This was the mark her life had left on mine.
Leaning back, I edged her shorts and panties from her hips, slipped them down her legs. My gaze traveled her length, every inch of this girl like a dream. I palmed her knees, pressed them apart. This time it was my turn to lose my breath. Every cell in my body strained. “Fuck,” I wheezed. “You’re so gorgeous, Aly,”
This slow blush started at her stomach, traveled up her chest, kissed her cheeks. “I love you, Jared. With all of me. I am yours.”
My blood pumped hard and joy leaped up in me.
Real joy. Not a hint or suggestion.
This joy was real. Overwhelming. Something tangible that Aly had shown me was still possible to feel.
My eyes locked on hers as I slowly leaned down. I feathered a kiss just above her pelvic bone where our child grew. Another mark my life had made when I’d believed I wasn’t living at all. Wisps of anxiety curled, twisting with my spirit. I didn’t know if I could ever be enough. But God, I was going to try.
I climbed over her, looked down at the girl who changed everything. The one who’d given me another chance at life.
Soft fingers caressed my face, green eyes intense. “Stay,” she whispered.
I wound my arm under her back and brought it up to hold her head. The other trailed from her shoulder and down the length of her arm. I wove my fingers with hers and brought her knuckles to my mouth. I brushed my lips over them. Our flesh so different, the pure and the impure. Yet now I knew we fit.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
Emotion rumbled thick in my chest, pushing and pulsing. I swallowed hard, my chest so fucking tight as I let myself finally feel, feel what I’d been fighting since I walked through Aly’s apartment door six months ago.
“I love you, Aly.” The words shook, but rang with truth. Our truth.
I never believed I’d get to have this. But somehow I’d found myself with it.
It scared the hell out of me, but I was done running.
I wound a single finger through a lock of her inky hair. A bond. It felt like home.
It was time I built another one.
Dear Reader,
Thank you so much for reading Come to Me Quietly.
Come to Me Quietly has been such an amazing journey for me as an author. It’s typical of what I write in that it’s an emotional, love-filled journey of two people with a past coming together. But Jared is unlike any character I’ve ever written before. He is passionate. Angry. Self-destructive.
Jared wasn’t originally supposed to be a character in Come to Me Quietly. He was the lead in a paranormal romance I began writing more than three years ago. But as I started writing that story, there was just something about Jared that stuck out to me. He was different. Special. And he just kept screaming at me that he belonged in a different story from the one that I had initially planned for him.
So that paranormal romance was shelved, and I began to plot out the story Jared wanted to be in. I so clearly saw this broken man who had so much love and passion buried beneath the pain he held inside him. I saw his burden and shame. I saw his eyes and I saw his anger.
And I saw this young woman, Aleena Moore, who was the only one deep enough to touch it.
Their story became Come to Me Quietly.
Through the process of writing this story, I absolutely fell in love with both of these characters. Jared and Aleena have had such a profound effect on me as a person and an author. They grew and became a permanent part of my heart and mind.
I’m absolutely thrilled that the story of their lives will be continued in my next novel, Come to Me Softly, because their story has really only just begun.
In Come to Me Softly, Jared and Aly will be able to explore their passion freely for the first time because their love is no longer a secret.
I’ve already seen what it will be like for them, waking up together each day… .
Aly stood at the kitchen counter, pouring a glass of orange juice. Locks of nearly black hair were all ratted and a mess, her bedhead about the cutest fucking thing I’d ever seen. Of course, the girl was wearing those shorts, exposing the length of those long legs that drove me out of my mind.
Shit.
One glimpse of her, and my body was already begging.
After I’d had her all night.
I inched up behind her and pressed myself flat to her back. I grasped the counter, her sweet little body pinned. My nose dove through the waves that spilled over her shoulders to the sweet spot just below her ear. I inhaled the delicious coconut and the good and the girl. “Fucking gorgeous,” I whispered, because she really fucking was.
I could almost feel her blush, the heat rising from her skin as she bit at her bottom lip to suppress her grin.
That thing that felt like joy lit in my chest, reminding me that I really fucking was happy.
“Ahh… are you kidding me?” The obnoxious voice that could only belong to Christopher broke through our moment. “Do I really have to wake up to this bullshit every morning? That is my little sister, you know.” It was all tease, but I didn’t miss the lingering remnant of his distrust.
I just pulled my girl closer and tossed him a smirk. Fucker deserved it. “Get used to it, man, ’cause I’m not going anywhere.”
But even though I know that in the next book, Jared will have returned to Aly, I also know he still has his demons and still keeps them locked up tight. It is Aly who holds the key. She’s the one who makes him feel, the one who makes him realize he has to face his past if he’s to live a normal life. Face his family, really face himself. But that past is one filled with shame and regret.
This is something he will struggle with in the new book… .
I stood outside the shitty, run-down house, shaking. Fucking shaking.
What was I supposed to say when he answered the door? I guess the better question was, what would he say to me? Chances were, he’d tell me to go to straight to hell. Exactly where I deserved to be.
Warily, I raked a hand through my hair and glanced back at the street, where Aly sat in the driver’s seat of her car. The girl. Her face was all soft and perfect and reminded me why I was doing this in the first place. I had to do this for her. Had to do this for them.
Swallowing down the lump wedged in my throat, I turned back and forced myself to ring the doorbell.
In Come to Me Softly, Aleena is and will always be his rock, the only one who can hold the shattered pieces together. And Aleena and the baby will be what drives Jared to the places he’d always most feared.
I can see how she loves him in the next book… .
I wrapped myself around his back, my cheek pressed into his spine and my hands fastened around his stomach.
Jared released a weighted sigh. For the longest time, silence overtook us. We swam in it. Tension thickened in the crisp fall air.
I knew he was hurt. Those words had cut him deep. I’d wanted to shield him from them, protect him, but this was just another obstacle we had to face. All I could do was support him, hold him the way I was now, my touch a promise that I didn’t believe the insinuations that had been spewed.