Paradise Found: Cain (Paradise Stories Book 2) (30 page)

“Your father came to see me.”

The words were a sucker punch to the gut. I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t want him in the same state as her, let alone within ten feet of her. His presence in Preston could only mean dangerous things.

I stepped toward her again, no longer concerned about the scent of me.

“What did he want?” I swallowed down the bile of fear inside me. I never put it past him to go after her. It was one thing I could predict of him. If my father thought Sofie was important, she’d be a target. Given his history with her parents, I worried even more. My hands fell to my side.

“He wanted me to divorce you.”

Another punch, this one to my heart. I still had that blue envelope of papers: the ones that contained her signature and not mine. I hadn’t filed them after I asked her to stay with me, obviously. I hadn’t even filed them when she left me behind. I just didn’t want to give her up. Marriage tied her to me. Swallowing hard again, I raised my head, bracing for the worst.

“I said I wouldn’t do it.”

My eyes opened wide as I sucked in air. In an instant, I was on her. My gloved hands slipped around her and her mouth was under mine. The kiss was hard. I wasn’t intending to punish her. In fact, I wanted to fall on my knees and worship her. I wanted to praise the heavens with the words she’d spoken. She wasn’t going to divorce me.

My lips slowed to a tender caress. Tongues tangled and I savored her. It had been too long. I was a man exiled to the desert, parched and caked with dust, in need of a sweet refreshment to replenish me. She filled me up with her delicate response. Opposite the numerous aggressive kisses we had shared, this was like our first kiss, hesitant, discovering. She was going to teach me, when I thought I was the master.

I slowed to her pace and drew back with a weary smile. My eyes remained closed, attempting to hold the mirage of her, before she disappeared again, because I was firmly convinced that was what would happen. I was hallucinating the words that drifted near the horizon.

“Why are you smiling like that?” she asked, a bit of edge to her tone.

My eyes popped open and I took in her somber face. She looked irritated with a touch of fear in her eyes.

“You’re staying married to me?” I questioned, pleasure filled my voice.

“Cain, this isn’t the time or the…” I cut her off again. I wanted to draw her out of her worry into my contentment. Like sucking the venom out of a bite wound, I wanted to take the poison from her mind and let her feel the euphoria inside me. She was still my wife. She was staying my wife.

My lips held fast to hers, nibbling, then consuming whenever she’d attempt to speak. She’d follow my lead, tangle with my tongue, but the moment she pulled back I latched on. My teeth scrapped playfully over her tender mouth, dragging her lips back to mine. She giggled against me and my smile broke the connection.

“What?” I teased.

“I’m trying to talk to you,” she said, attempting to be serious, but the curve of her lips told me she liked mine on hers.

“There’s nothing to talk about. You’re coming home with me, where you belong.” I smiled, before growing serious. “It isn’t safe if Atom is this close. In Preston.” I took a deep breath. “I think he’s the one who trashed your apartment, all those months ago, and I don’t like you being there unprotected.”

“Why did he do it?” Liquidy blue eyes tore my heart in two.

“Because he knew you were someone important, he just hadn’t figured out why. He wouldn’t have come after you, otherwise.”

“Did he ever go after Malinda?”

My shoulders sagged.

“No,” I shook my head, wondering if I’d ever be able to let go of my sins. Would she ever forgive me?

“Why?” she asked so innocently.

“Because I didn’t …” I couldn’t say it. I couldn’t tell her how I felt. Not like this. “Malinda wasn’t anyone special to me.” That was the truth. Malinda was a means to an end, as I was to her. She fulfilled the need when it grew to be too much, and I had to have a different kind of release than a hot shower and my own palm.

She nodded knowingly, but she didn’t know. The sad expression on her face proved it. She couldn’t know the depth of my feelings for her. I loved her.

“You can’t keep taking me in,” she whispered. “Like a lost puppy or something.”

