Page 37 of Bloody Wedding (The Order of the Owed #1)

His disappointment is palpable, though he doesn’t do anything other than shrug.

Damn it. The casual motion has my eyes dipping to the tanned skin peeking through his dress shirt.

I gesture at him. “You look like you’ve just rolled out of bed.”

Another half-hearted comment: “You like it?”

I do, but I’m not about to admit that at this moment. Instead, I can’t help but once again remember what happened between us the first time we came up to his study together. Add that to the come-hither look in his eyes and the way he’s already half-dressed…

I ball my hands into fists. “If you had me come up here because you want sex like the night of the party, screw you. Or not. Because no . Just no. No kisses. No fucking. In case you can’t tell, I’m still spiraling from everything I learned before.”

“So am I.”

“Those were your secrets, Adrian.”

A second nod. “They were. But you left before you found out the biggest one.”

Oh? “And what’s that?”

“You found one of my ledgers, but you didn’t find this.”

Before I can ask what he’s talking about, Adrian stalks quietly over to the desk, pausing only to trail his finger along the back of my shoulders.

I shiver as he pulls open one of the drawers on the left side of his desk.

Reaching inside, he grabs a small cedar chest about eight inches long, five inches wide.

Setting it on the top of his desk, he flicks the clasp, knocking the lid back.

The first thing I see on top is a lock of hair in a tiny baggie. It’s a little bit reddish, a little bit blonde, and every bit of the hair that grows out of my head.

“Where did you get that?” I breathe it.

“I cut it and you never noticed,” he says shamelessly. “I had a pocket knife on me the first time we slept together. Remember?”

Actually, yeah. “I remember thinking you were such a bad boy for a rich kid. You took out that knife and cut my underwear off of me. I thought you’d nick me, but you didn’t.” I pause, thinking back. “I never saw those panties again.”

“Of course not. I have them, too.”

I glance in the wooden box.

He huffs, a sound that might be a laugh if I didn’t know how serious he was being. “That’s my prized possession, princess. You think I’d let it take on the scent of cedar? No. It’s in a sealed bag, as delicious as the day I cut them off of you.”

I blink. I don’t even know how to react to that.

“Does that scare you? That I’ve kept a lock of hair as a memento all these years? That, when I missed you the most, I rubbed a pair of your ten-year-old panties against my cheek?”

Does that scare me? Not even a little.

But it does scare me how much that turns me on…

Dipping his fingers into the box, he pinches something else. It’s a used cigarette with the faint remnants of a pale pink lipstick around the filter.

“The one and only time you shared a smoke with me. After I put it out, I stole the butt because your mouth had been on it.”

Again into the box, this time pulling out a candid shot of me in a cap and gown.

“When you graduated college. I couldn’t be there, but Connor did me a solid. He snuck in and got a picture of you getting ready backstage.”

He did?

“Adrian.”

“There’s more. If you want to see it, I can show you.

But understand this: when I tell you that I love you, Avalon Heller, believe me.

When I tell you that I’m obsessed… know that I’m telling the truth.

” His eyes darken to a deeper shade of green.

“Odds are I’m underselling just how fucking addicted to you I am.

Your smell. Your taste. Your laugh.” He lifts his hand, pointer finger ghosting over my cheek.

“Those freckles. All of you. Do you know what my first real memory is?”

I shake my head.

“You. In overalls and pigtails, a smudge of chocolate on your nose after you broke you cookie in half and gave it to me. Do you understand what I’m saying? What I mean? You, Loni. It’s always been you.

“Look. I’m not good. I’m not nice. If I ever talked to a shrink, they’d probably fill a notepad with everything that’s wrong with me. But my love for you? It’s the one thing that makes me remember I’m human.”

Oh, Adrian. “You are, baby. You say that like there’s something wrong with you.”

But there’s not. To see this vulnerable side of him… how can there be?

And then he makes another confession: “You’re my greatest love, but that makes you my greatest weakness.”

Oof. “Wow.”

“I… shit. I said that wrong. It’s not that I meant, Loni.”

“It’s fine,” I lie.

“No. It’s not. It never was, and that’s on me.

I didn’t know how to protect you then. Putting a wall up between us…

doing what I could to make all of Harmony Heights believe that you were meaningless to me when it couldn’t be further than the truth…

” He closes the lid on the box as though he can’t look at his collection any longer.

“I tell myself I was saving you from the Order. From my uncle. But the truth of it is that I’ve been protecting you from myself most of all. ”

“I was never afraid of you,” I admit.

“Not even now that you know I’ve been stalking you for the last ten years? From a distance, yes, but there’s no denying that I haven’t followed your life every step of the way.”

“Even then,” I tell him, my words coming out like a quiet promise.

“I watched over you,” he says, matching my volume. “Not because I expected you to come back. I knew you wouldn’t unless I went and dragged you here?—”

“Or Dallas did.”

A tiny, begrudging chuckle. “Or Dallas did. But either way… you were such an important part of who I was. I held onto it even when I didn’t have any right to.”

He steps closer, just not that close. Like the other night, if I want him, I have to take him.

So I do.

Without giving my body the orders to do it, I’m right there, wrapping my arms around him.

He finishes the embrace, holding me tight. “I’ve spent ten years regretting what I did, and what I didn’t do. What I let happen. You… you think this is all about control. That I wanted you back in Harmony Heights so that I could force you into something you don’t want.”

“Isn’t it?” I whisper.

“No,” he says flatly. “This is about finishing what I started all those years ago. I Claimed you when I was a boy.” His voice drops notably. “Now I’m a man. And I’m still yours. Even if you never Claim me back.”

My throat seems to close in on itself.

Adrian rests his chin on the top of my head, tucking me under him. “You don’t have to forgive me. For everything I’ve done… I can’t see how you could. But I need you to know this: I never stopped choosing you.”

In my husband’s arms, I don’t know what to say, so I don’t say anything at all.

More importantly, I don’t leave, either.

Not yet.

And, after tonight, probably not ever.