Make Me Sin (22 page)

I drop the ice and wrap my arms around his waist, rising up on my toes. I kiss him softly on the mouth. “Welcome back to the human race, Prince Charming. We’ve missed you here.”

A smile spreads over his face. It’s heartbreakingly beautiful. “Angel,” he whispers. And then his lips find mine.

The kiss starts out soft, but within seconds it turns violently passionate. We’re desperately hungry for each other, clinging and voracious. His teeth draw blood as they press into my lower lip. When I make a small sound in my throat, he pulls back and sees the smear of red on my mouth. He tenses, his expression pained.

“Fuck! I’m so sorry—”

“Don’t be. That’s the best pain I’ve ever felt.”

He’s appalled, but also turned on, and can’t decide whether to smile or frown. So I decide for him. I reach between his legs and grasp the throbbing bulge in his jeans.

He groans. “No. You’re hurt.”

“Shut up.” I stroke him, ignoring his protests. When he doesn’t stop me, I reach for his zipper.

In the same way he gutted me with humiliation the night in my bedroom, he grasps my wrists and commands, “Stop.”

His face is flushed. His eyes are hot. I know he doesn’t want me to stop.

“We’ve already been through this, A.J.”

His eyes briefly close. “I mean, not like this. Not when you’re hurt. Not now.”

In spite of what seems like inevitable forward momentum leading to us finally consummating our relationship to become true lovers in every sense of the word, I suffer a moment of hideous insecurity. “But you do want to?”

He releases my wrists to once again cup my face. He strokes his thumbs over my heated cheeks, carefully skirting the area with the stitches. He breathes, “Sweet angel, I’ve wanted you since the first time I heard you sing.”

That stops me dead. “Um . . . what?”

He wraps his arms around me, and rests his forehead on my shoulder. His heart thumps a steady beat against my breasts.

“I heard you singing to yourself one day. Nine months ago, to be exact. The day Nico and I first came into your shop to get flowers for Kat. I’ll never forget it, no matter how long I live.”

He turns his face to my neck. I hold my breath, sensing that what he’s about to tell me might explain everything. Or at least shed some light on the mystery that is Alex James Edwards.

“I came inside the shop first. Nico was still talking to Barney in the car, but I’d been working in the studio all day and couldn’t stand another second of being cooped up. And as soon as I opened the door and stepped inside, I heard your voice. I didn’t know it was you, but I heard this woman singing to herself somewhere just out of sight. I thought I would die right there, next to the rack of Hallmark cards, from sheer bliss.”

When he looks at me his eyes are endless, full of what I can only describe as love. “Your voice, Chloe. The colors of your voice are like . . . fucking . . .
heaven
.” He starts to sing the lyrics of a Journey song, one I instantly recognize.

“
‘Don’t Stop Believin’,
’
” I say, stunned. “It’s one of my favorite songs.”

He laughs, but it’s choked with emotion. “You and your goddamn eighties rock. That’s what you were singing. You were hitting all the high notes, too, all the hard ones, without missing a beat. And it was like the Fourth of July and a Vegas laser show and the northern lights, all rolled into one. I was blinded. Frozen. I couldn’t move. I’d never heard or seen anything so beautiful. No occlusions or breaks, no cracks or wobbles, just pure, totally effortless perfection, surrounding me on every side, raining over me like a shower of precious jewels.”

All of a sudden, I’m crying. Tears stream unchecked down my cheeks, stinging my stitches. “Then why did you act like you hated me so much? If you thought I was so beautiful, why did you always snarl at me and push me away? Why did you tell me I make you want to die?”

A.J.’s eyes are so soft it breaks my heart. “You remember the famous saying from Jacques Cousteau?”

I nod, sniffling.

“That’s why. Because for a man like me, the most beautiful, dangerous creature of all is love. I fell in love with you sight unseen, just
from the sound of your voice, and I knew if I didn’t make you hate me,
I’d do the most selfish thing in the world and try to make you mine.”