“I’m not,” my voice croaked. “I’m not taking you in. I’m keeping you safe. A woman should be taken care of, Sofie, treasured, especially by her husband. I’ll have to have a little talk with him.” I winked.

This made her laugh a little, if only half-heartedly.

“I think it’s safest if you come home. To the house,” I clarified. “I can both be vigilant about watching over you, and watching out for Atom, until I figure out why he’s here.”

Sofie nodded again, slower this time, and while my heart flipped inside me, I sensed she wasn’t as pleased about the arrangement as me.

She allowed me time to shower and dress, before we drove to her apartment for a few of her things. I didn’t want it to be awkward when we got to the house but it was. We seemed to bump into each other and smile, like teenagers with a crush. Hell, I felt like a damn teenager, and I wasn’t even this jittery as one. I was confident and cocky, but this girl, she stripped me. She owned me. My whole body vibrated with need to be in her, and I didn’t know what to do about it. She didn’t seem real to me unless we were connected in the best way two people can be.

We had a quiet dinner, where she told me about school, and then she left me to grade some papers for her TA position. She studied really hard, training her mind almost as much as I trained my body. I liked to watch her work, imagining the knowledge seeping into her brain. She was going to make a great doctor, one day. She had this soothing tone and patience to her, like she could solve all your problems. It was one of the things that captivated me about her. She could be my salvation.

At midnight, I decided she needed sleep. She’d slept on my floor the night before and left early this morning. My father’s threat, and my demands to return home, had taken over her mind. I could tell she was no longer reading papers, but staring at them.

“Come to bed,” I said, without realizing how it sounded. Her eyes opened wide and she bit her lip, as she stared at me.

“I mean … you should sleep.” I slipped my hands in my jeans to disguise the problem I’d been battling ever since our kiss. The idea of her in my bed was too much for me. If she were there, there would be no control. I’d lose the fight. She’d be mine again in the most biblical of terms.

She nodded, then led the way up the stairs but paused in the hallway. Our room was on the right, but her old room was to the left. I’d carried her things there out of respect. I didn’t want to push her. Her crestfallen face quickly recovered as she turned into her old room.

“Thank you for doing this again. Taking me in. It’s got to be getting old,” she said, beginning to unpack some things from her bag, keeping her back to me.

“I like having you here. In fact, I think you belong here, but not like this,” I added. “I don’t want you here because of a threat or because you feel you have no other place to go. I want you to
want
to be here.”

Her lack of response told me everything. She smiled weakly at me, and I took the expression on her face as a dismissal. I nodded “good night” and exited the room. My temper wanted me to slam the door. My rationale told me to act like her rejection meant nothing to me. My heart clenched with an ache I’d never felt before.

She rustled around in the room, and I assumed she was unpacking her things. There was a private bath connected to the space, and I heard water running, then the soft click of a light turning off. I lay on my bed, stone still, taking in every sound of her movement across the hall. My hands were clasped over my chest like a dead man in a casket. I might have been holding my breath. I didn’t want to miss a step she took or a sigh she made. After long minutes of silence, I couldn’t take it. I went to check on her.

“Sofie,” I spoke quietly into the darkened room.

Her body angled toward the window, and she twisted to look at me over her shoulder. We didn’t need to speak. She slid over in the bed and pulled back the duvet in invitation. I stripped my jeans and my shirt before slipping in behind her. My body still pulsed with a need to be closer, but I’d take what she gave me. My arm wrapped over her waist, and she settled into the crook of my body with her back against my chest. I breathed in the scent of her hair, the warmth of skin fresh from a shower, and prayed for the strength to resist devouring my sweet temptation.

I couldn’t sleep with him holding me. As exhausted as I was, my body wasn’t getting the memo to rest. He just felt so good against me. His broad chest hovered over my back. His heavy arm wrapped around my waist. His large hand mere millimeters under my breast. My nipples were erect. My core: a marching band of rhythm. I needed his touch, yet it seemed like that would be too much.

