Exposed: Book One of The Love Seekers Series (35 page)

“I WON’T! I don’t want to get over this or you.” Grabbing my face in his hands, he forced it upwards, and I closed my eyes so I wouldn’t have to meet his stare. His thumbs brushed my cheeks softly. In a weird way, his actions soothed me, calming my racing heart. “I don’t want to get over you, Em. I know you don’t believe me, but I love you with all that I am.”

I squeezed my eyes tighter. My body should have expelled all of the tears I’d stored, but fresh tears burned my eyes. He was too cruel.

“Em, look at me.” I did not open my eyes. “Fine then. If you won’t look at me, I’ll just keep talking. I know I should’ve talked to you more after I left. I messed up. I thought you were with Chad, and I let my jealousy get the best of me.”

When I still didn’t do what he requested, he continued with a sigh. “Contrary to your muddled way of thinking, you’re not some shiny new toy, and I didn’t concoct my feelings out of thin air because of Chad. Fuck him. Take him out of the equation and I still love you. Evan believes I started falling for you the night I met you at karaoke.”

That stunned me, and in my shock, my eyes popped open.

His smile took my breath away. His face was so close to mine, and once our gazes locked, his eyes held me prisoner and I couldn’t escape.

“There they are. Chocolate brown eyes with flecks of gold. They’re darker on the outside than they are on the inside. Full of life. I realized when I was here a month ago how expressive they are. All three times we were together, I could usually tell what you were thinking and feeling by looking into your eyes. The day we went skydiving, you were nervous, but excited at the same time. When we went to dinner after going to the gym, you were confused when I asked you about Mr. Smooth. An irritated fire bloomed in them when I told you to stay away from Chad. I knew then that you’d go out with him. I hated it. I hated picturing you and him together.”

“So why didn’t you stop me?” I whispered. My logic, which had climbed to the top of the wall, was on the verge of jumping to the other side to join my heart. 

“I didn’t realize how much I loved you until I read your message. By then, I had already gone home. I should’ve stopped you though. I should’ve called and begged you not to go.”

I tried to shake my head, but his hands held me tight. “No, you can’t. I mean, I’m not your type.”

“You’re exactly my type. You are everything I’ve been looking for.”

“I can’t be athletic.”

“I’m not asking you to be.”

“I can’t be blonde. I look horrible with blonde hair.”

“I like you as a brunette. I can’t see you as a blonde.”

“What if I change to blue?”

“I would still be ok with blue hair,” Bryan replied quickly, a humorous glint in his eye. He probably thought I was a little crazy. 

Okay, it even sounded a little crazy to me. Suddenly, everything seemed funny causing me to snicker. We both laughed for a couple of minutes, but he never released me.

When I finished laughing, I asked, “What about all the other girls you’ve dated in the past. Even Chad—”

“Fuck Chad!” Bryan let me go and stood up. His hands pumped opened and closed as he paced back and forth. “I won’t deny that I’ve leaned toward blondes in the past, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want you!”

“A tiger can’t change its stripes.”

“Really? You want to use that one on me? Then you can’t change either. Are you telling me you’re the same person you were before you got sick? The same person you were when we started talking?” I opened my mouth to speak, but he wouldn’t let me say anything. “I know you’re not. You’re more open, and you’ve started put yourself out there more than you did before our agreement. And if try to say you haven’t changed, then you’re a damn liar.”

At this point, I didn’t know if he had purposely pushed my buttons or tried to make a point, but if attacking me had been his plan to win me over, he desperately needed a new one. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me. I love you, Emma, and I could care less about your disease or the fact you have to use a walker or a cane. I don’t care if you aren’t active, or that there’s days you have to stay in bed. I want to take care of you, I want to discover new things with you, and I want to love you. Yet you have the audacity to sit there and say that a tiger can’t change his stripes. I guess you’re in the same boat as me. If that’s true, you can’t change either.”

