Bad Boy Blues(116)

God, why does he have to so sexy and possessive?

How am I supposed to stop myself from jumping his bones and falling in love with him every second of every day?

Smiling, I peck his lips. “I know. It says so on the shirt.”

I gesture to my chest and confused, Zach looks down.

Across my breasts, it says: Dark Prince’s Cinderella. And there’s a picture of leather boots at the bottom.

I got this t-shirt custom made for tonight. I knew he’d love it. And he does. Unwrapping one hand from around my waist, he fingers the letters on my chest. It heaves like crazy when he brushes against my left nipple, going back and forth, waking it up.

I stretch my spine again, rubbing our lower bodies together.

Keeping his face dipped, Zach lifts his eyes up. “Cinderella, huh?”

“Yes,” I whisper in a low voice, rocking against him once. “And you’re my prince. Although, you act like a mean beast most of the time. But I can take you.”

A lopsided smirk and then, his eyes move over my hair. “Did you do something to your hair too?”

Biting my lip, I nod.

“It’s a different color.”

I don’t know how he can tell when my new color that I especially got for tonight is so similar to what I had before. There’s a very subtle difference between the two, but if anyone’s an expert on my hair, it’s Zach.

He’s obsessed with it. More so than he’s obsessed with my breasts that he’s still running his fingers over.

“It’s Royal Blue,” I tell him.

“For your prince?”

“Always.”

An emotion flickers across his face that makes him clench his jaw. I recognize what it is; it’s love.

Sometimes it’s so intense for him that it borders on painful; I go through the same thing.

I know he’s feeling that spark in his chest. Just as I’m feeling the buzz in my tummy.

I caress his jaw and whisper, “I love you.”

Zach remains silent but his grip on my waist goes tight and his thumb hooks into my belly button.

One time I told him about the vein that runs just behind my navel. I told him how I feel something move inside my belly whenever he’s close, and how when he presses against it, my body goes crazy. I didn’t have to tell him the latter because he’s spent countless hours kissing and licking that spot himself but still.

Now, it makes me moan, the pressure he’s putting using his thumb.

“I have something for you too,” he rasps, instead of saying I love you too.

He doesn’t say the words often. Or at least, not as often as I do. I say it all the time: before going to sleep every night, rushing out the door for work in the morning, when we finish a phone conversation. When he’s inside of me.

And every time I say it, I feel him absorb those words. I feel them move through his body. I feel his love radiating back in the way he presses a kiss on my mouth, in the way his eyes turn glassy.

So, I guess, he doesn’t need to. He shows me.

I caress his harshly angled jaw. “For me?”

His Adam’s apple bobs as he nods. Then, without taking his eyes off me, he reaches back and fishes something out of his pocket.

It’s a piece of paper, folded once.

“I wanna read it to you,” he says and my heart jumps in my chest.

Zach’s reading has improved so much in the past months. His writing, as well. He puts an effort into it every day. In fact, we’re thinking about him getting his GED soon.

And I know whatever he wrote for me, it’s important to him. It’s probably more important than all the words he’ll ever say to me, and maybe that’s why he wrote them down.

To impart their gravity, their worth.

“Okay,” I whisper, fisting his damp t-shirt.

Frowning and clearing his throat, he begins,

“Blue,

I know I’ve fucked up a lot. I haven’t wronged anyone the way I’ve wronged you.

No amount of Sorrys will ever make up for that fact.

But still, I’m sorry. About everything.

For all the times I could’ve saved you but I didn’t. For all the times I made you cry and wasn’t there to wipe off your tears. For all the times I made you bitter and angry enough that you started to hate yourself a little bit.

Words have always been hard to come by for me. I’m not good with them. I probably never will be. But I want you to know that I feel it.

I feel you.

Right in my chest, with every breath I take.

You saved me when I least deserved it. And I’ll spend the rest of my life proving to you that you did the right thing in choosing me.

But more than that, I want you to know that I’m gonna marry you one day. I’m gonna give you your future.

When I’m wiser and better and not too much of an asshole.

When I’m really the prince you think I am.

Yours,

Prince.”

It takes me a long moment to catch my breath after he’s stopped reading. I probably look like a mess, crying like someone has died.

Whereas in reality, I don’t think a night has been more alive. More fraught with electricity, emotions and energy.

I forgave him a long time ago for everything. He didn’t need to apologize but I’ll forever carry his words in my heart.