Page 71 of Praised
I remembered that conversation very well.
“And I think that’s what you’re doing now.”
“How do you figure?”
“Thirty days?” He winged up a brow, and I turned my attention down toward our joined hands. “I had the courage to speak up for what I really wanted. Now it’s time for you to do the same.”
“What doyouwant?” I asked instead.
Rose shook his head. “That’s not what I said.”
“I want you,” I whispered, raising his hands to my mouth and dusting kisses across his fingertips and his knuckles. “I want all of you in all the ways, all the time.”
“More than thirty days?”
I nodded.
“Ask for what you want then,” he said gently, untangling our fingers so he could start working open the buttons on his shirt. I covered his hands with mine, stilling the motion.
“I want you,” I said again, hating the tremble in my voice. “I want to be your partner, your boyfriend, whatever you want to call it.”
“You want to be my Dom.”
I swallowed, the weight of the realization hitting me like a cement truck. I pleaded with myself to find the fortitude to look him in the eye when I said the next part, and even as the words came out a little shakier than I would have liked, I succeeded.
“I want to be your everything.”
“That’s admittedly terrifying.” Again, Rose worked his hands out from my hold, but instead of returning to his buttons, he moved toward my face. He cradled my cheek with one hand and pressed the other against my chest, right over my heart. His stare was so bright, so intense, I had to close my eyes for fear I would say something else outlandish or daring.
“I know,” I agreed.
“But…” He trailed his thumb across my cheekbone. “I think I can be brave.”
My eyes flew open, not sure I’d heard him correctly. The smile on his face was small and crooked, but the truth was clear in his eyes, the rest of his expression.
“What are you saying?” I needed to ask. I needed to be sure.
“I want to be your everything too,” he said, lashes fluttering. “I think I deserve that, don’t I?”
“You deserve that and more.”
“Longer than thirty days,” he whispered.
“As long as you’ll have me,” I promised.
I curled my hands around his waist and pulled him onto my lap. He let out a soft laugh, but he gave me the chance to move him around until our stomachs were pressed together and he sat a head above me. He looked like a goddamn angel up there, the light behind his hair casting a glow around his head and through the loose curls of his hair.
“What did Grayson say to you?” I murmured, petting my hands up and down his sides to make sure he was real. To make surethiswas real.
Rose huffed and shook his head a little. “I don’t think Grayson likes me.”
“Impossible.”
It didn’t matter if Grayson liked him or not, because I was very close to loving him and I was finally going to get my chance to fall all of the way into that. I owed him a bottle of whiskey nice enough to say thanks, but not so kind that he’d believe I didn’t care about whatever he’d done to make Rose think he had a sour opinion of him.
“What does it look like? Being your everything, I mean?” he asked, turning his attention to my chest, which was bare. His fingers flexed and danced across my pecs and up my clavicle, over my shoulders and down my arms. His touch was electric, sparking ideas and feelings that I’d only ever dreamed of before him. And it wasn’t like he was the first person to ever touch me, far from it. But he was the first special one, of that I was certain.
“It looks like twenty more pairs of underwear for starters,” I said, and he tweaked my nipples with a bratty laugh. Instead of pulling away, I groaned and arched into him, pressing my quickly growing cock against him.
