Page 52 of Until Ace

“But—”

“No buts,” he barks. “You’re not going near them. Do you hear me?”

“You’re not the boss of me.”

“I’m not, but I’m your man, and I take care of you.”

“You’re my man?”

“What the hell did you think was happening here, Mandy?”

“I thought you were hanging out with me because Beverly asked you to,” I say weakly.

“No, I agreed to meet you because of that. My need to fuck you comes from you being you,” he fires back.

“Wh-What?” A tremor steals over my body. One that comes once in a lifetime, the one where you know everything is about to change in one single moment. Nothing will ever be the same. “You want to fuck me?”

“Baby, I’ve wanted you from the moment I laid eyes on you, and that urge only grew.” He shrugs, a boyish smile on his face. Then, his face grows serious again, the playfulness gone in the blink of an eye as if it never happened. His eyes bore into mine, pleading with me to listen, to understand, to accept what he has to say next. “I didn’t expect it would ever happen, but I found you on a fluke, and now that I have you, I’m not letting you go.”

“Then don't,” I whisper.

Ace groans and leans toward me. “I mean it, Mandy. You're mine. I've never felt like this before. I’ve never been a possessive man whose every thought revolved around a woman in my life. I’ve never woken up with a deep need for a woman lying next to me, sleeping in my bed. I’ve never needed to know what a woman I'm seeing is doing, thinking, watching….” He shakes his head as if he can't believe what's coming out of his mouth. He glances down at my hands on his chest, his heart beating faster and faster. He looks up, and the melted dark chocolate of his eyes robs me of my breath.

“From the moment I saw you, I knew you were the one for me. It was like a detonation went off inside me and something was released from my heart and spread all through my body. You are the first thing I think about when I wake up. Fuck, this morning, the disappointment I felt when I opened my eyes and you weren’t there…? That was proof enough how badly I want you. And if it wasn’t, the relief that filled me when I saw you in my kitchen sealed it.”

My vision of him gets blurry with the tears that gather in my eyes, hearing him talk.

“Babe,” he says when all I keep doing is looking up at him without blinking so they won’t fall.

“Ace.” His name breaks in the middle, but it’s the only thing I need to say.

His head drops again, his lips touching mine in a gentle kiss.

He exhales, then lifts his head, but only a little.

Resting his forehead against mine, he looks down at me, his stare heating me inside, and he mutters, “Yeah.”

He knows. With me only saying his name, he knows the same feelings are happening in me.

We stay like this for a breath, then two.

He sighs, stands up straight, and takes a few steps back. I watch his feet moving away, my brow creasing. Why is he pulling away?

Then Ace breaks the silence and confuses me with his change in topic… again.

“Obviously, I need to explain some things to you.”

“Like what?”

“Like the fact that from now on, you sleep easy, you breathe easy, you laugh, you don’t turn to stone whenever your phone buzzes, and you don’t jump whenever I come up behind you. But most of all, you do not look over your shoulder in fear that someone’s following you. Not when there’s something I can do about it.”

“Why would you do anything about it?”

“I can understand it escaped you last night, but how it did this morning, I don’t get. But you missed it.”

“I missed what?”

“You missed the fact that the moment I saw you, I wanted you, and last night when you crawled in bed with me, you became mine.”