by Susan Ward
My wife is in that building you dragged me out of, and no one is going to keep me from her. Not anymore.
Khloe
MY BREATHS STOP COMING in rapid spurts, and I lift my face from the door. I can’t tell how long I’ve stood here. A minute? An hour? It’s impossible to get a true feel of time.
Carefully, I turn around.
The lights are on, turned low.
I don’t remember flipping the switch, but I must have.
I stare out.
Wall.
Window.
Table.
Chair…an empty chair.
Images of Damon flood my thoughts.
I slip slowly to the ground.
I don’t understand how we got where we are.
I loved him so much.
I love him still.
Inside my head I retrace my steps backward, from this cold lonely existence to our days on the ranch in Wyoming when we were wonderful together. There has to be a single thing that changed how happy we were. Why can’t I find it, remember how it came for us to be apart? If I could figure out the point where we went wrong, maybe I wouldn’t be here without him, and Damon wouldn’t be out there without me.
Chapter Two
Khloe
Three years ago…
I WOKE IN A ROOM filled with soft morning light and was plunged into panic. There was no one in bed with me. I shot upright, my chest tightening as my heartbeat rapidly accelerated. My gaze flitted around the room, and for a moment I wondered if I’d imagined Damon being in Pacific Palisades with me.
It wasn’t beyond possible.
I had crazy dreams while on chemo and often passed days in a fog far removed from reality. It wouldn’t be the first time that had happened to me, but what I remembered of the past week would be unparalleled by any drug-induced hallucination I’d ever had before.
I retraced the days in my head.
Yes, the memory book being assembled in my mind was over the top, and I’d be a fool to believe any of it really happened.
Damon had arrived unexpectedly at our house Christmas Eve, walked fully clothed into the swimming pool, and carried me off in front of my gawking relatives. He’d given me some far-fetched story about his family kidnapping him and holding him hostage in the palace to force him into marriage with Carina Mills, his ex-girlfriend and the current pregnant mistress of his brother Henry. He’d followed that with an even more outlandish tale of Cody and five men he wasn’t allowed to identify rescuing him from his family by drugging him to make him look poisoned because it was easier to nab him from a London hospital than it was Deverell Palace.
We’d spent Christmas together at chez Manzone with my family. The day had passed like speed-dating, if my memory served me correctly. It started with a fast breakfast with Damon, then being pulled away from him to another activity by my sister Krystal. Next, joining Damon while my family opened presents; that was interrupted by being ordered to go eat again. After that, I sat wrapped in his arms to watch the sun set across the ocean. That one I’d done a fast shift from to sneak away for sexy times in my bedroom with Damon.
My cheeks heated, and the warmth spread elsewhere in my body. That memory definitely felt real.
Our official makeup sex for Damon having broken my heart was too quickly followed by a text from Krystal demanding our presence in the living room to watch my family finish opening gifts.
That part, exchanging Christmas gifts with Damon for the first time, was my favorite. I truly hoped that wasn’t a false memory.
I’d given Damon the key to the hotel room in Paris where we’d met, and Damon had given me an empty box as a present. Softly, I laughed. I couldn’t be remembering that correctly. Ah, I’d forgotten a part. His cousin Zane had swapped out the present Damon had wanted to give me without him knowing it and thought a box of nothing would be a better idea.
The look on Damon’s face: it was priceless when he realized the mess Zane had landed him in. But Damon was Damon. He could rescue any moment. And he had rescued that. With a fast line and his urbane charm, he’d forged ahead to explain why he’d given me nothing as my entire family watched him tread water like a drowning man.
It’d been a shock to me as well, opening the box elegantly wrapped in lavender and silver only to find nothing it in. I was decidedly due a pat on the back for how I’d maintained my composure and smiled as Damon scrambled for a way out of that embarrassing moment for both of us.
