Taken Over (Book 2 The Ravening Series) (32 page)

   “You never could have found me Bethany,” he interrupted.

   “Where were you?
How
did you get away?”

   His lips were warm as they brushed against my temple, soft as they found my cheek. “I don’t want to talk about bad things now either.” I pulled slightly away from him, searching his charcoal eyes intently, looking for some sign that he was different. For some sign that they had damaged him in some irreparable way. There was no such sign in his gleaming gaze as he bent to kiss me gently. “Tomorrow we can discuss everything.”

   He wiped the tears from my cheeks as I continued to cry softly. Happiness engulfed me; love surged through me as he kissed my nose. “I love you too,” I breathed. “I never got to tell you that
. You were taken
s
o fast. I thought you had died without ever knowing
how I felt
. But I love you Cade and I was broken without you. I could barely breathe…”

   “
Hush, stop, I know.
I
kn
e
w you loved m
e
Bethy, I
’ve
always kn
o
w
n
. I’ve been so worried about you, so lost without you
also
. You’re not the only one who was broken, not the only one who feared the other was dead. I know what you went through, I went through it myself. But I’ve found you now and that’s all that matters.”

   “
How
did
you find me?”

  
His smile was slow and lazy and so achingly familiar that I couldn’t help grinning wildly back at him. “
I could find you anywhere love. I’ll always be able to find you.”
   It wasn’t a real answer, but I didn’t care.
The only thing I cared about was that he was here!
I threw
my arms around his neck again, burying myself against him. He placed gentle kisses against my face and
neck
as I stroked and clung to him. There was nothing sexual
about this
, it was simply a need to touch and feel each other. To reassure each other that we were not dreaming, that the other was
in
fact
real.

   He pulled me down to the ground, cradling me gently against his side as his fingers entwined with mine. I couldn’t stop touching him, couldn’t get over this sudden good fortune as we
simply
held
and stroked
each other late into the night.

CHAPTER 12

  
I bolted upright the next morning, my heart leaping and jumping in my throat as I searched wildly around. It couldn’t have been a dr
eam, it simply couldn’t have! It had been so real! My lips were still swollen from his kisses; my skin tingled from the lingering effects of his heated touch. I
searched
frantically
as I leapt to my feet, tears burning my eyes as I took a frightened step forward. Oh God, please no, I pleaded silently.

   I could
n’t
take losing
Cade
again, even if it had only been a dream. I searched the woods desperately as I took a shaky step forward. It had been so
real
. I could still smell him upon me, still
feel his lips against mine;
still taste him
!
It couldn’t have been a dream. It
couldn’t
have been.

   “Bethany?” I spun, a strangled
cry
escaping me as
Cade stepped out of the woods.
I didn’t know where he had gone to, or why, and I didn’t care as
I raced a
t him,
thr
o
w
ing
myself into
hi
s arms. “Whoa what’s wrong? What happened?”

   “You weren’t here. I thought it was just a
nother
dream, I thought it hadn’t been real.”

  
I could feel the surprise in his body, but his arms came slowly around me as he pulled me against him. He sighed softly, pressing his face into my hair as he inhaled deeply.
“It wasn’t a dream. I’m not leaving you ever again Bethany.”

   “You can’t promise that
.”

   He
hugged me tightly before
lift
ing
me against him. I instinctively wrapped my legs around his waist as I leaned back to look down at him. “Maybe not,
” he admitted.
“B
ut I
can
promise you that I will do everything possible to make sure that we are
never
separated again.
”

   I studied him for a long moment before nodding slowly.
I wanted to be soothed by his words, but I couldn’t be. Our world was so precarious right now, so full of danger and death that every day was a
n uncertainty
.
I kissed him gently, c
linging to him in my relief at finding that he was
not
a dream. I had meant for it only to be a quick kiss, but our long time apart and aching longing for each other quickly turned it into something more.