I’m kissing him again; I can’t help myself. Like breathing, it’s an automatic reflex. I need to taste him, to feel him, to communicate without words what he does to me. How much I care.

“Angel. Angel.” He murmurs it over and over as I kiss his face, his eyelids, his lips. I’m not particularly religious, but I feel like this is a form of communion. This moment is sacred, and I don’t want it to ever end.

It does, though. A.J. takes hold of my shoulders, gently pushing me away. “You need to get back in bed.”

I nod enthusiastically. “Yes, I do.
We
do.”

His chuckle is soft and indulgent. He swipes the moisture from my cheeks with his fingers. “Easy, killer. One thing at a time. Sleep, eat, sleep more, then we’ll talk. And then . . . we’ll see.”

“I just woke up from twelve hours of sleeping!”

He presses his thumb against the frown lines between my brows, smoothing them out. “Which was instruction number one. Instruction number two was eat.”

As if on cue, my stomach growls.

A.J. grins triumphantly. “You like pancakes?”

“Pancakes? It’s dinnertime!”

He shakes his head, the corners of his eyes crinkling. “Yeah, but that’s all I know how to cook, so that’s what you’re getting.”

I roll my eyes. “Okay. Pancakes. Then sleep again, then the other thing. Deal?”

“The
other
thing?” He smirks at me.

I say innocently, “Yeah, talking. That was instruction number four, right?”

He gathers me into his massive arms. I gaze up at him, falling, falling, falling.

His voice husky, A.J. asks, “Are you going to follow all my instructions from now on, Princess?”

“I would say yes, but we both know I’d be lying.”

He nuzzles my neck. “How about just for one week?”

There’s something in his voice, some kind of dark need that makes me go still. “You want me to do whatever you say for a week?”

He lifts his head and stares at me. The desire in his eyes tells me the answer is yes.

“Why?”

He struggles to find the words. “Because I need to be in control of this.”

“Me, you mean?”

“No, baby. This. What’s happening here. I have to be in control of it, so that when the week is up and you’re gone . . .”

He doesn’t finish his thought, but I think I understand. This has to be on his terms. So that when we both go back to real life, he can go on without me.

My heart takes a flying leap out of my chest. I stare into his eyes, finally comprehending why he’s revealing all this, why he brought me here in the first place. “This is all I’m going to get, isn’t it? This one week with you. That’s all there will ever be.”

He swallows, hard.

“Answer me, A.J. Is that what you mean? Is that what you want?”

“What I
want
is to wake up next to you every day for the rest of my life, angel. But I already told you this wouldn’t end well. I already told you I’d hurt you. And you said you’d be willing to only take one night, so I’m thinking six more days is a good compromise.”

Oh, God, the pain. It’s like fire. It’s like I’m being burned alive, from the inside out.

I shove him away. Red faced, I shout, “You just told me you were in love with me! You just told me you were happy! You said I’d never have to be alone again! What the hell is wrong with you?”

“Everything, baby. Everything is wrong with me.”

The look he gives me freezes all my rage. There’s something so dead about his eyes right now, something so unbearably bleak. Whatever he isn’t telling me about himself—which is pretty much everything—it’s bad.

“What does that mean?”

Silence.

“What are you hiding? What’s your big secret, A.J.? Why won’t you let me all the way in? Don’t you trust me?”

“I trust you. It’s myself I don’t trust.”

A nonanswer if there ever was one. Now I’m angry again. “Are you a serial killer?”

“No.”

“An undercover FBI agent?”

“No.”

“A drug dealer? A cartel leader? The head of an international prostitution ring?”

He winces. “No.”

“What, then? Why do you hide from cameras, A.J.? Why do you live up here alone like this? Why would you bring me here and make me hope that you’re going to give me everything I want you to give, and then pull the rug out from under me?”

