Page 44 of Secrets That Bind Us

Dean

Present Day

As soon as the sound of cicadas was loud in my ears, and the warm early September breeze hit me, I regretted it all.

I hated Micah Henderson with a passion. Everyone knew it.

I never hid it. And when he took my girl away from me while I was, healing like the fucking snake he was, I swore I’d kill the motherfucker myself.

Then again, I never truly healed, did I?

She was my girl first. My only one. To know she carried my child, and he helped raise her because she had no other financial means when I had sixty-five thousand dollars at my disposal?

Fuck, that hatred reared its ugly head back and became a jealous whore.

Now, while I’m still standing on her back porch, fireflies lighting up in the distance, dancing their life away, I understand it.

She chose him because he was safe . He was safe in all the ways I wasn’t as a teen. I was a reckless adrenaline junkie that partied like there was no tomorrow.

They painted and went to art shows and museums together.

I wanted to race and made her stay on the sidelines when she begged me not to because it was too dangerous.

He chose to take her to foreign film festivals.

I wanted to party, and Micah fucking Henderson played the guitar for her.

I wanted to be drafted to the NFL, and travel the continental US, she wanted to write the next bestselling novel, living in New York City and all that came with it.

I almost scoff at the realization that all of her dreams came true by playing it safe… and none of mine did.

I did so many things wrong concerning her, and even though Micah manipulated so many situations, he must have done something right. Because he got my girl.

Never again.

It took losing her and six months of physical therapy for me to get my shit together.

Another six to graduate late. Then I spent my time working on old motorcycles at my uncle’s shop for a while before realizing it wasn’t what I wanted to do.

So after saving up all the extra cash I could to get to her, and begging Zoey to give me her address, not to mention having to practically kiss her ass in the process – I was finally able to.

When I saw her with him, God, I should’ve at least looked in the stroller. I should have made my presence known. I should have done anything other than catch a cab and go directly back to the hotel to gather my things and leave with my tail tucked between my legs.

When I came back to Adelaide, I had to face all the realities I hadn’t wanted to.

I didn’t get a scholarship to go to college; I didn’t keep racing because it took forever to overcome my PTSD from that night.

Hell, I couldn’t join the Marines so soon after my injuries, which was my failsafe.

So eighteen months after coming back from New York and graduating community college, I finally caved and joined the police academy like my dad.

I wasn’t completely unhappy with my life, but no matter what I did there was always something missing. Someone. And it always came back to her.

The same reason why women in my bed felt and smelt wrong. I had to stop bringing them home altogether, going for their place instead so I could dip when I was done. And those were so few and far in-between. And only after finding out she was married.

I made my life, just like she did. Except now we’re literally right back where we started, only a decade apart, and it feels like fate , not death, that brought her back to me.

“Dean.”

My name on her lips has always sounded like a distant prayer meant for my ears only, and I wonder if this is what it’s like for God –if there is one–when we call out to Him?

“Do you know how many nights I cried in the shower to hide my tears? How many times I would call out to you while standing under the shower head, saying ‘ Miss me, miss me, please for the love of God, miss me so you can come back to me?’ ” I ask, my voice steady and honest, and yet it feels like my throat is being branded by a hot iron poker.

“Dean,” she whispers my name again, but it pulls me like a piece of string tied to a marionette. It feels like warm wax being poured down my spine, slipping between the vertebrae, molding into every possible crevice between muscles and tendon and bone, barely holding me together.

I finally get the courage to turn around and face the love of my life, no longer a girl in braided pigtails with a goofy smile, but a woman who's seen the awful things this world provides.

Things I wish I would have been able to protect her from or at least be there to hold her hand through the storm.

Dark hair up in a messy bun, brown almond-shaped eyes– framed by those fantastic dark lashes that always captivated me and held me prisoner– watch me through the screen door. Eyes that now have tiny, barely-there crow’s feet from all the laughs she laughed without me, and my heart cracks wide open.

“Did you ever feel my soul crying out to yours?”