   His hands grasped hold of me, clasping my head to him as he held me firmly against him. I lost myself to the blissful feel of his mouth as
I clung to him. My heart hammered, my body responded eagerly, but I broke away before I lost myself to him. Before we finished what had been started last night.

   “Cade I’ve never…” I broke off, heat flaring over my face and down my throat as the words clogged in my throat.

   He frowned at me, his dark eyebrows drawing tightly together
as worry flitted over his features
. “Never what?”

   I couldn’t bring myself to look at him as I slid from his grasp. His hands remained on my waist as he set me on the ground. “Never you know… ah… I’ve never…”

   “Had sex?
”
   I was fairly certain that even my hair was about to catch on fire with my mortification. “Ye
s
,” I mumbled.
“I mean no.”

   He laughed softly, his fingers threading through my hair as he pulled me a step closer to him. I frowned angrily up at him, irritated by his laughter.
“I know.”

   “What do you mean you
know
?” I demanded thrown off by his words. Was it so obvious then? Was
I
so obvious?

   “Bethany…”

   “I
was
dating
Bret for a year.”

   He cocked an eyebrow at me, but his amusement did not abate. “You were,” he agreed. “But it wasn’t the same.”

   “You don’t know that.” I regretted the words as soon as I uttered them, what I felt for Cade was
extremely
different than anything with Bret.
I never wanted him to doubt that.

  
His smile vanished,
but his were still sparkling. “I do know that.” He kissed me gently, then again, and quickly once more. “I haven’t either
,
you know.”

   I started in surprise. I pulled away from his mesmerizing kisses as I gaped at him. “How is
that
possible? All the girls in school were after you, you could have
had
anyone you wanted…”  

   “And I
do
have her. I told you once Bethany that it was you
;
that it ha
s
always been you, and I meant that. Do you think just anyone could have taken your place, even for a moment?”
I opened my mouth to answer, but I had no idea how to respond to that. I was adrift, caught up in his words and the love that brought tears to my eyes. “No, they couldn’t have. Just as no one could have taken m
y place
with you.” I was crying openly now, weeping with the
wonder
of it all. “You may have been dating Bret, but you were never
with
Bret, not in your heart.”

   He placed my hands against his chest
. Beneath the muscle and bone I could feel the hard, steady beat of his heart. “And you
are
in my heart.” He wrapped his hand into my hair, brushed his lips over my forehead. “I
was made
for you Bethany; and you
were made
for me. You always have been
,
and nothing could change that
.”

   I was humbled by his words, enveloped by the weight of them. He was right, I knew he was right. I had always known where I belonged, always known who I belonged
with
, even when I
had
been dating someone else
. My body, my heart, my soul was all his. It always had been; it always would be. “Yes, yes, yes.”
I agreed with him wholeheartedly.
   He wiped my tears away, bending to me as he kissed me ever so lightly upon my nose.
“Yes,” he mumbled, smiling as he kissed me again.

   I wanted to lose myself to him, but I knew that I couldn’t. Not right now anyway. Soon though, so very soon I could shut out the rest of the world by losing myself in him.
Then a thought occurred to me. “But if you knew all this, if this was what you had always wanted, why did you avoid me so much? Why didn’t you come to me before I started dating Bret? Why did you leave me all those years ago?”

   Something flickered in eyes, there was a
slight
recoil
ing
that he
was quick
to bury
,
but had been unable to hide. My eyes widened
, I wanted to grab at him, to pull him back to me, to make him stay when I felt his withdrawal. Then he was smiling, a small curve of his mouth that barely tipped the hard edges of it. “Because I wasn’t sure how you felt about me, not until all of this anyway.” He shrugged absently. “I didn’t approach you because I was afraid of being rejected by you. I had nothing to offer you, I was an orphan, and definitely not the golden boy Bret was. It was obvious to me that your feelings for him were more platonic than his were for you, but I wasn’t going to stop you from going down a path that I felt you needed to travel.