Roots and Wings (City Limits #1)(51)

Men wanted someone delicate they could take care of and protect. They wanted someone who made them feel powerful and needed.

And I’d never be a woman who couldn’t take care of herself. A girl who couldn’t survive if left alone.

I’d been left alone before.

My mom left both of us. I’d watched my dad struggle with trying to teach me things a mother would have. From baking when he’d rather have been hunting. Or making Christmas decorations when the game was on.

He’d fallen in love with a woman who couldn’t sit still. A woman who would abandon her child and never come back. I knew he struggled with it. I knew it broke him. He was lonely, and often he’d apologize that it was him I was doing things with when it should have been her.

That’s what stuck in my head. I never wanted to feel like I was left lost. Wandering around, needing someone else to save me.

I could save myself.

Ironically, he saved me from myself at that moment by saying my name.

“Hannah.”

It snapped me out of my worrisome thoughts and my eyes locked on his.

“Lost you there for a minute.”

“Sorry,” I said and laughed to pretend like my thoughts weren’t getting much deeper than I wanted.

“That’s all right. You want to talk about it?”

“Nothing to talk about. Now what were you saying?” I could hear the change in my voice. Normally, around him I spoke much softer than I usually did. In that moment, I sounded like I was talking to anyone in town. “You wanted to tell me what I’d done all day that bugged you?”

Time to face the music.

He got closer and it shocked me when he wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled me into him.

“You haven’t kissed me all day.”

That was it? He’d wanted me to kiss him?

“What?” I wasn’t sure I’d heard him right.

“Before I go I wanted to let you know that I want you to touch me, to kiss me. I saw you today—you looked at my lips more than my eyes. You licked your lips after I lifted my shirt to wipe sweat off my face—which I did as an experiment. You want to touch me.”

Where does this stuff come from?

Where did he get the balls to say things like that?

Right as he was, I’d never known anyone who could just say whatever was on their mind the way he did.

It was one of the things I liked about him the most. His sincerity. He never let me wonder where I stood with him for too long. Never left me hanging.

Still, he hadn’t kissed or touched me either. What was that about?

“I don’t know. I guess I’ve just never been a touchy feely kind of girl. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry? Do you want to do those things?”

“You just said you knew I did.” I wasn’t following?

“What I’m trying to say is, I know this is new for you—and I really like that—but if we’re seeing each other now, then that means a few things. If there’s something you need, or want to do, then do it. I want you to grab my hand, or kiss me, or touch me. It lets me know I’m doing all this the way you like it. It lets me know I’m treating you well if you want to be near me. It’s not about being clingy or anything like that. It’s your body communicating to my body it likes it, too.”

My body was all over that and I kissed him, without holding back.

He made me feel so good about being me. Which made things a bit trickier. I didn’t want to change for anyone, but for Vaughn, I wanted to be other things that I wasn’t sure I knew how to be.

Gentler.

More attentive.

Sweeter.

It wasn’t something I had to think about doing, somehow I was already starting to behave those ways. And that part of me, a part I didn’t know was even there, sort of existed when he was around.

He’d magically turned all of my rough edges to silk when he touched me. Made all of the empty and lonely spots full with his attention. When his fingers moved over me, everything male in him spoke to everything female in me, and I felt beautiful. Fragile and vulnerable.

I loved how he knew he should take his time and be careful with that part of me. Because obviously I did not.

When my swollen lips almost abandoned my face to take up residency on his, I pulled away, slowly breaking the kiss.

“Thanks for the invitation.”

“I mean it. I want you, Hannah. But I’m going to take my cues from you. I won’t rush this. Won’t rush you.”

“But I want you, too,” I admitted, not much louder than a whisper. I wasn’t used to saying things like that. I knew for a fact that those words had never left my mouth.

We stood there, the late afternoon sun sneaking under the cabin and warming me from behind, the front of me warmed by him and his romantic words.

The light was in his eyes and they shimmered like brilliant, glowing ripples on the water.

“I like hearing that. I’m going to run home and clean up, and I’ll come back, if you want. Then, instead of looking at my lips, you better kiss them.”

“And I’ll touch you,” I added to let him know I understood what he meant.

He groaned a little, but it was more of a tease. “That doesn’t sound like too bad of a time.”

“Yeah, but what if, after I start, I can’t stop?” That was something I should have thought to myself.