“Sofie,” he muttered into my neck after several minutes passed. “Let it go. You’re safe here. I got you.”

I nodded in the dark, but what kept me awake wasn’t what he thought. It was him, not his father, who filled my mind. Desire surged throughout my body. I fought myself as my hips ached to thrust back and brush against a part of him I’d seen him struggle with throughout the evening. He wanted me, I was certain. But if I was a means to an end, my heart couldn’t handle it. I didn’t want to be the tool he used to taunt his father. Atom threatened me, and Cain was going to retaliate. He took pride in my defiance of his father, but it wasn’t
me
he wanted. Malinda had served a purpose for him. Perhaps, I was going to serve one, too. That wasn’t settling well for me.

His hand slowly caressed up my arm to my shoulder, in that tender touch he used the night before. His fingers worked magic in many ways but massage was not one I’d experienced before. His lips softly brushed my shoulder and the moan-sigh combination escaped me before I could capture it.

“You like that?” he groaned below my ear, before his nose tickled the delicate skin. I couldn’t speak. My tongue was swollen; my mouth dry. Parched. Forty days and forty nights without him, maybe more at this point. I needed to be restored. I needed a sip to sustain me, like that kiss, which was only a light drizzle of rain to a sun-dried desert.

I twisted enough that his hand skidded over my collarbone and around my throat. His lips followed the path, trailing kisses up my jaw. Hesitantly, his mouth covered mine. I remembered this kiss. He’d given it to me on the day after our first night together. A kiss that asked, can I have another taste? Will one more be enough? It wouldn’t be for me. He’d be a delicacy I would crave all my life.

As our mouths moved in unison, and the kiss took up a dance of its own, I followed his lead like the curious woman that I was. That kiss was a promise. It was encouragement that what I wanted would be fulfilled. I could have what I asked. I could learn what I wanted to know. He would provide it for me, if I gave into him. Cain had never been rough with me, and I didn’t expect things to go that way now. He was a guiding hand, pulling me closer to what I desired, teasing me with tongue and lips that spoke volumes without words. He drew me even closer to what I longed to know: did he love me?

A leg slipped between my thighs, and a gentle press against the pulse between them proved he wanted something from me. The hard length of him was prodding against my hip as half his body covered mine.

“This isn’t going to end well,” I said softly, as I tried to break the attraction of those promising lips.

“This isn’t going to end,” he assured me, before lips drew back to mine, magnetized by the force of being together. His thigh pressed higher, harder, and my body began to dance against his. Hips rolled, forcing the friction my core craved.

He pulled back to skim my body with his hand, while I undulated against him. I closed my eyes and slipped my arm over my face. His attention to me was too much.

“Why did you tell him no? Why did you tell him you wouldn’t divorce me?” he asked softly, so tenderly, so unlike him.

“Because I love you,” I whispered. The words tumbled out of nowhere.

He froze over me. Mid-roll, not quite a full press, he paused. One hand was already braced on the side of me, pushing upward. He was about to tease me one final time with his lower body, but he pulled back completely.

Silence poured between us.

“Sofie?” His voice was a whispered response. I shook my head, denying I’d said those three words. I couldn’t face his rejection. Maybe the emotions of his father’s threat were catching up to me, after all.

Within an instant, my shorts were yanked downward, my underwear heading south with it. Large hands fumbled and jiggled my body, and the shock of being wrestled undressed kept me quiet. Suddenly, he was in me without foreplay, filling me to the hilt. My legs were spread wide without thought, as my body drew him inward, until I didn’t think he’d end, but burrow through me. I cried out in surprise and fulfillment, wincing with pleasure at the intrusion. His voice echoed mine in a prayer of obscenity, as our foreheads came together. He pumped inside me three times. His fingers dug into my hips, as he rocked hard over me. The mattress squeaked from the sudden pressure. My hands came to his shoulders as I was about to get the ride of a lifetime. Then he stopped.