Thick & Thin (Thin Love, #3)(13)
We’re end game. God, Ransom had said that to me with such conviction the night I left Miami. He’d said it like he’d meant it but I’d allowed myself to stop believing him. I’d stopped believing a long time ago that he was where I’d end up. Then Ethan came along and… me zanmi, I’d agreed to marry him. Logically, I knew that I was too young to be senile, but the night came back to me in an instant, while I sat in that fine car with that finer man patiently waiting for me to explain my relationship with Ransom and what he’d seen when he found us in the dressing room. What I hoped he hadn’t seen was that I’d said yes to him just minutes before and I’d already begun to regret it.
“Look at me.” Ethan’s hands were gentle, a touch that even then relaxed me, had my breath evening out. “Maybe I shouldn’t have asked. Maybe it was too soon, but you know I don’t like to think about things before I do them. I like to be spontaneous because it makes everything I attempt that much sweeter. But you’re not like me.” We sunk deeper into the leather with Ethan pulling me so close that our noses nearly touched. “You like order. You like to know what’s happening next. It’s one of the things I love about you, beautiful.”
He spoke so softly, a gentle tickle of his words easing me, comforting so that I didn’t feel like such an idiot, so that the weight of my guilt didn’t choke me as much.
“It was a rush,” he continued, keep his fingers on my cheeks, ghosting his thumb against my jaw. “This whole proposal thing was another spontaneous thing from me and I know you’re doubting your answer. I’d be a little worried if you weren’t. So how about we take this slow? No wedding planning. No setting any dates. Nothing that’s going to put that look on your face.” He smoothed the muscles across my forehead until the ache there went away. “You were with him for six years. His family is your family. I have no desire to take any of that from you. I just want you, Aly. I want to be with you and if that means I have to wait while you figure things out, I will.”
He was a man I didn’t deserve, but God, I wanted to, so badly. Herein lay the problem. Ethan was good and smart and sweet. He was more beautiful than Lucifer and kinder than a less wicked, more obedient angel. But…and this was the hell of it all…Ethan was not, would never be, Ransom.
“Do you want the ring back?” I asked because it seemed only fair. It seemed to make things less complicated.
“No,” he said, picking up my left hand to kiss my knuckles. “Why would you think that? It looks good where it is.” He wouldn’t let me pull away from him, not just then. Instead, Ethan tugged on my wrist, fingers slipping up my hand, gripping me tight, but gentle. I let him because his touch was warm, because I craved the comfort he offered. “Let’s just take it day by day. Maybe you and Ransom aren’t together anymore, but that doesn’t mean you both aren’t important to each other. That doesn’t mean you can’t be friends. His kid sister adores you, so does his mom. Hell, even Kona dotes on you.”
I nodded, reminding myself that no one knew how deeply Kona had taken offense at my leaving Ransom four years ago, and how deeply his rudeness had cut me. The first time I had seen Kona after I had walked out on his injured son, he had interrupted my quick return to the lake house to pick up Mack for a girls’ day out. He’d been cold to me then, his temper flaring when I didn’t back down from his bluntness, Kona had let his mumbled disrespect cut me to the bone. “What kind of woman leaves her man when he’s hurt?”
Keira had yelled at him, telling him to mind his own business, but even that simple question stung. Kona hadn’t realized what his anger had done, how that snap at me for leaving Ransom had stuck. But he also hadn’t realized the secret I had been carrying deep inside, a secret that no one knew, that had been the catalyst for my leaving Miami, or how much his drunken words months before had made it a secret I could not share with those I loved the most.
Ethan moved closer, no longer, it seemed, interested in discussing my warring emotions or what I felt about Ransom. He seemed to want my mouth just then, eager to see if I wanted his too. When I didn't move away from him, smooth, collected Ethan kissed me like he always did—like it was the first and last kiss all at once.
I didn’t know if I could name what I felt for Ethan. Maybe it was that I’d deprived myself for two years of a man’s touch and he ticked off all the buttons that made me reconsider my celibacy. For more than a decade, there had only ever been Ransom. Even after we broke up. Only him until that text message two years ago. Maybe it was Ethan, who he was, how he treated me, that had me second guessing myself anytime I stopped him from pushing me too far.
He wanted me. That I felt in the aggressive movement of his mouth over mine, in the way he held onto my hip, how his fingers dug into my skin, how he bit my bottom lip, how his breath went quick and pulsing inside of a minute of me returning his kiss. And when Ethan moved his hand down my arm, when he rested his palm flat against my ribs and brushed my nipple with his thumb, I was aroused enough to do little else than arch into that touch.
“Shit, Aly…” He was gentle, as much as a frenzied tornado can be and I didn’t push him back, letting him sweep me along by his smell, by the heat in that car and the satisfied buzz of my body finally being touched. For just a second I forgot to keep myself restrained. “Baby…I don’t want to rush anything but I…” He grunted, an unsatisfied sound, before he gripped the back of my neck, holding onto me like he thought I might float away. “I just want to taste you. No…no pressure, but please, let me…” He cleared his throat, finally glancing at me. “Come inside with me.” A graze of his mouth on mine and his fingers shook against my arm. “Stay with me tonight.”