Him and his fucking logic. I didn’t want logic. I wanted to dig a hole so I could hideaway in it and protect myself. In my hole, I would never again have to question someone’s motives or words. In the past, I believed men cared about me, Allen being one of them, but all of them left me with nothing except scars and disappointment—especially after my illness. Could I give him the chance he sought?

Deep inside me, I knew Bryan was different from any other guy I’d ever been with before, but different didn’t always equal better. He listened to me, made me laugh, and unknowingly lit up my world, driving away some of the darkness that consumed me. Was it possible that he really love me?

Lifting my head, I gave him a hard stare. “Why?”

I saw a split second of confusion before his eyes cleared. I wasn’t sure if his knees buckled, which seemed unlikely for a man like him, or if he’d dropped to his knees in front of me on purpose, but once on the ground, he grabbed my hands, squeezing them.

“You’ll get dog hair all over you if you stay down there,” I warned him before he said anything.

“Then I get dog hair on me. It won’t kill me.” He took a steadying breath. “I love you because you are you. You’re a strong woman who’s had to deal with shitty things in her life, and instead of giving up, you fought and persevered. You have a strength within you born from adversity. You’re beautiful, even with your brown hair and brown eyes. I don’t care if you’re not athletic. I think I’ve proven that I don’t mind carrying you when you can’t walk or when you need my support. Besides, you don’t just lie in bed all day. You’re loyal, trustworthy, beautiful, curvy—I love your curves—funny, and I love talking to you more than I love flying. I never thought I’d say that to anyone in my lifetime. You’ve also opened my eyes to a new world. Since we started talking, the first thing I do when I’m done with work is check for messages from you. It’s also the first thing I do when I wake up, and when I go to lunch. The days I don’t talk to you before going to bed, I feel like something’s missing from my day. You’re it for me. I don’t care what everyone thinks my type was before you, what matters is the future. I love you.”

I hadn’t realized I was crying, until he reached up and wiped away my tears. I found myself daring to believe in him. 

The hand he used to brush away my tears, brushed my hair behind my ear before it gripped my hand once again. “You know. When we were at the gym, I wanted to punch Mr. Smooth for flirting with you, and then I wanted to wring my friend’s neck for saying you weren’t his type all because you had a walker. I wanted to kill Chad because I knew he would be good for you, and he could be everything you needed. I hated him for it because I wanted to be that man. I didn’t talk to you because I was jealous, and because I was terrified my fingers couldn’t lie to you. They would’ve told you what I felt, and I felt like I should save those words for when I could tell you in person. I didn’t call for the same reason. I needed to be here in front of you, touching you, when I told you that I loved you. I was an ass for ever saying you weren’t my type. You are exactly my type.”

Crying and sniffling, I tried to wipe my face on my sleeve without releasing his hands. I hated letting him go even for a moment.

“Em?” His Adam’s apple bobbed when he swallowed hard, waiting for my answer. He wanted to know his confession had not been made in vain.

“Do you want to go with me to the wedding? I need a date.” My voice sounded more like whine than a question due to my crying.

“I thought Chad…” His voice tapered off, and his bewildered expression marred his handsome face. In his eyes, I saw his hope and fear. Those were the same feelings I dealt with after he confessed.

Shaking my head, I chose my words carefully, however, I didn’t offer him my full confession…yet. “No, I told you we aren’t dating. Only friends. In fact, when he dropped me off tonight, he somehow knew you’d be by tonight. I’m not sure how, but he knew. He also told me that it would probably be best if I either went to the wedding alone or had you escort me.” 

“So you two really aren’t dating?”

I shook my head again. “No.”

He exhaled in relief. “Thank God, but hell, even if you told me you were dating him, I would have found a way to take you away from him.” Leaning forward, Bryan pressed his lips to mine, fulfilling one of my heart’s desires. I floated to heaven. Was I dreaming? God, if I was, I never wanted to wake up.

His mouth, hot and insistent, pressed harder against mine. I wanted him to press even harder, to melt into me. I’d been waiting for this since meeting him. The night Mel forced me to attend karaoke to celebrate her engagement.

