Thick & Thin (Thin Love, #3)(26)
She tried moving around me again, but I jumped in front of her, feeling stupid and desperate, pushing back the inclination to stand in front of the door and block her path. I wanted her to tell me she’d missed me, that I was right, that Ethan, no matter how she felt about him, wasn’t me.
“You are being a brat.” She sent an elbow to my rib before she had a hand on the door knob.
“Yeah, well, my favorite toy is being tossed off to some * who doesn’t know how to play with it.”
That stopped her suddenly and I knew, the moment Aly turned, hands balled into fists, that any swats that came my way now would hurt something fierce. She wasn’t playing any more. Not even close.
“It?” she said, taking two slow steps toward me. "Toy?"
“Aly…”
Her voice was lethal; like something that would kill me if she'd let it, but I couldn't step away. “You know what, you son of a…” She lifted her eyes, absently shooting her gaze behind me toward that wall of framed pictures before she amended her curse. “You’re a selfish, spoiled joko!” She wanted to hit me, I could feel it, see it in the white knuckle grip she held at her fists, but Aly was subtler than I was. Anything she did, physically, was level and thought through, unlike that spontaneous acceptance of Ethan’s proposal. ‘Imbecile’ leveled at me in Creole seemed to appease her a little. “I am not an it or a toy…”
“I know you aren’t,” I said, grabbing her, a little desperate, a lot turned on by my anger, by hers.
And when I grabbed her face, hopelessly holding her still as though my kiss could bring her back, make her admit that she still loved me, Aly only frowned, hauling back to smack me across the face so hard I stumbled. “You will never, ever have me again, Ransom.”
Anger filled the air between us and even the throb on my face and the curl of her mouth didn’t ebb my unjustified upset. She’d never been this angry, not in the past, not in Miami and though my own fury bubbled, I couldn’t help but watch her, see the difference in the woman in front of me and the girl I’d loved for half of my life.
“Is that what you tell yourself? That I was just a plaything? Something to amuse you when you felt like it? Is that how you justified my leaving you?” she said, my face inches from hers. She didn’t even flinch. “After everything you did, the things you didn’t do, you have the nerve to try and convince me that what we had shouldn’t be buried in the past?”
I should have matched her anger, but instead, my feelings for her flared even hotter. This was the Aly I had first gotten to know, the Aly I had first fallen in love with, fiery, confident, angry. But I couldn't be angry with her—all I knew is how much I wanted her, how much I still needed her, needed what we had been to each other. She didn’t fight me, barely moved or breathed at all when I slid one finger over her cheek. “You want me to remind you what we were?”
“You will never…” she started to repeat herself, voice low, steady, but then I licked my bottom lip, turning my fingers over her cheek to hold her face still. One touch and her body shook, arms, shoulders trembling as I took a cautious step closer, eating up the space between us. That fury that kept her raging against me receded and that low, surprised gasp told me Aly, despite her anger, remembered, too. Remembered how it has been between us before life and my own stupidity drove us apart. Now all I had to do was convince her we could have that again.
I slipped my hands down to her waist and the shivering quickened, eyes fluttering closed as I kissed her forehead. Inches between us and the air thick and hot again, weighted as she stood there, letting me touch her, move my hands down her back, my lips over her face. “Don’t tell me you stopped loving me.” She opened her eyes, frowning when I held her face between my fingers.
“It’s the truth.” She pulled away from my mouth, stretching her neck to keep my lips from her skin.
“No,” I said, voice soft. “It’s not.”
She stopped attempting to extract herself from my hold until I inhaled so deeply I smelled the sweet whiff of sweat mixing with that familiar vanilla fragrance. I wanted to taste a bit of her myself. God, it had been too damn long. “You can tell yourself all the lies in the world about how easy it was to walk away from me, how you’ll never let yourself really love me again, but it’s not that easy with us.” She turned her back to me then, arms curled around her middle, pretending as though she couldn’t hear me, despite how she tilted her head, profile in front of me as though she couldn’t help but listen.
“We’re visceral. We’re inside each other.” Gaze right at me, Aly kept as she stared. There was nothing but the space between us and words that got caught in our throats. But I wasn’t completely speechless. I was reckless and desperate and knew there was something inside her that wanted free. I wanted to bust it loose.
She turned toward me when I approached, holding one palm flat against my chest with no real strength in that touch, as though she wanted me to stop, but wouldn’t hold me back completely. “No one will ever make you laugh and cry and feel like I can. No one but me will have you clamoring for release, for the freedom inside my touch. No one else can give you all that you crave and push you even further. We’re it. We’re always.”
She exhaled then, a small pulse that heated her skin before she closed her eyes, and then she pushed me with a force I did not know she possessed. She’d been holding back. No matter how angry I’d made her in the past, she’d never pushed me as hard as she did just then—a shove that had me staggering back as she marched right by me and out of the foyer. The front door bounced against the wall when she threw it open, cracking the lower pane of glass.