Page 32 of The Locksmith’s Promise (The Promise Duet #1)

Gold

B axter

My words hit her harder than I expected.

Her eyes widened with fear and filled with tears.

And I almost took them back.

But I’d be taking us in the wrong direction.

Stretched out beside her perfect body in her bed, I attempted to ease the ache of my words with my hand and my mouth.

I stroked the valley between her breasts and laid my palm over her heart.

Kissed the swell of her breast.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered, stiff and unmoving.

“I know you are,” I whispered back, kissing the sweet, soft curve of her breast again. “But I need you to understand.”

I forced myself to maintain contact with her even though every cell in my body urged me to bury my need rather than ask her to meet it.

Swallowing hard, I pulled up my resolve.

We were going to do this right.

We were going to do this once.

And I would not accept defeat.

“I’m grieving,” I admitted. “I keep thinking about all the years I missed, and how that all came to be.”

“I’m sorry.”

Sorry wasn’t what I needed.

“I deserved a chance to explain,” I hedged. “Up until that point, I hadn’t done anything wrong, and I deserved a chance to explain what happened without you aban— running out on me.”

Eyes wide and frightened, she latched onto my biceps. “What can I do?”

“You can’t do anything, Maggie.”

“There has to be something,” she pushed. “Tell me how to make it up to you.”

Asking anyone for anything wasn’t ever easy, but with the stakes as high as they were, it had never been so difficult.

My chest squeezed tight so that I couldn’t take a deep breath, making my voice louder and my words harsher than I intended.

“I need you to feel my fucking pain, Maggie, so you understand how you badly you hurt me and never do it again!”

Inside, I cringed.

My face flushed hot.

But I hung onto her.

She gasped. “How could you even think that? I would never do that again!”

“Run,” I gritted out, my heart beating like a bass drum. “You can’t ever run away and leave me again.” I shook my head. “Not without giving me a chance.”

Her mouth snapped shut as she met my eyes. “I won’t.”

Though my need embarrassed me, I pushed. Because I needed this. “How do you know?”

She cupped my face in her hands and stared into my eyes. “I promise, Bax. Never again will I abandon you.”

She searched my eyes. “I lost my faith in us. Once. It won’t happen again.”

I blew out a breath, then nodded.

Voice soft, she ventured, “You’re not completely innocent in all of this, Bax. You could have picked up the phone.”

Her breath quickened as her own voice rose in volume, and she dropped her hands. “Just once, in all the times I called, hoping and praying you hadn’t completely forgotten me, you could have picked up the phone.”

“Yes,” I nodded.

“What do you mean, yes?” she hissed. “While I was dragging myself out of bed every morning, planning to stay alive just long enough to bring our son into the world, you were out drinking and partying and playing in bands and fucking your way through every weekend.”

I winced. It was ugly, all of it, but the truth often was. “Yes.”

“Yes? Yes?” she exclaimed, sobbing as she struggled to get up.

I gently pulled her back. “No running. Let it out.”

She pulled the sheet up to her neck and armed herself with anger. Her covering her lovely body expressed more than her words.

“I’ve been in love with you since high school,” she spat.

My eyebrows shot up. I hadn’t expected any more surprises.

She nodded fervently, her colour rising with her ire as she fisted the sheet at her throat. “Yeah. And watching you pick Jenny over and over and fucking over while I sat on the sidelines and waited for you to see me in that way?”

My heart clenched tight enough to steal my breath. “That must have hurt.”

“It did,” she choked out, that ancient pain, exacerbated by all the trauma that followed, reared its ugly head.

“I’m sorry, Maggie. I loved you, too.”

“Yeah,” she blurted. “Like a friend.”

I rolled on top of her and tugged the sheet from her hand. “Not like a friend.”

She clutched onto me, using my body to shield hers from my eyes.

“Maggie,” I murmured. “I don’t want any other woman. I’ve never wanted any other woman. It has always been you.”

She turned her face to the side.

I grasped her chin to bring her back to me. “Your body, Maggie, is the only one I want. You could parade one hundred women of all shapes and sizes in front of me and I promise you I don’t want to stick my dick into any of them.”