In a voice that sounds like gravel, he says, “I hide because I’m ashamed. I’m alone because I have to be. And I brought you here because I was going crazy without you, and I might not be selfish enough to try to make you mine permanently, but I’m not strong enough to stay away from you, either. So we can have a week, or we can have nothing. The decision is yours.”

That’s all he gives me. He stares at me, his face closed off. I can’t read anything in his eyes. Instinctively, I know we could go on like this for hours. Back and forth, questions that lead nowhere, uselessly spinning my wheels. I need to decide right now if I’m leaving or going, if I’m willing to accept all this on his terms.

I draw a deep breath, close my eyes, count to ten to try to get control of my ragged breathing. “And what do I get out of all this, A.J.? What’s in it for me except heartbreak?”

The mask of hardness melts away from his face, and his eyes blaze with emotion. He pulls me against his chest. He cradles my face in his hands. He kisses me, deeply, with everything he’s got. When he pulls away I’m breathless, clinging to his arms so I don’t collapse at his feet.

Looking into my eyes, he says softly, “Let me love you, Chloe. Let me love you like you need to be loved. It won’t be for forever, but it
will
be the best thing either one of us has ever had. I know it. It’ll be enough to last us the rest of our lives.”

I swallow a sob. I’d told Kat and Grace almost the same thing, that what he’d given me so far would be enough to last me the next fifty years. And I meant it. And I’d told him earlier I’d be happy with just one night, and meant that, too.

But I want so much more. I want all of him. Without limits, without secrets, without lies. If I can’t have that, will seven days with zero answers satisfy me?

No. It won’t satisfy me. But as I stare at him, as I see all the emotion and need and longing reflected in his eyes, I realize it will be enough.

He’s enough for me. For one night or one week or any other measure of time, he’s enough. I feel it to the marrow of my bones. And though it’s crazy, I feel lucky. In entire lifetimes, some people never even get this. Some people will never know the joy of this small, enormous, effortlessly simple, ridiculously complicated thing:

Love.

I rest my head on his chest. I heave a deep, resigned sigh. I make a conscious decision to let go of everything, all the expectations, all the frustrations, all the questions I’ve been so desperate to ask. I let everything slide through my fingers and vanish.

In the steadiest voice I can manage, I say, “If I’m going to be eating pancakes for the next week, boyfriend, they better be awesome or I’m seriously going to kick your ass.”

All the tension drains from A.J.’s body. He hugs me so hard I have trouble catching my breath. He says, “Honestly, baby, they’re shit.”

He laughs. It’s like a sound a mourner makes at a funeral.

God, this is gonna hurt.

I
’ve seen hundreds of women sleep. Alone or in twos or threes or dozens, pillowed in satin or custom linens, shivering in freezing rooms under torn, filthy rags.

No one has ever looked like Chloe. Nothing on this earth is more beautiful than her.

She sleeps on her stomach like a child, arms flung out to the sides, legs splayed, face buried in the pillow. Lit by a moonbeam from the window, her hair is a shimmering spill of platinum and gold, messy around her shoulders, and I’m going insane with want and self-hatred.

What the fuck am I doing? This was so not the plan. But I had to have her with me. I had to keep her safe. Even when all this ends, I’ll make sure she’s safe forever.

I shut my eyes and press the heels of my hands into my eye sockets. Crying, something I haven’t done since I was ten years old, is as easy as breathing now. All these stored up tears, now so eager to fall. I have to fight to keep them from coming. Every time she looks at me with those eyes of hers, I have to fight not to break down and tell her everything.

If I did, she’d run away as fast as she could. So I keep my mouth shut. And I keep her.

I told her I wasn’t selfish, but I lied. I’m the most selfish bastard who ever lived. She’ll find out soon enough. And then she’ll hate me, like I deserve.

My angel murmurs incoherently in her sleep. I stroke her back and she settles, sighing, burrowing farther into the pillow. When I press a kiss to her temple, she murmurs my name. It’s like a thousand spear points piercing my heart.

Who knew love would be such utter, fucking misery?