“Go on,” he urged, turning my face back toward him and licking those damn lips of his.
“I thought if you gave yourself to me, I could take back a piece of my heart.” A lone tear drifted down my cheek, and I cursed myself for showing my weakness, which was him.
“If I gave myself to you?” A disbelieving laugh erupted from his mouth as he wiped away my tear. “Where did you come from?”
“Oklahoma,” I sheepishly replied, which made him laugh right before he pulled me into his embrace, the muscles of his arms trapping me. But I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.
After a brief silence, he kissed the top of my head and pulled me toward the bed. “How about we relax and watch a movie? I think I can scrounge up a comedy.”
“Um… okay.”
“I thought I saw a couple movies in one of these drawers. I can’t tell you what they are or how long they’ve been here.” Lincoln searched through several of the drawers beneath where the television stood before he pulled two movies from the last one he looked in. It was either Forrest Gump or Reservoir Dogs. Both were way before my time, but I chose Forrest Gump. Although it wasn’t necessarily a comedy, I’d seen the film a few times and loved it. He popped in the disc and joined me on the bed, leaning forward and taking off his boots and socks before he grabbed the back of his shirt and pulled it over his head.
“Is this okay? I’m kinda warm.”
“Yeah, it’s okay.”
After he hit the Play button, he scooted back until he lay flat, his head on the pillow. “Come join me, will ya?” His smile brightened my otherwise downtrodden state.
Everything Lincoln had done for me since the night he saved me was to show me he cared. Whether it was for my safety, or my basic human necessities, such as food, he made sure I had what I needed. He was patient with me while I learned to trust that what he told me was the truth. He didn’t push me to do anything I wasn’t comfortable with, even going as far as sleeping on the ground each night beside the bed.
It was then I realized he wasn’t rejecting me.
He was respecting me.
32
I tried like hell to concentrate on the damn movie, but all I could think about was her mouth and the feel of her clutching on to me like she was afraid to let me go. Then she hit me with “I thought if you gave yourself to me, I could take back a piece of my heart.” What the ever-loving fuck?
The girl nestled in the crook of my arm with her head on my chest exhilarated yet scared me.
She was fragile but strong.
Bold but shy.
“I love this part,” she said, looking up at me to make sure I was watching. The gleam in her eyes cut right through me, and all I wanted to do was capture her mouth again, but I refrained. My stare flitted from hers to the screen, smiling when the character awkwardly ran from the bullies before his leg braces busted away to allow him to go into a full-on sprint.
“It’s a good part,” I agreed, pulling her closer.
Everything was going fine. We were relaxed, together, and engrossed with the film, but when Maddie suddenly draped her leg over mine and cuddled even closer, my breath caught in my throat. Then her finger traced over my stomach, my muscles twitching from the contact. If she kept this up, I was gonna be sportin’ a hard-on, one I’d barely managed to keep at bay this entire time.
“Maddie.” I swallowed and inhaled a choppy spurt of air. “I… that feels….” I didn’t even finish my sentence before she extended her arm and placed her hand on the mattress on the other side of me, lifting the rest of her body until she hovered half over me. Her mouth was close, her warm breath fanning over my lips.
“I want you to make love to me, Lincoln.” Her eyes traveled from mine to my mouth and back again. She appeared resolved but tentative at the same time.
It took my brain a few seconds to compute what she’d said, and when they hit their mark, I pulled back so I could see more of her face. The flecks of gold around her irises seemed to brighten as she looked at me, and I almost forgot to respond.
“What?” I finally said, pulling myself out of my self-induced trance.
“I want you to make love to me,” she repeated. “I’ve never wanted anything more.”
“Are you sure?” What the hell was I saying? There was no way we could have sex or make love as she put it. Fuck, I’d never “made love” to anyone before. At best, I had sex, fucked. Never made love.
Her face lit up as if I’d said yes. “Yes. I know you’re worried about me, and I love that about you, but I want to be with you.”
She loved that about me? Loved? I focused on the wrong thing, distracting myself from the real issue, which was that Maddie told me she wanted to have sex. Correction… make love.
I could either continue to deny her and possibly compound any hurt feelings she already had, or I could give in to what we both wanted.
Hard choice. No pun intended.
“I don’t want you to do somethin’ you’re not ready for only because you think I want to or for any reason other than it’s really what you want right now. You’ve been through a lot. More than most. Quite frankly, I’m surprised you’re able to function as well as you are.”
“My dad was crazy religious, and while I didn’t agree with everything he told me, I did believe one thing, and that was that God would help me.”
“Help you? How did God