Her eyes blew wide, and then she laughed. “Oh my God, Baxter.”

I grinned down at her. “Just wanted to make myself clear.”

Lifting up, I pulled the sheet from between us and covered the peak of her breast with my mouth before admitting, “I loved you even back then, Maggie.” I met her disbelieving eyes.

“It’s probably a good thing I didn’t know how you felt.

I would have hurt you, Mags. I wasn’t ready for you in high school. ”

“You loved me, too?” She narrowed her gaze and tilted her head. “I always felt like she was your first choice.”

I trailed my tongue down the valley between her breasts to her other nipple.

“Bax,” she protested, gripping my hair. “I don’t want you touching me and thinking about her.”

“No, Maggie. You have to know. She’s not a threat to you. Not in any way, shape, or form.” I sucked her nipple into my mouth, hard, reveling in her gasp as her back arched off the bed.

Lifting my head, I held her gaze and continued. “She was my friend. She understood what my homelife was like. And most of the time, we just smoked up.” He shook his head. “It wasn’t even a relationship, not in the sense you may be thinking.”

She shuddered, but after a moment, offered me a nod.

I rested my forehead on hers. “Can you take more?”

“Oh, God,” she gasped. “I’m not sure. What is it?”

“I had to put on a happy face and sugarcoat everything as best I could because my situation stressed everyone out. With her, I didn’t have to pretend. My shit didn’t freak her out because she had her own.”

She inhaled deeply, her eyes searching mine.

“I was always jealous,” she whispered, her cheeks heating. “Later, when we got together, I felt I wasn’t pretty enough or thin enough because she’s so beautiful.”

And there it was. The root that lay in wait to trip us up.

“She is,” I agreed readily, absorbing the flinch that rocked her. “And she does nothing for me. Never truly did. Not like you always have.” I paused to make sure she heard me. “Not like you do.”

I grasped her head between my hands and gave a tiny squeeze. “I know this is hard to hear, and there hasn’t been anyone but you in a decade, but it was always you even when it wasn’t. And that includes in high school.”

Eyes glossy, voice small, she asked, “Are you sure?”

“Baby,” I whispered, stricken by the naked vulnerability in her gaze.

If she could only step inside my skin, she’d never doubt me again. I’d move mountains for this woman. I’d do anything to wipe this insecurity from her heart.

“It’s the one thing that never changes. Some days you’re the only thing I’m sure about.”

She sniffed and rolled her lips between her teeth. Finally, she met my eyes. “I’m glad you had her to lean on.”

Her eyes, fractured with the pain of rejection, landed softly on my face.

Offering grace.

Offering comfort.

Putting me first.

Surrendering her right to hold the past against me.

I stilled as the moment imprinted on my brain, a turning point, a new beginning. Then I dipped my head.

Slanting my mouth over hers, I forced my way inside, swallowing her yelp of surprise.

I couldn’t get enough.

Not close enough.

Not deep enough.

And she gave as good as she got.

“Maggie, my sweet Maggie.” I rained kisses over her face. “I love you so much.”

“Bax,” she gulped, tearing her mouth away. “What we did to Jenny.”

Closing her eyes, she curled into my chest.

Sliding my hand down her leg, I lifted it around my hip, urging her to wrap herself around me.

Her other leg followed, and I settled into the cradle of her thighs.

Her emotions swung all over the place, but it was exactly what I expected. We had a fuck of a lot of ground to cover.

Maybe I was wrong to push us to walk through all of it tonight, but my desperate desire to pick up my life and my dreams where I left them eleven years ago wouldn’t let the past rest.

I pressed my lips to her crown. “I know.”

She continued, her voice muffled. “She cried so hard yesterday, Bax. And she sacrificed so much for both of us.”

I swallowed audibly. “She did.” With everything that had happened in the past 24 hours, the one thing I hadn’t processed was Jenny’s suffering in our mess. “It was my father’s fault. All of it.”

“We were at fault, too,” she reasoned.

