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Decision made, Jameson King would like me, and I’d make sure he never stopped.
He was beautiful, and if I were the type of person who created art, I’d paint him.
He was warm and safe. He was what I imagined having a steady home must feel like.
It wasn’t just worry…it was like someone attempted to touch something that belonged to him. I knew after this moment that look had ruined me for anyone else for the rest of my life.
“I hate when you do this.” My eyes were back on him. “Do what?” He stepped closer, his thumb still against my chin, but now his fingers were spread out against my jaw. “Lower your face as if you don’t belong to stay in the moment…as if you need to separate yourself from what’s going on. You do it a lot in the club.” I stared up into his eyes, letting his hand remain against my jaw. “I don’t belong there.” His thumb traced my bottom lip. “You do. You’re the only thing there that feels like home.”
clinging to his. A tiny spark of fire slid against my bottom lip as he moved the pad of his thumb over it again. “Me,” he rasped, just a singular second before leaning in and pressing his lips to mine.
There, on a cold October night, Jameson King stole my first kiss in the middle of the street. I wish he hadn’t.
If you were mine, I’d kill anyone who told me to let another man touch you. I’d burn down the club before letting someone feel what’s mine. Within the club, the only other thing that is sacred is our women, the ones we claim, the ones we choose. If you were mine, I’d tell Tuck to go fuck himself and if he tried to hurt me, then I’d welcome the carnage.”
I looked around, and realized he’d rolled up his sleeping bag and tucked it into the corner. I wondered how mad Jameson would be if his sleeping bag somehow ended up disappearing.
“Well, she’s about to become my fucking wife, so you’ll get over your reservations and really fucking quickly. As for the kid…he’s mine too, and will be raised by me...”
This wasn’t fake, and whether he agreed to it or not, I’d claim a piece of him by the end of this. Some part of that gave me hope. If I could finally find a way inside his heart, then maybe he’d let me stay there.
but that first kiss would always trace back to me. I’d be branded on her forever, whether she wanted me or not.
“Would this stay between us?” Wanda’s smile grew. “It would. I’d never rob my daughter the joy of discovering someone loved her.” My face heated as I shook my head. “I never said that.” “You didn’t have to.” Wanda smirked again, and I lowered my face to hide the growing blush.
Write to her…” Doubt crept in, smothering all the hope Wanda had stirred, forcing me to shake my head. “Why bother?” Her gaze lifted and moved to the window as she let out a sigh. “Because you weren’t the only one watching her, Jamie. That’s why. Write your letter.”
PS- Did you know ravens remember faces? I think I’d like to be one in another life…if that sort of thing is possible, but if I were one, I know I’d remember yours, Penelope.
She knew that I returned for the funeral, not because of my respect for Mathias, but my devotion to Jamie.
I’d go to pay my respects and then I’d walk back home, then leave this city once more, allowing Jameson King to remain with a silent, secret piece of me.
“Because moments after I buried my father, I was supposed to be drowning in grief and yet one look at you, and I felt...joy. You ruined the saddest day of my life…all because I wasn’t prepared to see you. I wasn’t planning on you…and then there you were.”
“I wanted to be angry today. Sad. But then you showed up, and you look different, Pen. More beautiful than I—I…” His face flushed, making it difficult to track what he was saying. “You’re a tragedy in your own way, just hanging around in my chest like a poison, slowly infecting my heart.”
He also had a few verses of text right below his belly button that seemed to act as an arrow down to his cock. The words were simple, and in script… My midnight ruin. Starlight eyes, burning flesh and bone. A bruised heart, crushed by all our good intentions.
He was warm sunshine on a lazy summer day. Heat soaked dirt and fresh grass. He was peace. My peace. The one steady thing I’d clung to for half my life.
No one would understand that my obsession for you comes from under the skin, down in my marrow. A sunlit backdrop to my turbulent life. You are the hope I always feel when things feel hopeless, and your smile feels like it has a rope tethered from it to my heart. Your lips turn up, my heart lifts too. You make me laugh, and you breathe poetry, as if I was to crawl inside your head and found it was all purple night skies and constellations.
“It wasn’t supposed to be like this. We were supposed to be outside at night, under the stars, and preferably in a field of wildflowers. Your mom was supposed to be there and my dad…and it was supposed to be years ago when I had you all to myself. I take the blame, Penny. I always will, but you’ll have to agree to take my name and give me time to fix all of it. Because I promise I will, Pen. I promise that I’m in this until the end.”
“It’s always been you, Jameson. Always in the back of my mind at night, in my chest, expanding with my lungs in the morning, when the sun would warm the earth. You were always in my dreams when I thought of forever. However long you give me, I will happily accept.”
Anyone but fucking Luke.
I wasn’t avoiding Penelope. My wife. I was simply careful not to be in the same room as her while she was awake.
“You’re mine, Penny. For fucking ever. I don’t want to annul anything. I want to keep you. My filthy bride. I want you, for always.”
“And now...” I pulled my hips back and then gently rolled them forward, fully sheathing myself inside her. “You are officially...” I moved again and her fists clenched the comforter. “My motherfucking wife.”
“You wanted to know why I didn’t fight for you.” She slowly turned on her toe. “You were this beautiful dream that just walked into my life when I was thirteen, too young to know what to do with it. You were as out of reach to me as the stars. I’d watch you and you were imprinted in my mind, running through it at night, claiming every waking moment in the morning. I’d see you in school and I’d miss what the assignment was, or what the club had asked me to do. You were always watching me, and I could feel this pull between us, and I knew…I knew if I gave in to it, then you’d become part of the
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“And now that you’ve had me?” Her hands came to my chest, hovering over the feathers branded into my skin. “Now, no one else ever will.”
My heart had already made room for him. Visions of teaching him how to ride, how to fix bikes, how to throw a baseball. All the things my dad had done with me, it all rushed in and seemed to fill in that bright spot in my soul that had recently been made just for him.
“Your grandpa Mathias is watching down on you, and your grandma Wanda. You’ll feel their love in the warm breeze when it shifts and brushes against your face. They’ll love you in the way the sun will warm you, and the way the snow will fall when you least expect it. You’re not alone, baby boy. You’re so loved.”
Jamie’s gaze remained fixed on me. “I love you. I’ve always loved you. You’ll go with me wherever I go, I promise.”
“Who is that?” I whispered to Jamie. Wes suddenly limped into view, then froze at the sight of the man. “That...” Jamie’s face twisted in confusion, looking up. “Is Simon Stone…who is supposed to be dead.”
