Page 113 of Worth the Fall

Salt from her tears is on our lips.

Her desperate need to lose herself palpable.

There’s definitely pleasure in our kiss, but there is also so much more. Her well-being. My sanity. Our belief that we can see our way through to the other side of this.

My normally assured Emerson is anything but. She’s timid, hesitant. She may have initiated this, but I know it’s because she’s trying to lose herself in the physicality like I now see she always has. She’s trying to forget the ugly in her.

And that fucking kills me.

For a man who prides himself on being able to handle every situation—womanly or otherwise—I’m at a loss as to what to do.

God yes, I want her. Especially when she scrapes her nails against my abs under my shirt before lifting it over my head. The taste on her tongue. The smell of her skin. The knowledge of how goddamn good she feels when I bury myself in her. They all collide, vying for my focus.

And I may typically be a let’s jump right in when it comes to sex, but something is stopping me from ripping her clothes off and giving her the exertion she craves.

If I do that, I’ll be giving her exactly what she needs to run away from me again. I’d be giving her the tools to close off, when what she really needs is to know what I see when I look at her.

She needs to see the beauty in her ugly.

The thoughts are clouded with lust, lost in its haze, but when she reaches for the buttons on my jeans, I grip my fingers around her wrists.

“Em,” I say, my breath coming in pants as my dick begs me to let her hands stroke it.

“No.” She fights my hold, and I just keep my hands cuffed over her wrists as I lead her into my bedroom. “I don’t . . . just please . . . I need—” she murmurs between kisses, her lips meeting mine over and over, each time more urgent than the last.

I push her back onto the bed, her mile-long legs working her body closer to the headboard as I crawl over her. She looks up at me with eyes so intense they steal my reasoning. My words. My breath.

Her lip quivers.

Her eyes well again.

When I reach down and pull her arms up so that they rest beside her head, palms up, her breath hitches. With my eyes locked on hers, I lower my lips ever so slowly and press them softly against the fresh and angry red mark on the inside of her bicep. She freezes, and I know it’s taking everything she has not to pull her arm away from me. I know if she tries, I’ll let her. But if she doesn’t, then I’ll know she trusts me, if only just a little bit, and a little bit is enough for now.

While I wait for her decision, I can see the shame in her eyes, the discomfort in my knowing, the struggle to let me in. Her inhale is shaky, but she doesn’t move.

She puts her trust in me.

I lace a row of kisses across the scars on her right arm, my heart breaking and temper firing as my lips ghost over the ridges that mark her pain. There are so many, and all I can think of is how many times she’s felt the need to cut herself to cope with what that fucking bastard did to her.

How much pain was she in that she needed to mar herself? Permanently scar herself to cope? With my lips against her skin and her perfume in my nose, I can picture her huddled in a corner, drawing a knife across her arm. Over and over. Tears falling like the drips of blood were. Alone and isolated from everyone and their help.

And then I realize it’s not past tense. It’s not how much pain she was in, because she just cut herself again. The pain is still there. Still prevalent. Still haunting this incredible woman.

My need to show her she isn’t alone, that she’s beautiful inside and out takes hold.

So I continue to worship her scars with reverent kisses. And when I’m done with the right side, the need to calm my ire leads me to kiss her lips again. To sip and take and soothe and know she’s okay before leaning back, looking in her eyes to let her know my next intention, and then pressing my lips to the ridges on her left arm.

Call it my hero complex. Call it her being the first girl I’ve ever loved letting me love her now. Call it me being a fucking sap. I don’t care . . . because put any man in my situation—with a woman who doesn’t trust putting one hundred percent of her trust in him when she’s at her most vulnerable, and for fuck’s sake, it will change him.

Change him in ways he never knew possible.

As I slide my lips down the rest of her arm before pulling her tank up to expose toned flesh and pressing heated kisses across her abdomen, I know I’m changed. I know the taste of her, the sound of her, the feel of her will forever be seared in my goddamn memory.

I told her we should chase moments and not memories.

Enjoy the moment.

So I do just that. I take the trust that Emerson has bestowed upon me and slide my hand up her inner thigh, her flimsy skirt bunching up with it as I go. I lick over the cotton of her panties, prompting her legs to spread apart for me. I suck on her clit, the muted sensation of the fabric and the heat causing her hand to grip the sheets beside me and her hips to buck against my face.