Unlike others I’d met, Bryan never gave me a funny look or treated me any differently. Granted, he hardly said much to me that night, but when he did, he never made me feel like an invalid or like I was different. To him, I was one of Mel’s friends, and therefore, just another face in the crowd. God! I didn’t want to think about Mel right now…or anyone else. Right now, in this moment, I only wanted to think about Bryan. No one else existed.

Pulling back, he growled and pressed his forehead against mine. His chest heaved as his breathing came out hard and fast, but he wasn’t alone. Mine matched his. “Fuck! I planned on taking this slow and wooing you or some shit.”

Snickering, I asked, “Wooing?”

“Mel said I should woo you.”

Mel. I loved her more than ever before. In the past, there had been a couple of times when I mentioned I wanted someone to woo me. She remembered, and had passed that information on to Bryan. However, wooing could wait. I wanted to be thrown on my bed, stripped quickly—or slowly—and for the fire that had been ignited months ago to be quenched. Not extinguished, merely sated. “But now?” I probed.

His grin…damn, it could light up the world if the sun ever went out. Standing up, he bent down, slid one arm under my legs and balanced the other on my back before scooping me up with a small grunt. “I’ll woo you tomorrow.”

Wrapping my arms around his neck, I told him, “I’m going to need my walker in the morning.”

“You really want to worry about that right now?”

“Nope. Down the hall, the door on the left.”

“That’s more like it.”

In the books, when the guy carried his girl to the bedroom or wherever they decided to have sex, it was a sweet romantic gesture, and nothing untoward ever happened to the heroine. In real life, I banged my feet walked into the hallway, which threw off his balance, and he threw himself against the wall so that he wouldn’t drop me. After recovering, he shifted me and hoisted me up a little higher, we continued down the hall sideways so that neither one of us would injure ourselves before we got into bed. Afterwards, all bets were off.

We were both laughing about it, but the laughter ceased when we reached my bedroom. I had clothes scattered on an unmade bed—another thing that usually did not show up in romance novels. He paid them no attention, and dropped me on the edge of the bed; I bounced

I would worry about the clean clothes tomorrow. Tonight, my desire for him outweighed any other concern. To prove that, I pushed the clothes off my bed and onto the floor.

“Laundry day?” he questioned, chuckling, but he didn’t give me time to respond because his mouth claimed mine once again.

I fisted his shirt, pulling upwards. I wanted it off. The elasticity of t-shirt material had some give, but the material had not disappeared. Of course, it might have been easier if we weren’t connected at our lips. I felt impatient, reckless, and wanted everything to happen now. If I had magical powers like a genie, I would have blinked our clothes away, and made sure both of us were on the bed instead of me sitting on it while he stood in front of me.

He stopped kissing me long enough to get rid of his borrowed shirt. And when he was naked from the waist up, I moaned. Forget a six pack, I craved his eight. Hair covered his chest, but he was not overly hairy, it led to a trail that disappeared into his shorts. My desire urged me to follow that trail with my tongue, and his cocky smile told me he knew every single one of my thoughts and desires. Not that I tried to hide them. Not tonight, and not any longer.

Leaning down, he lifted my nightshirt off of me. His hands dropped to his sides, and he swallowed hard.  I wasn’t as thin as most of the girls he had been with before. Would my flab turn him off? I suddenly felt very self-conscious under his scrutiny.

“What are you doing?” he asked when I reached for the blanket.

My skin felt like it burned, when I mumbled my answer, “I’m probably not like most of the girls you’ve dated. I—”

His hand covered my mouth to cut me off. “If I wanted someone else, I wouldn’t be here. I don’t care if you don’t look like anyone else because you’re you, and that’s the person I want. You are the most beautifully sexy woman I’ve ever met. I love your curves and everything about you, Emma. You are all I want and more.” He removed his hand and leaned over to kiss me again, which only lasted a second because he lifted my legs to throw me completely onto the bed, and I rolled. Laughing, he got on the bed with me and crawled over to where I landed, flopping down beside me. “You know books and movies make it seem this whole seduction thing is easy.”