, not bothering to try to go back to sleep. I’m still awake when Landon returns and starts to prepare for work, and I join him, both of us quiet, not talking about what happened. We have breakfast together, still silent, and it lasts all through the short ride to my office. Outside the Gilt building, when I reach for the door handle to get out of the car, Landon reaches for my hand.
“I’ll see you in the evening,” he says, his eyes searching my face. We’re supposed to leave for his mystery weekend destination later in the day, and now, seeing the uncertainty in his eyes, it’s almost as if he’s afraid that last night would make me do something like change my mind, or walk away again.
But there’s nothing that could ever make me leave him, not again, not ever. “Of course,” I say with a small smile. “Have a great day.”
“I don’t know why you’re drawing it out,” Laurie is saying. “You know you’re going to move in with him.”
We’re in the dressing room of a bridal boutique, whose owner is a former model like Aunt Jacie. My lunch hour is already gone, but I’m relieved that Laurie has already chosen her gown, a flowy, off-shoulder dream that’s perfect for a beach wedding.
“I don’t know anything, and neither do you,” I frown again at the selection of bridesmaid dresses on the rack in front of me. Sissy Fletcher, the owner of the boutique, had selected them especially for me to view, or so she said. They were all beautiful, sweet pastel colors and girlish styles, the perfect accompaniment to Laurie’s dress. I’ve tried them on, and they were all flattering.
‘What are your misgivings exactly?” Laurie frowns. “Wanna share?”
I shrug, my hand hovering over one of the dresses, then moving to another one. I don’t know how to put all my worries into words. There were so many things that happened in a relationship - so many feelings, and tiny little actions that were impossible to explain to outsiders. “I just don’t want to rush.”
“So you keep saying.” She looks at the dresses. “Want my opinion?”
“On the dresses, yes. On moving in with Landon, no.”
She laughs. “Sometimes it doesn’t take four years, you know.”
I give her a warning look.
“What!” she exclaims. “You knew I was going to give you my opinion anyway.” She picks a dress, then another, then puts them back on the rack. “They’re all lovely. I can’t tell you which one to take.”
I sigh. “Of course.” Looking over the rack again, I select one, a lilac off-shoulder dress with a sweetheart neckline and a hemline that dances around my knees. “We’re still doing bare feet?”
“Of course.” Laurie grins at my choice. “This was always my fav!” she exclaims. “See? I instinctively know what you want. Which is why I know you want to move in with Landon.”
“I’m beginning to think he’s co-opted you into convincing me,” I say, glowering at her. Inside, I’m thinking about Landon’s face from this morning, our mutual silence, last night….
“Ha ha.” Laurie rolls her eyes, oblivious to my thoughts. “I always have your best interests at heart.” She thinks for a moment, then wrinkles her nose. “I’ve become one of those people in relationships who try to push everyone else into the same level of commitment, haven’t I?”
“You have,” I agree.
“Just think about it,” she says, laughing. “Do what you want to do,” She emphasizes the ‘you.’ “And no matter what, don’t forget that you have a tribe, and we always have your back.”
I won’t, I say silently. I can always count on my family, and not just them. I think of Landon, and suddenly I know for sure that I’m going to say yes. Because I know, deep down, I can count on him too.
AFTER work, Joe is waiting to take me to the airport. During our drives together, he has told me about his family. He has a teenage daughter, who lives with her mother in Connecticut, and he sees her about once a month. I ask him about her now, and he tells me he’s going to see her over the weekend.
“Enjoy yourself,” I tell him, catching the animation in his eyes through the rearview mirror. My own feelings are less straightforward. My mind keeps going back to last night, and I don’t know whether to accept that as far as Landon is concerned, I can’t help him with his nightmares and that I shouldn’t bother.
I could live with them. I would gladly lie beside him and give him the little comfort I can for the rest of my life. What I can’t do is watch him su
ffer alone, refuse to let me in, and refuse any other kind of help as well.
Inside the plane, Landon is in the bedroom, a tastefully decorated cabin with muted dark wood accents. He’s having a conversation on the phone and I catch a few words while I stand at the door admiring him. He looks gorgeous - beautiful and golden. His sleeves are rolled up, exposing muscular forearms. His collar is open too, his shirt still tucked into his pants, but slightly pulled out and rough around the waistband. It pulls at my heart, how helpless I am about this attraction. I could look at him all day, and I’d consider my day well spent.
“Evans Sinclair is just a hair’s breadth away from being committed. No sensible person is paying attention to him,” Landon is saying, “and neither should you.”
Even as he’s speaking, he’s walking toward me, and as his eyes hold mine with a silent question, I know that I’m not the only one still thinking about last night.
I raise myself on tiptoe to kiss him on the lips, and when I pull back, he holds on to my arm, his touch soft, but firm and possessive as he ends his conversation.
“You look beautiful,” he whispers, his eyes flicking over my face.
I smile softly, deeply affected by the simple compliment. “You too.”
“Beautiful?” he smiles and places his lips on mine, letting them linger lazily over my mouth. I close my eyes, enjoying the warm firmness of his touch as I relax against him. He sighs and touches his forehead to mine.
“Rachel…” he starts.
“Wait,” I interrupt. I pull my face back and search his eyes, and I can see all my worry and uncertainty reflected in his. I know that whatever he has to say, it’ll have something to do with last night, but I don’t want that to color our weekend. “I’ll move in with you,” I tell him softly. “I want us to live together.”
His arms go around me, pulling me even closer to his body. I feel his chest rise and swell, and I place my arms around his waist. “I was always going to say yes,” I whisper.
“I’m glad… relieved.” He leans back so he can look in my eyes. “I’m sorry about last night, for brushing off your concern. God knows I want to share everything with you. Every hope, every pain… but I don’t want to burden you. I’ve become used to doing things on my own.”
