Harlequin Desire January 2021--Box Set 1 of 2 by Maisey Yates (inspirational books .TXT) 📗

change either. Maybe things wouldn’t change. Maybe it would all stay the same, just for a little while. Maybe they could put off all the hard conversations for another time. They could say goodbye another day. She had cooked. Just in case. And she had been rewarded. It was funny, how much she enjoyed cooking. And she would have been more annoyed about the fact that she liked such a traditionally feminine pursuit, except that he seemed to enjoy it so much, and he appreciated it. She thought back to the day she’d made bread and brought out ham sandwiches. Oh yes, he’d appreciated that a whole lot. She felt a dreamy smile cross her face when she thought about it. These times with Jackson had been… Well, they’d been everything.

He’d been everything she’d ever fantasized about.

She knew this moment was supposed to be about moving on. About moving into the next phase of her life, but…

No. It doesn’t bear thinking about.

Except, he was here.

And she kept thinking that, even as they each built hamburgers out of the ingredients she had laid out.

“Jackson,” she said softly as they finished eating. “How was your day?”

“Good. And yours?”

“Good and—”

She cut herself off. Because she didn’t care. She didn’t want to have this conversation. She really didn’t. She didn’t want to talk at all. Because her insides were jumbled up and everything hurt. Because this was the last day, and she didn’t know how to ask him if he would stay. She didn’t know how to explain to herself, in a way that made her not feel silly, why she might ask him to stay.

Because I want to marry him.

And I want to have his children.

Because I would be his ranch wife in this house or any house.

Because he was her dream. And that was the bottom line.

She was young, and she was supposed to go out and live. She knew that. She wasn’t supposed to want a man she had been completely hopeless over since she was twelve. She was supposed to experience more. Have more lovers. Travel. Something.

But she just didn’t want to.

And she had the sick, terrible feeling that—much like her mother—there was really only one man for her, and there would never be anything that would take away her feelings. So she didn’t want to waste time talking.

She flung herself into his arms, climbing up on the same chair as him, her legs on either side of his, the heart of her right up against where he was rapidly growing hard. And she kissed him. Kissed him until she thought she might die. Kissed him because she thought if she didn’t she might die.

He stole her oxygen and became it all at once, and she couldn’t have explained that feeling if she’d been put before a firing squad. She had never thought in terms of fate. She had always believed she was a pragmatist. But he felt like fate. This moment felt like fate. And she really couldn’t deny it. Didn’t really want to. Didn’t want it to end.

He stood up from the chair, and he swept their plates to the side, breaking them on the floor. “I owe you a set of dishes,” he said roughly.

“I don’t care,” she said.

Oh she really didn’t care. Because she just wanted him, wanted this. And nothing else mattered. Not plates, not anything. And she gave thanks that she had worn a dress, which she so rarely did, because it made everything easily accessible for him. Because then he had his hands at her hips. Had his fingers between her thighs, stroking her, stoking the fires of her desire. This was like madness. This was like every fantasy she’d ever had.

And she had a terrible feeling that it had been love she’d been feeling from the very beginning. Love and fate—and that was why. That was why it had been him from the time she was twelve years old. And it didn’t matter how much she wanted to deny it. It simply was. It simply, simply was. But he was here. He was here.

And he had broken dishes and cleared the table and was kissing her on top of it.

This table that had been an emblem of everything she’d been missing.

And she’d thought what she’d wanted had been some generic idea of a sitcom family. And she’d tried to shoehorn Jackson into that picture. But that wasn’t what she’d wanted. It hadn’t been quiet dinners that she was missing. It had been him. Just him. It wasn’t an aching for domesticity that she felt that first night they’d sat down to dinner together, it was a life spent with him. It had been things shared with this man that had called to her from the very first time she’d ever seen him.

It didn’t matter if the idea was crazy. It didn’t matter if she was younger than he was. It didn’t matter if she was just starting out. Because she knew.

He’d made fun of her the other day, when she’d said she’d understood all these things, but she did. She understood this. Now, suddenly, in his arms—she understood.

She loved him.

And that was all there was to it.

She loved him and she wanted to be with him. And whatever else she needed to experience, it didn’t matter. Because this was the one thing her heart and her body had known from the beginning. A lifetime spent feeling like she might always have to be second best, not quite so spectacular as her sisters, had seen her trying to find another explanation for how she felt. To find a way to protect her heart. But there was no protecting it, not now. She felt exposed. Cut open. She couldn’t hide or protect herself even if she wanted to. So she didn’t try. She surrendered to this madness between them.

And then he was inside of her, the table hitting up against the wall with each and every thrust. And he was amazing. In every way.