I’d sat there staring into the package for a few minutes before the inspiration struck me to ask Damon what it was. A delicious shiver ran through my body as I floated on the memory of him telling me to close my eyes, murmuring that what was in the box was everything he was and all we’d been to each other.
Better than any Hallmark movie love story, and then he’d slayed me again by asking me to look inside and tell him what I saw.
Infinite possibilities, I said. In truth, that was what I saw. Any man who could be that fast on his feet and pull a win out of the mess Zane had created for the both of us could give a girl a lifetime of infinite possibilities.
It’d been a gloriously wonderful first Christmas together by any measure. I could have left things there, been thoroughly satisfied, if not for that look on his face when he saw the box was empty. Yes, I had to know what my gift was supposed to be and pounced on him later in my bedroom.
That led to a proposal from him and an engagement ring for me. I scrunched up my mouth and twisted it right then left. I was sure it wasn’t possible for any of that to have really happened and felt a moment’s letdown until I felt something heavy on my left hand.
My gaze locked on the three-carat diamond, and I smiled. The gorgeous engagement ring Damon had given me, very real and very much not a drug-induced hallucination, was absolute confirmation that what I remembered really did happen.
As I relaxed against my pillow, I noticed the indentation in the bed beside me. I leaned over and pressed my nose into the sheets. It was still warm, and into my nostrils flooded an unmistakable male scent.
Damon.
I savored the pleasure of knowing he was near. That our past week together hadn’t been a fantasy, and that he was with me in Pacific Palisades.
Thinking of him was enough to send heat through my languid body. From the first moment I saw him in Paris, I’d been trapped in the inescapable pull of his tigerlike amber eyes. I needed him like I needed my heart transplant. I couldn’t live without either. And he’d walked away from his birthright to the greatest throne in the world, put himself in enormous jeopardy to escape the palace, and risked everything to be with me.
He should have been in bed with me when I woke. Now that my emotions had calmed and I was clear-headed about stuff, I was ready for morning sexy times.
Hmm, I just had to find Damon.
I heard a sound from the bathroom and sank back against the headboard, a smile on my face. He hadn’t started the day without me. He was still in my bedroom.
With reverent fingers, I brushed the linen covering the pillow where his head rested while we slept. Our separation had taken a toll on me, but it had taken a toll on him as well. I’d been too caught up in my own emotions when he’d first arrived in Pacific Palisades to see it.
Our weeks apart he’d grown leaner, and there were faint, new lines at the corners of his mouth and eyes. His chestnut hair was longer than he preferred, almost shoulder-length like my dad’s and brothers’, and it had the distinct look of being unkempt and needing a hairdresser.
He gave the appearance of a man starved for tending and love. I needed his touch and to physically feel what was in his heart for me, over and over again. It didn’t matter that I wasn’t at my best health or looks. Having Damon fill me with his love was a curative tonic unsurpassed by anything I could get from my doctor. In fact, there wasn’t a way for me to get through the days without him.
The bathroom door opened, and Damon entered th
e bedroom. The sight of him shot a reaction through me that blew me away even after a week of him being here. My heart jumped into an excited rhythm, and yearning flooded my veins. Each time he stepped into a room, it felt like the first time I was seeing him.
“Whatever you’re thinking, stop it now,” he ordered firmly. “You’ve got a busy day. You need to get up. Get dressed. We don’t have time for what you’ve got in mind.”
His tone of voice was authoritative and intractable, as if it were unimaginable that he wouldn’t get his way, but my lady parts pooh-poohed it the same way my other parts did when we were outside the bedroom.
My gaze greedily roved him, from his broad shoulders to his narrow hips he’d slung a towel around. He should have thought out his wardrobe better if he wanted my thoughts not to run first to sex.
“Who says I’m thinking anything?”
He turned his head to arch a chestnut brow at me. “Your eye color. When you want to make love, the blue deepens to a rich shade like the Adriatic Sea.”
“What color are my eyes when I’m not thinking about sex?”
