Page 69 of Chasing Home
My chest is pinched so tight every inhale is small, not enough air coming in to fill my lungs properly as I grow light-headed.
Aurora’s shoulders droop for the first time in my presence. “You ruined my plans. Twisted me into a knot I can’t untie, and for what? For fun? Something to fill the time while you’re away from another woman?”
I blink, thinking I misheard her. “What do you mean ‘while I’m away from another woman’? Do you think I’m the type of guy to have taken you to the home of a woman I’ve been wanting like that?”
“Don’t play dumb with me. I saw the way you were with Jill.”
“I know what you think you saw, Aurora. But it wasn’t me wantin’ another woman.”
“Then what was it, then? Because I didn’t see you shoving her off of you when she clung to you or touched you all day. You seemed to enjoy the attention she was giving.”
I drag my thumb across my bottom lip, letting out a short, breathy laugh. “I knew you were jealous. Knew that’s why you were so cold and closed off. I just hoped you had more faith in me than to believe I was enjoying anyone’s company as much as I enjoy yours. Or that every time she spoke to me, I wasn’t wishin’ it was you instead. I was being polite instead of tossing her across the ranch the moment she touched me like I wanted to.”
“How did you expect me to be thinking that? Do I really come off as the non-territorial type? Especially when I haven’t given you any reason to be loyal to me.”
“No reason to be loyal,” I repeat, the weight of her admission hitting me full force. “What exactly should you have had to do to expect loyalty from me?”
“I don’t know. Given you something, at least! We haven’t even kissed, Johnny. I haven’t done anything besides run?—”
It only takes one step forward to be able to take her face in my hands. I drop my head and brush my lips over hers, testing the soft, plump feel of her mouth. Tasting her for the first time without taking our first real kiss. Swallowing the rest of her sentence and the wobbly exhale that follows.
“If you wanted me to kiss you, Rory, you should have just said so,” I whisper, splaying my fingers to touch as much of her cheeks as possible before pressing our mouths together.
23
AURORA
I’m aware of all of the flaws in my character and have long since accepted them.
I know that I’m anti-social on most days, defensive without reason to be, and that I shut down when I’m upset. I’m picky when it comes to accomplishing daily tasks and would rather stay up all night finishing a project than risk falling a day behind. I’ve always been the girl who pulls away when she’s hurt instead of confronting the one responsible and risking that pain growing.
I never feared abandonment before finding my mother’s letters. Reading those broken-hearted words on tear-splotched paper damaged a part of me that was once perfectly functional. It broke me so terribly that I convinced myself carrying those letters around with me was normal. The worst of them sits in my nightstand. I force myself to read it every night, as if by going over it time and time again, I’ll become numb to the pain it brings me. Exposure therapy, they call it.
Torture, more like.
The ache in my chest only grew once I learned Lee had a family. One created after abandoning mine. The feeling of being unworthy grew and grew until it started eating away at my soul.
Its feasting halted when I met Johnny.
For small moments in my every day, whenever he appeared with his crooked grin and dimpled cheek, that feeling of unworthiness fell prey to something else. Something warm and soft.
Affection. Care. Happiness.
And as he kisses me in this moment, it’s like he’s transported us somewhere entirely outside of time and space to somewhere my brain doesn’t overthink and my chest doesn’t ache for anything more than another dose of him.
I curl my fingers in the soft material of his shirt and moan at the soft pressure of his lips on mine. It’s almost audible the way my chest cracks open at the patience he has with me as he waits, still not giving in completely to the kiss.
As if he’s scared I’m going to turn and run.
With a tug on his shirt, I prove to him that that’s the last thing I want right now. I’m the one to deepen the kiss and take my first real taste of him. The lingering flavour of the Twizzlers he ate on the drive out here and a longing so intense it’s almost a living thing. He pushes back instantly, taking the opening I’ve laid out in front of him with vigour.
His scent wraps around me, and I moan again, completely past the point of caring whether he thinks I’m being too loud or too weird. It’s not even the way he smells so damn sexy or how good it feels to kiss him that has me throbbing between my legs so fiercely, but the strength in which he holds me to him. With the confidence of a man who knows exactly what he wants and isn’t afraid to do everything in his power to get it.
He releases my cheeks to cup the back of my head and my waist, his thumb stroking the underside of my rib cage. My body lights up at his touch, a million missiles self-destructing beneath my skin.
Guiding my head back further, he glides his tongue along my lips, tracing it once before I part them, allowing him entrance. My brain melts, turning to mush at the first stroke of his tongue inside my mouth. Another moan fills the air, but this time, it doesn’t come from me.
“Do you believe me now, Rory?” he asks, the words slipping down my throat.