Until I'm Yours (30 page)

Sofie takes the corner of the sheet to wipe at her tears, sniffing quietly.

“I don’t know how they found out. My medical records were private. They got it wrong. I did have a D&C, but it wasn’t an abortion. It was a miscarriage.”

She shivers despite the shared warmth of our bodies.

“And I wanted that baby. I wanted it for myself. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. Who knows what I would have done in the end, but when I lost it, I wanted it. I do know that.”

She quakes with the cries wrenched from her. I feel every heave and every rough sob, not just the motion and sound of it vibrating through my muscle and bone, but I feel it in the places unseen. I feel it in my soul, and I know it’s because Sofie and I are connected by something that goes beyond sex, beyond friendship. We are connected by love. I know I can’t experience this hurt as deeply as she does, but I feel it with her. I’m attuned to every motion, every tear, every sigh. An intimacy that transcends flesh and blood tangles us together, so I know when she finally falls asleep. And I know it’s not only because this day has left her spent, exhausted, but because here with me, sharing these hurts with me that she’s never shared with anyone before, she found some measure of peace.

I
jackknife to sit upright, confused by my surroundings. I dreamed of that night again. The night that severed me from the innocence of my mind and body. Sleep transported me back to my bedroom after the prom. I was wrapped in my fluffy robe, my spine, a pipeline for rivulets of water dripping from the hair hanging in tangled clumps around my neck. Icy water pooled at the small of my back. My fingertips puckered from the shower. My nails, broken from the fight, folded into my palms. My skin, scalded neon pink from all the scrubbing. But the scrubbing couldn’t reach the shame. Nothing could.

But I’m not there anymore.

I’m not slumped on the floor in the bedroom where I hosted sleepovers for the popular girls growing up. I’m in bed, and it’s not the pink and white four-poster in my parent’s Park Avenue house. The headboard is quilted and tufted at my back. I’m not in my fluffy robe. I’m naked, and a thickly muscled thigh brushes up against my hip.

The room’s bulky shapes clarify as my eyes grow accustomed to the predawn light. A huge lump next to me rises and falls only slightly under the covers, the sound of breath drawn and expelled the only noise in the otherwise quiet room. My hand wanders a few experimental inches until I encounter the warm, hard slope of a naked shoulder. I slide my fingers into the hair at his nape, the strands cool and silky.

Bishop.

My relief is so deep and profound tears sting my eyes, and I have to catch a sob in my hand before it wakes him.

He’s here. Oh, God, he’s here. Thank God.

While I slept I was trapped in a montage of memories from that night fifteen years ago. I’m not sure how much of it was a fictional scene my subconscious cobbled together from scraps in my head, and how much of it was real. But the other part, the part where Trevor gathered me close—cold, naked, catatonic—and brought me to bed, that was real. The part where I unlocked the cell where guilt and shame held my past prisoner, and I told Trevor all the things no one else knows—that was real. The part where I fell asleep experiencing something I, by reason of my shitty week, had no reason to feel—peace—that was real. And everything real was because of the man asleep beside me.

I don’t have the strength to push him away again. It nearly killed me the last time. I know Kerris said putting him first is love, but maybe I’m too broken for that kind of love. Maybe I’m too selfish to put what’s best for him over the overwhelming need to have him in my life. To keep him. My heart aches that being with me might cost him his dream of running the Collective. I’m torn, but not perfectly, evenly in half. Most of me is too grateful to have him back, damn the repercussions.

“Sof?” Trevor asks, his voice gravelly with sleep. “You up, darlin’?”

I pass my hand over his brow, exploring the strong, high cheekbones and square chin. I’d know this face anywhere. Even in the dark, the angles, the planes, the curve of his mouth—they rivet me. He brings my hand to his lips, repositioning himself until his head and shoulders rest in my lap on top of the comforter. I slide my hand under his chin so my thumb can trace his mouth. This simple intimacy soothes the ache in my soul I thought beyond reach.

“Are you okay?” He pulls my hand down to his broad, bare chest, mingling our fingers.

“I’m better now that you’re here.” I pause, trying to swallow my guilt, but it doesn’t go down easily. “I shouldn’t have pushed you away and shut you out like that.”