“Pale blue like the Pacific,” he informed me, “and when you’re angry they’re a very intense navy blue like the Atlantic Ocean.”
I laughed, wondering if that was true.
God, I loved him like there was no tomorrow.
My gaze followed him around the bedroom. He was an impossibly beautiful man, to the point I’d feared he might be too perfect for me, but I fast learned he was very human. Like me, he was new to love, finding his way, making mistakes…and making up afterward.
My chest expanded with a quick inhale of breath from the memory of apology sex with Damon, and I could feel the white-hot current between us even if he pretended that he wasn’t feeling it presently.
He grabbed a pair of jeans from a chair, purposely keeping distance from me and not letting his gaze linger in my direction.
I pouted. “Not even a morning kiss before you dress? You go directly for your clothes. I don’t know how I should take that.”
“Heart of my heart”—my insides shimmied each time he called me that—“if I get close to you before I’m dressed, you’ll get me back into bed.”
“You don’t have to sound unhappy about it,” I chided breathlessly.
“I’m not unhappy about what would happen if I kissed you right now. Merely unhappy we have no time to make love this morning. You overslept. You have to be at Dr. Hern’s clinic in two hours. It takes you an hour to dress. Thirty minutes to eat, and it’s a twenty-minute drive there even when Cody speeds through traffic like a maniac. There’s no time, Khloe, but for getting your butt in gear and out the front door.”
He recited my a.m. schedule in bullet-point style as though he’d spent some time trying to find a way to fit morning sex onto the day’s calendar, and I stifled a laugh. He sounded deliciously frustrated, and the tension in his posture was visible. He must’ve woken up amorous, too.
I lifted my chin. “It doesn’t take me an hour to get dressed.”
“Fine. Forty minutes. That frees up twenty.” His gaze shot to mine, sending a shiver through me. He was considering it, weakening.
“I could wear sweats and comfortable shoes. That’ll get us another fifteen minutes for sex.”
My tongue darted out to wet my lips, and Damon took a deep breath.
“I love you so much, Khloe. Stop making it hard to love you the way you deserve a man to care for you.”
Making it hard…terrible choice of words. “This morning I’m in the mood to love you the way you deserve.”
That made his hands fist at his sides. “The way I deserve requires you to put yourself first, to get dressed, and get moving.”
My sex tightened in answer to the roughness of his voice and how his gaze burned. My nerves tingled in anticipation of his touch.
“Put myself first, huh?” I widened my eyes to the fullest and locked my gaze on him. “I am putting myself first, Damon. You haven’t been to the clinic with me before. You don’t know how the treatments hit me. All the days…I might not be able to make love to you for weeks. It’s important to me when I feel wonderful to savor it to the fullest. That’s how you take care of me the way I deserve. We love each other the most we can, and we don’t let anything interfere with that.”
“KK.” Damon groaned, but he took a step toward the bed. He halted. “We’ve had a lot of sex since Christmas. It can’t be good for you.”
The phrase humped like rabbits was what came to my mind. I was as shocked as Damon how intensely physically the hours had passed between us. But neither of us should have been surprised by the result of our explosive chemistry combined with two months of pent-up need.
“It’s absolutely the best thing for me, Damon.”
He stopped fastening his shirt and scrubbed back the hair from his brow.
“I’ll skip doing my makeup and wear giant sunglasses like my mom does on bad hair days. That gives us another ten minutes. A whole hour we can do anything we want with today, Damon. There. I’ve fixed the schedule.”
“An hour, huh?” He thought about it only a beat, then reached me in three steps, dropping his shirt on the floor and somehow getting his jeans unfastened. Sinking his fingers into my hair, he tilted my head and took my mouth in a searing kiss. As he eased apart my lips, my tongue darted out to meet him.
He was shaking, and I curled my fingers around his biceps as our kiss quickly became heated and hungry. “God,” he breathed. “I can’t get enough of you.”
