Page 116 of Rock Giant

Paul looked up at her, his eyes imploring, the green amidst the hazel luminous with woe.She could drown in that sadness.Couldn’t allow it to infect her more than it already had, or she would never leave.How could she leave?

She had to leave.She’d chosen to make a future with Nash.

“Stay with me.”

“Paul, I can’t.You know I can’t.I don’t want to hurt you.”

They were all fucking hurting.

“So, don’t.Stay.”

“I can’t.”She had to think about Nash, too.And herself.She couldn’t tear her life apart again.She’d done it once.Wouldn’t survive doing it again.It’d hurt enough the first time, and then she hadn’t had the things she had now—a job, friends she adored, friends who meant more to her than her family ever had.She tore herself away from him, her heart cracking as she did.How when she stepped back it wasn’t throbbing in midair between them seemed fantastical.“I’m so sorry.You don’t deserve this.You don’t.”He was so kind.So loving.So precious.Absolutely deserved someone to love him wholeheartedly, it just couldn’t be her.“This has to end, Paul.We have to end it.You can’t keep waiting for me thinking it’s going to happen.Whatever you promised me, I’m freeing you of that.I’m going to marry him.I made him that promise first.I gave my word.”

“And we swore vows.”

Vows she could barely remember.

“In a moment of madness.”

“In a moment of complete lucidity.I meant every word.”

That was the hardest part, his complete sincerity.It rang in his voice now and seared her soul right through.She might not remember what she’d promised him, but she remembered too much of what he’d promised her.

“Paul...Please...I can’t deal with this.I don’t know how to make this right.I’m trying, and I feel like I’m getting everything wrong.”

That look in his eyes—adoration shot through with razor sharp pain, the glitter of his tears gathering—it was too much to bear.

“I love you.”

“You can’t love me.You can’t be in love with me.You can’t...”

His lips pressed to hers.Softly, if not entirely chastely.“I am.Profoundly.I opened my heart to you that night and let you pour right in.You don’t understand.I put it out there into the ether for the universe to answer, and it did.It gave me you.Fate brought us together.It did it the first time I asked, and I foolishly let you go.This time, I’m hanging on and never letting go.”

A tear slid down his cheek.Jodi raised a thumb to chase it away, but a second instantly fell, to replace it.Previously, she’d only ever seen one man cry.Her father the night he realised her mum had left.She wasn’t sure she’d ever recalled that before.

Something broke inside her.

“Please, please, don’t.”The more she wiped his face, the quicker more tears spilled to replace them.The salt taste of her own distress trickled across her lips.She thought she’d been the only lost soul wandering the field that night, but hearing him now, that hadn’t been the case.

She needed to fix this.Heal him.

She kissed his brow, meant only to kiss his tears away, but their noses bumped, and his breath whispered against her skin.

“I’m sorry.I’m so sorry.Please don’t cry.”

She kissed him again, and he kissed her back harder.

Goodbye, that’s what sort of kiss it ought to have been.Only, it wasn’t a goodbye kiss, nor an it’s over kiss.It was an I can’t take it anymore, I need this, and if I don’t have this, I’ll stop breathing kiss.A questing battle of tongues and drowning sort of kiss.A hello, there you are, I’ve finally found you, kiss.

“Castle?”He breathed her name right into her mouth, before enacting another collision.His hand on the back of her neck, pulled him to her.The other, in possession of her hip, soon glided to the small of her back.When and how her trousers came off she couldn’t quite recall, but her head falling back, his hands beneath the T-shirt, him ripping it from her was crystal clear.Likewise, his mouth on her breast.Him claiming one nipple, then the other.Her pulse pounding in her ears.Her body awakening.

She touched him.Bit him.Wanted...Demanded more.Sensibility confined to the footnotes.

Their bodies fused together, in the way their mouths already had.It was wrong.Very wrong, while simultaneously, hopelessly, and impossibly right.

Afterwards, certain moments would remain crystal bright amongst the haze of clinging desperation.The sweep of his fingers along the lips of her split.His thumb on her clit, then dipping inside of her.The first feel of him hot and naked inside her.

His groan that accompanied that.