Pen Pal(50)

I bury my face in the crook of his neck and cry harder.

He tightens his arms around me and gently rocks me, cooing soft words. He strokes my hair and caresses me, calming me and cradling me like a baby.

We sit like that until my tears have stopped and I’m sniffling, trying to stifle the occasional hiccup.

He inhales deeply, exhales, and glides his fingertips lightly along the side of my face. Resting his cheek on the top of my head, he says softly, “Tell me what you need from me.”

I’ve never had a man ask me that before.

Well, technically it was an order, not a question, but I’m not splitting hairs. Dazed, sore, and thoroughly satisfied, I sit and think seriously about it for a while before deciding I need more specifics.

“Do you mean now or in general?”

“Both. I want to know what makes you happy. What will make you feel all the time like I do right now.”

I peek up at him. “How do you feel right now?”

He gazes down at me, his eyes endless and dark. Tracing my lower lip with his fingertip, he says, “Reborn. Forgiven. Or maybe…I don’t know.” He struggles silently for a moment. “Freed.”

I ask shyly, “I make you feel free?”

“Like I’ve been living in a dark cave my whole fucking life, and I just stumbled out into the sunlight.”

Tears stuck in my throat, I close my eyes and snuggle closer to him. With a hitch in my voice, I whisper, “I’ve never met anyone like you.”

His chuckle is soft and dark. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“It is. I always feel safe around you. You bring out a side of me I didn’t even know existed before. I feel like I could tell you anything, my darkest secret, the worst thing I’ve done that I’m most ashamed of, and it would be okay.” I hesitate. “Except…”

He stills. “What?”

“When you walk away in the middle of a conversation, I get really frustrated.”

After a moment, he nods. “Okay. I won’t do that again.”

Encouraged, I keep talking. “And when you shut down and don’t tell me what you’re thinking, I get confused. You’re very intense in some ways, very communicative and open and right in my face, but other times you seem like you’re hiding from me.”

I pause to think again. Then I venture, “Like maybe you’re worried how I’ll react if I get to know the real you?”

He kisses me, brushing his lips against mine with a tenderness that makes my chest ache.

Then he murmurs, “What I’m worried about is giving my heart away to a woman who’s still wearing a wedding ring.”

The sadness in his voice makes my heart flip-flop. I whisper, “Oh, Aidan. I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize. Or explain yourself. I don’t ever want you to feel obligated to explain yourself to me. I know you’re just taking this one day at a time.”

By “this” he means “us.” This thing we’re doing together, whatever it is. And he’s right, in a way. I am taking it one day at a time. There’s no other way to take it. He crashed into my life like a meteor falling to earth, right when I was the most broken I’d ever been.

Only I don’t feel broken when I’m with him.

Too overwhelmed to continue with the conversation in my emotionally raw state, I say, “Okay. You want to know what I need to be happy right now?”

“Yes.”

I smile up at him and tug on his beard. “A glass of wine and a hot bath.”

His lids lower. He smolders at me in silence for a moment. “I can do that for you.”

“Thank you.”

He raises his brows. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

I spread my hand over his jaw and smile wider. “Thank you, sir.”

He stares deep into my eyes for a long moment. Then he says quietly, “Kayla, be careful with me.”

Surprised by that, I ask, “What do you mean?”

“I know you think I’m strong. But the problem with strong things is that they’re brittle. They can’t bend under stress. They just break.”

Before I can respond, he picks me up and carries me into the bathroom.





I soak in bliss for an hour, up to my neck in bubbles, sipping a glass of Cabernet. Aidan comes in and out of the bathroom, bringing me little bites of cheese and slices of apple, feeding them to me from his fingers and watching me chew as if it’s the most fascinating thing he’s ever seen.

The way he looks at me is addictive.

Because I like it so much, it’s also a little scary.

I don’t think I’m ready for this. It seems as if he isn’t, either. We’re magnets who don’t want to be magnets, pulled together by invisible elements beyond our control.

I don’t have the words or the will to tell him it would be wiser if we slowed down this runaway train before it veers off the tracks and kills all the passengers. Besides, aren’t we past that point, anyway?

The obvious answer is yes. We are. We skipped the dinner dates and polite conversation and jumped straight to kinky fuckery.

Not that I’m complaining. It’s simpler this way, and simple things are beautiful. And with my recent state of mind, small talk would be a stretch.