He tilts his head back, angling to see my face even in the dim light.

“No, you shouldn’t have, and if you do it again there will be consequences.”

“Like what?” I find a smile because I know this version of Trevor, and he always makes me smile.

“Like locking you in my house on Tybee Island and making you my sex slave.”

My laugh is helpless and husky.

“You sure know how to punish a girl, Bishop.”

“Don’t do it again, Sof.” The humor faded fast, and his sober tone behooves me to listen.

“I won’t. I promise.” I close my eyes, ashamed of the very public stunt I pulled. “Trevor, about Rip. Nothing happened between us the other night. I just…I wanted to throw the media off your trail.”

He’s quiet so long I wonder if he doesn’t believe me. After a few moments he turns, grasping my hips and sliding me down until we’re lying face-to-face, the brightening skyline revealing his watchful expression.

“Did you kiss him?” His voice pulls tight, braced for my answer. “Did he touch you?”

I reach up and push the hair, just now growing back, away from his forehead.

“No. I told him I’d finally agreed to see him face-to-face so he could have the closure he thought he needed.” I shrug. “It was just an excuse, and had the added benefit of distracting the media from your involvement with me.”

His hands at my hips spread over my bottom, his fingers warm through the sheet. He dips his head to my ear.

“How many times do I have to tell you that you’re mine, Sofie Baston?”

My heart flips behind my sternum, his words sending a thrill through me. I fold my arms between us, elbows bent, fingers locked around his neck.

“And you are mine, Trevor Bishop.”

“About damn time,” he says, closing the space between us, pulling my lips between his, his mouth possessive, claiming me and yielding to me in the same breath. He pulls back after a few moments, pressing our foreheads together and running his hand over the choppy mess of my hair.

“Thank you for telling me about Rip,” he says. “I needed to hear you say that, but in my heart, I knew nothing happened.”

“How’d you know?” My hands press into the hard muscles of his back, run down to the taut waist.

“Because I trust you.” He tilts my chin. “And because I figured you were trying to protect me. Henri told me what she said to you about the Collective.”

I carefully pull my chin from between his fingers, lowering my head. I wouldn’t blame him for choosing the Collective over me, but the same heart that flipped moments ago, hurts from that possibility.

“All I know is the woman who made a sacrifice like that for me, the woman I saw at that press conference yesterday,” he says, taking my chin again and locking his eyes on mine. “That woman is worthy of my love. I just hope I’m worthy of hers.”

If there is such a thing as time in this utopia we’re in right now, then it stops while I try to make sense of what he just said.

“Love?” My voice lays limp between us, uncertain. “You…well, you—”

“Love you, yeah.”

“Bishop, you don’t have to say it.” I shake my head. “If you—”

“Well, I need to hear
you
say it.” He traces my eyebrows, his long fingers pushing back my hair. “Do you?”

There’s no rationale to us. He’s the saint. I’m the sinner. He’s always known he wouldn’t settle for anything other than an urgent love. I’ve only ever had phonies, sorry substitutes for this real emotion, this visceral connection we share. We shouldn’t be here together, but we are. Our hearts defied those odds, and I can only be grateful.

“With everything,” I whisper, tears on my cheeks. “I love you with everything I have.”

He frames my face with those big hands, thumbs brushing at my tears, eyes melded with mine.

“Then you understand why I can’t ever let you go, right?”

I laugh into the kiss he initiates, a mixture of mirth and emotion that has me mumbling against his lips.

“Oh, I’m counting on it.”

T
he promise of a love like this, the possibility of it, led me to break my engagement with a woman who made perfect sense. This kind of love compelled my father to drive all night to be under the same roof as my mother. I refused to settle for anything less with no assurances that I would ever find it.

But I have, in the most unlikely place I could have imagined. On a billboard in a city where I never wanted to live. My dad used to say when he saw my mom, it was like a click in his head, the sound of his soul locking with hers. Is that what happened to me that day when I saw Sofie up on that billboard in Times Square? Who knows? Who cares? Click or no click, all that matters is that we’re here now, and I haven’t made love to her in two days.

Time to rectify that.