She gnaws on that plump bottom lip the way I used to, until she stops. “Every day.” She whispers. “I wanted to come back to you, every day.” Through the porch light, I watch as one sole tear rolls down her cheek. She quickly wipes it away but doesn’t take her burning gaze off of me.

And that confession is all it takes to break me, but she sees me coming.

She takes one step back as I pull that goddamned screen door and wrap my arms around her waist to haul her up to me.

Her legs immediately wrap around my torso, and I groan at the feel of her soft, womanly body finally against mine again.

The kiss hurts , teeth clashing, lips parting, tongues colliding.

It’s a kiss meant to bruise, to mark, to claim, igniting and extinguishing as much as it is healing the last thirteen years we were apart.

It’s two souls that were destined to find each other in the darkest of voids, in every lifetime, finally reconnecting.

I start taking the stairs but remember her bedroom is now the primary, and head there instead, groping the thick globes of her ass like I did when we were hormonal teenagers, figuring each other out.

Except this time, I have Verity Experience, and I hope to whatever God is out there, it won’t have me spilling in my jeans before I can even get them off.

The anticipation of getting her , naked, of seeing her in this new body, the body that carried my child, is killing me. I want to see all the changes.

I dump her on the bed, pulling my shirt over my head and shuck off my boots, unfasten my belt, and shove down my jeans, only to stay in my black boxer briefs, not wanting to scare her with my own changes.

The sight of her sitting on her sleigh bed, watching me undress, honey eyes wide behind her glasses, makes me know working out with Jason has paid off big time.

I flash her a grin when she visibly swallows and her mouth hangs open. But then, she reaches over and turns out the lamp on her nightstand.

I rectify that immediately.

“What are you doing?”

She shrugs, pulling her knees up to her chest and draping her arms over them. “It’s better this way. You look… you know. You look great. And I- well, I take my bra off and my boobs drop like the next hot album.”

Well, I’m fucking stunned because that just sent a jolt of need to my already aching dick. “Prove it.”

“Dean, this… I… I don’t look the same as I did when we were seventeen.”

“Perfect. I’m not attracted to minors.”

She groans. “God, you’re infuriating! That’s not what I mean! I've had two pregnancies. Bodies change!”

I kneel by the side of the bed, reach over, grab her by an ankle, and yank her close, which makes her squeal like she did when we were seventeen.

I kiss one ankle and then the other. “Darlin’, if you don’t let me undress you right now and let me kiss every freckle, lick every silver stripe, grab and touch every inch of your body and fuck you till we both forget our names, I just might die.

I can see the headlines now: Sheriff Dean Carson, Death by Blue Balls. ”

She groans out in frustration. “Dean, it’s different. Men get hotter as they age. It’s science.”

My fingers trail up her soft legs, skin like silk under my touch, and shove her thighs apart, marveling at the wet spot on her light pink panties.

“I’m damn near thirty-three, if you think a little bit of cellulite on these perfect thighs or a bit of a roll on your stomach is enough to deter me from loving you and fucking you into oblivion”- I replace my fingers with my lips, crawling up on my stomach, placing kisses where I mapped them out years ago, remembering which places caused her breath to hitch– “then I ain’t a man and I don’t deserve you. ”

“Dean…”

Fuck, the way she sighs my name when my nose rubs over her panty-covered clit makes me fucking feral.

White-hot chills rush over every vertebra to the base of my spine like a fucking raging river.

I reach down and shove off my boxer-briefs with one hand, while the other inches up the smooth expanse of her thigh.

My fingers find the waistband of her thong, and I yank it up between her pussy lips and groan when I see they're bare and waiting for me to kiss.

I lick up one and tilt my head to lick the other, my tongue barely skimming over the engorged bud between them, her thighs trembling each time.

Now that I’m fully naked, except for my socks, but I’ll deal with that later.

Right now, all I can do is feast. I take both hands and fist the waistband of her thong by the sides and snap it off, only to admire the prettiest pussy I've ever seen.