I took another swig of the champagne and considered my options.
“It’s okay,” she laughed and sank back into the warm water. “I understand. I was such an idiot to believe him. I thought he said that after Tracy and his baby died he wanted to be safe. He wanted to wait because he was healing.”
Yeah, we shouldn’t talk about this. I changed my mind.
“So stupid,” she uttered and then dipped her head under the water.
“Did…” I gulped, too nervous to ask if she loved him. She had to have loved him to be with him for so many years. “Did you love him?”
“No. I wasn’t in love with him. I loved him as a friend, but I knew that I would never love someone the way I loved you. He and I were best friends, helped each other through Tracy and you, and he really manipulated me. I want to kill him myself. I can’t believe I took his word over my love for you. It was so wrong of me.” She spun around in my arms and straddled my waist. Her breasts floated above the water, and her nipples weren’t hard, about the size of a quarter, since the water was so warm, and we weren’t doing anything sexual. We were just being, just us, and she was perfect. “How can you forgive me?”
My arms settled naturally in the curve of her waist; I leaned my forehead against hers. “Nothing to forgive baby. I understand. It upset me for a long time, and then I just never heard from you again, but I knew one day I’d see you again.” I pushed her wet hair over her shoulders, and my throat thrummed appreciatively when I saw the slenderness of her neck and the defined ridges of her collarbone.
“I wrote you every day,” she whispered, looking down from my eyes when she saw the shock on my face. Her hands found my pecs, and she started tracing the tattoos again. I wondered if that was something she did because she was nervous.
“I never got any letters,” I said, lifting her chin with my thumb and index finger. “What letters, Quinn?” I searched her eyes for answers, but I didn’t find any. Her brows bowed in the middle, wrinkling her forehead, and she tried to look away again, but I wouldn’t let her. “What letters?”
“I wrote to you every day, but I never had the courage to send them. They were stamped. They were ready. And every day I told myself, ‘this is it; this is the day.’ More time kept passing by, and then I figured, why bother? You probably hated me, anyway, so getting a letter from me would just make you miserable.”
“I could never hate you,” I said, keeping my tone gentle. “Where are the letters?”
“Why?”
“I want them.”
“There are ten years-worth of letters,” she stated, placing her arms on my shoulders.
“I want to read them all. Every day of every year. I want to know what you’re thinking, what you were wanting, everything. Where are they?” I asked. I wanted them right now. If I could, I’d get up and fly back to our hometown and steal them. I wanted to know how she felt during that time. I knew she hated me, and I wondered if those letters conveyed that, or if they held any amount of love.
She worried her bottom lip. “They are in the apartment back home. I still have them. Some are awful. Some have tear stains on them running the ink. Some are spilling my love. Some are telling you about Brian. And none of them matter because Brian is the liar. Ten years of my life wasted because I was a coward.”
“No, you can’t be a coward and be with a man like Brian. You were just afraid, and you had every reason to be. I didn’t get accused of shoplifting or stealing a car, Quinn. It was murder.”
“So? I should have stood by you. If I could turn back time—”
I laid my finger over her mouth to silence her. “Stop. Just stop. It doesn’t matter anymore. You’re here. I’m here. We are together. You’re all I ever need.”
She sucked my finger into her mouth, and I held my breath as her tongue wrapped around me, teasing me, and my cock stood at attention, poking out of the water. She raised her body and then lowered herself onto me. My sack cradled her ass, and my cock filled her to the hilt. We moaned at the same time as she started to rock.
Quinn let go of my finger with a pop and tossed her head back, the ends of her hair skimming the water. “We are all each other need,” she moaned into the room.
My palm pressed against her stomach to apply more pressure in hopes I’d hit her G-spot. She cried out, and her hands gripped the side of the tub as she rode me.
Yeah, if all I had was this for the rest of my life.
I’d die a happy man.
Chapter Eighteen
Quinn
“Wake up, baby.”
“No,” I groaned, flipping over in the other direction so Jaxon wouldn’t bother me.
“Quinn,” he said my name with humor.
I didn’t find it funny to wake me up at the ass crack of dawn when the roosters crowed. No. That was one thing that had not and would not change about me. I was not a morning person. Sure, I had my sleepless nights, and sometimes I woke up early, but not because I freaking wanted to. My body hated me in those days. There was a difference between waking up early because you had to versus waking up early because someone made you.
And Jaxon was making me.
Did he care about his life at all?
“Come on; I have the entire day planned for us. You must get up now. I brought coffee.” He must have placed the mug in front of my face because I got a strong whiff of delicious coffee. I pried one eyelid open, much to my dismay, the only way to get me up calmly was with coffee.
“That’s it. Come on,” he laughed at his own tone of voice because it sounded like he was trying to coax an animal out of a corner.
I slowly sat up, not opening my other eye yet because I wasn’t ready to let go of the sleep yet.
His chuckle annoyed me when it sounded again. “Still not a morning person, I see.”
“And never will be,” I yawned, debating if the coffee was worth it. I could go back to sleep for a few hours and then warm up the java. That was a good plan.
“I brought your favorite food. Loaded hashbrowns.”
That had me lifting my other eyelid.
“Uh-huh. That got your attention, didn’t it?” He shook his head but kept the smirk on his handsome face. He lifted the lid off the tray, and my stomach grumbled when I smelled the biscuits and gravy.
“Did you bring A-1?” I gave him a chin lift and lifted one brow as high as it could go to see if he passed the ultimate test of knowing me. Anyone that had ever been close to me knew how much I loved A-1 on nearly everything. If he forgot…well, maybe we weren’t meant to be after all.
Kidding.
Kind of.
“Did I forget the A-1?” he mocked me and blew a raspberry. “Did I, me, Jaxon Steel, forget the A-1? What kind of dumbass do you take me for, baby?” He bent over for a moment, and I stole a glance at his perfect ass. Jaxon looked over his shoulder and caught me. “Perv,” he poked fun at me.
I shrugged a sleepy shoulder. “Well, when you put it out there like that, you’re asking for the attention.”
He straightened and sat the biggest damn A-1 bottle I had ever seen in my entire life on the table. “I should make you wait for this, for staring at me like I’m a piece of meat.”