When I'm with You (Hope Town #3)(3)

“I’m not a baby!” I repeat on a yell into the still night, my voice shrill, and I cringe at the emotional hit his words cause me.

“I didn’t say you were. You just don’t understand what you’re saying.”

“I assure you, I do.”

He shakes his head, his hand still resting on the back of his neck. I notice briefly that his grip has tightened to the point of his fingertips turning white. When he starts to move forward, closing the distance from where he’s standing and where I’m perched at the edge of the swing’s seat, I jerk back, making the chains holding the swing up rattle loudly. He narrows his eyes and lets out a long breath. Dropping to his knees in front of me, he pulls my hands from their death grip on the wood next to my bare thighs. He doesn’t speak for the longest time, and I foolishly let that flicker of hope light, thinking he must have realized he’s wrong.

“I’m sorry, Em, but I don’t feel that way toward you. I don’t want to hurt you or lose your friendship. You might hate me for it, but we just can’t be what you’re saying. You loving me would do nothing but cause your heart ruin.”

“You’re wrong.” I force the words past that damned lump in my throat.

“I’m not,” he says softly, a sad smile ghosting over his lips, gone just as quickly as it appeared. “We’re friends and always will be. One day, you’ll see that.”

Pulling my hands from his, I instantly miss the warmth of his skin as I stand and move around him. He doesn’t move from his crouched position, nor does he turn to look when I move around him.

“I know what I feel, and you’re going to be the one who has some grand understanding one day when you realize what you’re denying. Sure, I might be young, but I’m not a baby and I know what I feel. I also know that you’re using our families as an excuse. Especially my father because he also knows that I’m smart enough to know my own feelings and follow my heart. I thought you were someone different, Nate, I really did. I …” I sigh deeply, the one sound full of so much emotion. “You know what? Just forget I even said anything. We can chalk it up to me having some foolish, childish, drunk admission. After all, I’m just a kid … what do I know?”

It takes every ounce of strength I can muster to turn and walk away from him. Leaving pieces of my heart smashed on the deck at his feet while he just sits there and lets me go. The tiny sliver of my heart that had held on praying he would change his mind and stop me dies and joins the rest of the pieces on the ground.

Unfortunately for me, I’m so lost in my own pity party that I miss it. I walk away without knowing that the second my back was turned, he had silently moved, jumping to his feet. One arm started to reach out to me, only to drop heavily at his side after I moved out of his reach. I was so blinded by my own heart breaking that I missed the visible pain on his face as he felt the same pain with each step I took away from him.

Had I looked back, even stopped for just one second, maybe I would have heard his whisper, but instead, his words just floated away with my dying hope.

“I love you, too, Ember.”





I PRESS MY FOREHEAD AGAINST the wall, ignoring the bite against my fevered skin. My lips dance across the shoulder held captive between the hard surface and my body, as my head spins faster from the amount of alcohol I consumed tonight. With each pass my hands make over the silky smooth skin underneath my fingertips, I trail more wet kisses and bites across her neck. The rasped breath that escapes from the mouth pressed close to my ear only fuels the desire raging through my body.

Fuck. Have I ever been this powerless against the need to take someone?

Blindly moving my hands down the slim torso, my fingers dig in when I hit her hips, giving her a firm squeeze in warning before I pull her body closer to mine. Her legs wrap around my hips easily as her dress rides up and my dick instantly finds a home. Or the warm home he wants to go inside of, that is.

Fuck. I can feel how wet she is, the thin barrier of her underwear doing nothing to shield that from me.

I’m drunk enough to know I should stop, but even though the rational thought keeps crossing over the intoxicated waves rolling in my head, I would never be able to step away from this feeling. I justify that decision with the mental reminder that I’m not that drunk.

Drunk or not, even I have a few reservations about taking her when I don’t even know her name. I might have been f*cking my way through life the last few years, but even I have some morals.

The smell, taste, and feel of her are like nothing I’ve ever felt before. If I weren’t already flying on a beer high, I would swear it was this little firecracker doing it to me.

Firecracker.

Even with another woman warm and willingly wrapped around my body, the vision of Emberlyn Locke hits me hard with just that one word. It’s been years, years of fantasies and forbidden desire, and it never changes. I try my hardest to shake the image that is holding my mind hostage, using my body’s desires for the willing woman in my arms to try to replace it as I move against her.

“Take me,” she whispers on a moan when I thrust my hips harder against her pliant body.

I know from experience that now that I see her in my mind, I’ll never be able to see the reality in front of me, so I’m not sure why I’m even trying so hard. This chick is just another faceless woman who will wear the mask of Ember’s face. Like many before her have.