Page 31 of Always Right Here

“And you meant it when you said you’d be mine, too?”

“I’ve always been yours.”

She softened again and turned around to straddle my lap. I adjusted my hands and continued my washing from our new position.

“Is this your way of asking me to be your…” she said, resting her hands on my shoulders.

“Girlfriend? Yes.”

“Then yes.”

I pulled her to me, taking her lips, kissing her deeply. She sighed into my mouth, tighteningher arms around my neck. It was perfect. She was perfect. Everything about this was perfect and I wanted to live in it forever. But Riah pulled away, a worried look scrunching her forehead.

“What do we tell my family?”

I rinsed her hair as I thought. I had never considered that the plan would change, but that didn’t have to change what we told them.

“We can say the threat has been eliminated. It wouldn’t exactly be lying…just leaving some parts out.”

“Right,” she nodded, working out the details in her mind.

“Hey.” I rubbed the wrinkles on her forehead with my thumb. “Don’t worry about the details, Jesse is…he knew. Not everything, but he’s loyal and will vouch if any more questions come up. I can work out any extra details with him and I can handle all the talking.”

“It's just…this whole time part of me was afraid to act on what I felt for you because of Eddie. I know he wants nothing but my happiness, but I don’t want to steal his best friend.”

“Baby, we are all adults. Yeah, maybe it would have bothered him while we were teenagers, but he has his own wife and family now, I doubt us being together would disrupt his life too much. Plus, he and your dad already implied that they’d like us together.”

Her head shot up, eyes wide. “Really?”

“Really. So telling them won’t be as bad as you think. We don’t have to rush, we can still stay here for a few more weeks. I can make you come a couple thousand more times…”

My fingers traveled between her legs, brushing across her clit. Riah squirmed, backing away from me and swatting me playfully on the shoulder.

“Stop it! Be serious,” she giggled.

“Okay, okay,” I obliged, resting my hands on her thighs. “But really, we can stay here a little bit longer. We’ll tell them we grew closer while we were away. Also not a lie.”

“What about my job?”

“I might have lied about some things, but not about protecting your job. They did get the files they needed about your case. You’re safe.”

“Alright,” she breathed. “Okay. We’ll do that.”

I pulled her closer on my lap, pressing tiny kisses over her shoulders.

“Good. Now that that’s settled, let me fuck all those worries out of your pretty little head.”

Chapter 25

Riah

Tall, twisting trees zipped past me as I leaned my forehead against the window. Soft r&b played over the radio. Korie gently held my thigh, rubbing her thumb over my exposed skin.

The last two weeks in the safehouse had been perfect. Nonstop fucking, cuddling and talking. I discovered a whole list of kinks that I didn’t know I had. We spent hours reminiscing on our childhood, my years away at college and what we envisioned for our future. So many of our plans aligned and it felt like everything was finally falling into place.

She explained how she orchestrated her plan in exquisite detail. I now knew why the police hadn’t found anything, Korie had helped them close the case shortly after the brick incident. They were all convinced it was an unrelated, singular incident and there were no suspects. Nothing worth pursuing.

She admitted how, at the housewarming party, she controlled the electricity and the cameras all from her phone. When she went outside to ‘check the perimeter’, she was really doctoring the footage.