“We were, but there comes a time, when the dominoes are stacked just so, they can’t help but fall into place. He stacked them. And he tipped them over.”

She nodded.

“And he took out me, you, and Jenny in one fell swoop. That’s on him. How we treat Jenny going forward, both of us, that’s on us.”

I paused. “I’m not going to be her friend, not without you, but I won’t ignore her or treat her badly. She deserves so much more than that from both of us. Without her, I’d be living out my days in a penitentiary.”

“I know,” she replied, her voice small.

“You need to check your jealousy and leave it behind. There’s no basis for it,” I stressed. “None.”

We needed to finish this and move on. “That whole mess wasn’t Jenny’s fault, or your fault, or mine. It’s his. But now that we know the truth? If we don’t learn going forward, it’s on us.”

The tension in her body eased, and she splayed her palm over her name on my ribs.

With that touch, my cock surged to life.

Tunneling her fingers through my hair, she drew my mouth to hers and tentatively pressed her lips to mine like it was the first time she’d ever tasted me.

Easing a breath away, she sighed sweetly into my mouth.

And I remembered the aftermath of our first time.

Remembered her flushed face, glossy eyes, and swollen mouth.

The wondrous disbelief that filled me because she was finally in my arms.

Always Maggie.

Only Maggie.

“Maggie,” I murmured. Tangling my tongue with hers, I took the kiss deeper.

Her sweet hum of satisfaction rolled my hips.

She writhed beneath me. “Are we done talking?”

I held on by a shoestring. “You have anything else hanging on? We’re not taking any baggage with us into this next phase.”

“I don’t think so.”

“You’ll tell me, immediately, if anything comes up?”

“I will.” She nodded. “You’ll do the same?”

“I will.”

Sad eyes met mine. “Are you still angry with me?”

I wilted.

Caressing her sweet face, I gave her my truth. “I’m still sad. I’ll probably always be sad about missing so much of his childhood. I just needed you to understand. And I needed reassurance that I don’t have to worry about you leaving without giving me a chance.”

“I won’t.”

I nodded in acceptance. “I’m not angry with you anymore.”

There was no more talking. Everything else that needed to be said we expressed with lips and tongues and touch.

I eased into her slowly.

And it hit me anew.

How lucky I was to get this second chance with her.

She might have moved on, been married, or fallen out of love with me.

The fears I’d never allowed to fully form into thought blossomed and shattered my control.

Gripping her hip, I drove inside her, deeper and harder with every stroke.

Bottoming out, I ground against her clit. “You’re going to marry me, Maggie. And we’re going to be a family. You, me, Corwin, and Jeff.”

“And maybe a baby,” she gasped, hanging on for dear life with all four limbs.

My hips jerked forward violently. “Maybe a baby. Fuck,” I rasped. “And I’m going to take you out for dinner every Friday night.”

“Yes,” she hissed, her small, curvy body writhing beneath mine.

“And plant you roses in the garden.”

“Tulips,” she corrected.

“Tulips.” Grasping her wrists from around my neck, I pulled her arms up over her head and pinned her to the mattress with my hips as I promised, “I’m going to give you a key, Maggie. Made of solid fucking gold.”

I ground into her, my groin teasing her clit.

She bucked her hips and dug her heels into my ass.

Voice shaking, I promised, “I’m going to build you and Corwin a house on that land and we’re going to eradicate the past.”

She gazed up at me, eyes heavy with desire. “We’ll do it together.”

I squeezed her wrists. “Are you with me?”

Breathless, she promised, “I’m with you.”

I released her wrists and cupped the nape of her neck, pushing up on one hand as I thrust inside her.

Pleasure coiled deep and threatened to spiral through me. My voice shook. “Come with me, baby.”

She huffed out a breath and nodded, breathing my name, “Baxter.”

There was no sweeter sound.

“Yes, baby. Let it happen. Come with me, sweetheart,” I begged.

Her muscles tightened and she stilled, balanced on the precipice for a moment frozen in time, one I would remember always.

Then she tumbled over.

And she took me with her.