Except her phone keeps beeping with a text alert, and it’s wrecking my moment.

“I should probably get that.” Sofie traces circles on my shoulders with her nails. “It could be—”

“Doesn’t matter who it is.” I reach over to silence the alert, then lie back down to face her, grasping her waist and dragging her into me. “Whatever it is, whoever it is, they can wait.”

“What if it’s important?” Her smile tells me she couldn’t care less about whoever is on the other end of that text.

“This”—I gesture between our two hearts—“is important. Everything else can wait.”

She nods, eyes fixed on me as she takes my bottom lip between both of hers, coaxing my mouth open to her.

“Are you sure, Sof?” I frown, my hands pressing into the subtle curve between her back and her butt. As much as I want this, it was just last night she was weeping on the bathroom floor. Just last night she was unburdening things she’d carried around nearly half her life. “Yesterday was traumatic. I can wait if you need me to.”

“I
can’t
wait.” She runs her tongue over the scruff of my jaw, dotting kisses over my chin, my neck, my shoulders. “You’re right. Yesterday hurt.”

She pauses, pulling back so I can see the shadow that passes over her face.

“But your love heals me, Bishop.” She lowers her lashes, shaking her head. “I know it sounds silly, but—”

I take that excuse captive with my lips, swallowing any words she would have said. Gently, carefully, like she’s fine crystal, I turn her to her back, positioning myself between her long legs, supporting my weight on my elbows. One hand pushes back her jagged, uneven bangs. My kisses traverse her face, her neck, the fragile bones of her shoulders. I’m steadily moving lower, pausing to suck her plump, tight nipples. Stopping to lick into the hollow of her belly button. Nibbling at her hips.

“God, Bishop, yes.” Her breath catches every time I possess another part of her.

I hook an elbow under her knee, pulling it up. Pushing it back, feathering kisses across the silky skin of her inner thigh, licking and kissing until I reach her sweet center. I force myself to slow down, to take my time. I open her up, pulling the bud between my lips. Dipping my tongue inside. Her whimpers spur me on, making it harder to go slow. The taste of her hits my tongue, and all control slips through my fingers like loose reins. I grab her bottom roughly, pulling her into me, spreading her wider, eating voraciously, with hunger I can’t check. One hand presses her knee back more, the other grazes her stomach on its way to her breast, to knead, to squeeze, to pinch, to roll. To love.

“Don’t you dare stop.” Her fingers plow into my hair as the rhythm of her hips matches the stroke of my tongue. “Please, don’t stop. Don’t…Bishop, don’t—”

Her words dissolve into plaintive cries, her nails digging into my shoulders, her knees pressed into my head as she falls apart, syllables strangled in her throat. I live for this. I’ve waited for this all my life. To have the woman I love this way, an intimacy that comes only with knowing you are loved in the same way you love.

I rise up, propping myself on my elbows, aligning our bodies. I don’t ask if she’s ready. I know she is. Tremors still roll through her, and at the first thrust, I feel her quaking against me. She grips me tight, each time I pull out, her body reluctant to release me. She’s not crystal. She’s not glass, and as much as I wanted to be gentle, my body takes over, mercilessly slaking itself inside her. She anchors her heel behind my thigh, meeting every thrust.

“Yes. Just like that, Bishop. I love you,” she whispers, meshing our fingers. “I love you so much.”

Pleasure tips her head back into the pillow, eyes pinned to the ceiling above, mouth falling open with a silent sob, tears running down her cheeks and into the corners of her mouth. She clings to my shoulders, burying her head between my neck and my shoulder. “Don’t ever leave me. God, Bishop, don’t ever…”

“I love you, Sof.” My throat is raw with emotion. My body slave to the want, the love, the unrelenting rhythm driving us both. “I won’t go. Promise.”

Love and lust crest between us, climbing and climbing until we crescendo. She splinters around me, her tears wetting my neck and shoulder. I drop my head into the pillow by her hair, cupping her head, twining our bodies so tightly it feels like she’s drawing my breath and I’m drawing hers. Like her heart beats in my chest, and her heart beats in mine. I know in that moment, she’s the fire burning in my chest, and I’d chase her down. I’d follow her anywhere.