Page 139 of Reckless
Not my waist.Not my back.Not anything that would look like possession to the room.
He lifted one hand and brushed his knuckles once, very lightly, over the underside of my jaw.
The smallest touch.
“Good,” he said.
And because by then I knew him enough to hear it properly, I smiled.
And somewhere beneath all the wanting and the sex and the danger and the impossible family around us, I was starting to hope.
Seventeen
The Gesture That Breaks Them
Xerses
The first mistake I made was thinking Kelly saying real future meant she needed proof.
The second was believing proof looked like action.
And all my life, future had meant the same things.
Security, permanence, and structure.If you find a queen my father said then you must give her something solid enough to stand on.Something built.
I had been raised in a world where love was not abstract.It was provision.It was room.It was taking the thing someone cared about and making sure it could never be taken from them again.My father built empires out of instinct and force.My mother loved through creation and shelter and scale.In my family, when you loved someone, you made their life safer, larger, more beautiful.You used what you had.
So when Kelly said future, I reached for the language I knew I needed to build for her.
Make it impossible to doubt.
Roman sat across from me in the conference room, one hand around his coffee, the skyline behind him all cold glass and silver lines.I had just explained the zoo plan to him in the clipped, efficient way men described emotional disasters when they were pretending they were strategic breakthroughs.
He listened and shook his head.
Then said, "You're translating what dad said to use and what you think that means wrong."
I looked up."Excuse me."
"You heard what she said," he said calmly."But you don’t have to do this.My wife wouldn’t approve and I doubt Kelly will want."
I hated when he sounded this certain because he was usually right.
"She said she wanted something real."
Roman nodded once."Yes."
"And this is real."
"No," he said."This is permanent.That's not the same thing.I think she just wanted the security you aren’t going anywhere."
That should have stopped me.
Instead I heard challenge, not warning.
I was trying to show her I listened.
That was why this was right.