“I can’t either.”
His mouth closed over mine again, and the sound of his pleasure rasps made my pulse quicken. I slipped my hand down inside his pants and closed my fingers around his cock. He was thick and pulsing, and he sharply inhaled when I gave him a firm stroke.
I did it faster until he broke our kiss, his head tilting backward. His cheeks were flushed, and his lower lip drooped. It made it more exciting knowing he wasn’t in command of himself with me any more than I was with him.
Up, down, over again, I stroked his length, savoring his pleasure sounds. I sprayed kisses across his chest, and his hands went to my shoulders as if he needed support to stay on his feet.
Then I looked up at him. I still couldn’t believe that Damon was here, that he was mine, that he was caught in the same strong emotion and hunger that made him impossible to resist for me from the start.
“Get your jeans off now, Damon.” I pulled back my hand and eased up on my knees, completely comfortable being naked before him. “I can’t wait a second longer for you to be inside me.”
My voice throbbed with emotion, and his lids flared open. How he looked at me made my eyes sting. He shoved down his pants, kicked them aside, then with careful fingers clutched my hips and brought me up against him.
My nipples touched his chest first, and the shiver that ran down him raced down me as well. His breathing grew quick and harsh, and I gasped when I felt his hardness press into me.
He brought me to the bed slowly, prolonging the moment when we’d fully touch. Then his mouth claimed mine, and I was quickly swept away with Damon.
Chapter Three
Khloe
The Past
MY TREMORS EBBED IN TIME with the easing of Damon’s thrusts. As the seal of our bodies slowly broke, my back bowed as my chin lifted, and he pushed upward with his elbows to take his full weight from me.
Little contentment purrs sighed from my parted lips as Damon struggled for breath, panting like he’d run a marathon uphill.
I opened my eyes to stare up at him. “We’ve gotten so good at making the most of a little bit of time.”
“Oh, definitely.” He laughed, then an adorable pucker claimed his brow. “Now that I’ve learned how to block my anxiety that your mom’s going to knock on the bedroom door and block out the sound of the phone dinging.”
I was sure my gaze was glowing wickedly. “Imagine what we’d be lik
e together if I had one hundred percent of your attention, instead of maybe”—I made a hmm sound as though seriously considering it—“maybe ninety-seven percent of your full attention on me.”
He gave me a wry smile. “Trust me, you always have my full attention, and I imagine that about fifty times a day.”
“Imagine what? Be more specific.” But I knew what he was saying.
He settled back against his pillow and brought me to his chest, holding me snug against him. “Being somewhere alone with you. Us in Wyoming on my ranch. But I’d settle for anywhere without your parents in the house and no cell service.”
I laughed. “It’s not that bad. My family’s gotten a little better at giving us space.”
He lifted a brow. “Not as bad. At least today no one knocked on the door, and your phone dinged only twice.”
“You like my parents.”
“I adore your parents,” he corrected. “They’re responsible for you. How could I not love them? But they definitely don’t understand the concept of boundaries. They should—especially your father—have some appreciation that a bit of privacy would work well for us.”
“Privacy?” I repeated it with his heavy British accent that made the word sound so official. “They’re doing better. None of my sisters could have shacked up in their home with a guy. Though I’m pretty sure my brothers could have lived here with their girlfriends if they wanted to.”
Damon groaned. “Why do you say it that way? Shacking up. It sounds awful. That’s not what we’re doing.”
“Technically, it’s what we’re doing.” I smiled sweetly. “We call things how we see them in California.”
“It’s what you’re doing. I’m here endeavoring to marry you. That’s the British perspective in our relationship.”
Endeavoring. I stifled a laugh and didn’t poke fun at Damon that round, though how he said endeavoring—jeez, Louise, it made me a smidge amorous again.
I crawled over his sweaty body to grab my cell from the nightstand. I swiped it on and tapped into my messages.
“Krystal?” he asked.
