No Longer Lost: Secrets Of Stone: Book Nine Page 22

  The night my life changed forever.

  I wanted to throw all the food in the trash can and drag her to the bedroom right then and there. But I had to show some restraint. Clearly she had a plan in her mind of how she wanted the night to play out, and I had a feeling it would be in my best interest to go along with the program.

  Although I could feel my dick swell past comfort in my cargo shorts, I grabbed the other bag and the plates I had taken from the cupboard and joined her at the table.

  “Very wise, huh?” It was so rare that she issued me a heartfelt compliment, I had to fish around a bit more to see if there were more where that one came from. She just grinned and continued serving our dinner though.

  Conversation escaped me as we ate. All I could think of was laying her out on the table and having her for my meal. Feasting on her pussy until she called my name with her climax. Italian pasta and meatballs just didn’t hold the same appeal.

  Scraping forks and clinking glassware were the only sounds filling the villa now. I was trying not to scarf my food down, but I was certain I finished my meal in record time.

  “I’m going to go shower, if you don’t mind?” I asked, not wanting to wreck any part of the big plan.

  “Actually, can you give me a hand cleaning up first?” She smiled sweetly, and I felt like a first-class jackass. Where were my manners? Also, if she kept up with that sexy little smile, I’d walk across hot coals barefoot if she asked me to.

  “I’m so sorry. Totally rude of me.” I shot up out of my seat, grabbing my plate and hers, now overcompensating for my boorishness.

  “Hey, don’t overreact.” She put her delicate hand over mine when I went to take her plate. “We’ll do it together.” She took care of the leftovers while I scraped and rinsed the plates and loaded them into the dishwasher. We had the table cleared in no time.

  “See? Now we can get to the good stuff.” She widened her eyes while taking my hand. “How do you feel about a bath?” We started down the hall toward the master bathroom. There was an enormous Jacuzzi tub in there—one I’d thought was a waste of space when looking to purchase the home.

  “I can’t remember the last time I sat in a bathtub. Maybe when I was five?” My imagination was already coming up with better ideas than working math problems on the tile walls with dry-erase markers.

  “I guarantee this will be a much different experience,” she promised as I trailed behind her into the large en suite bathroom. I watched while she produced some sort of hamburger-sized object from her overnight bag. She ran the water to fill the tub and unwrapped the patty from the tissue paper that covered it.

  “What the hell is that?” Curiosity had finally gotten the better of me, and watching without asking a million questions just wasn’t my style.

  “It’s a bath bomb.”

  “A bomb? Yeah, definitely didn’t detonate bombs when I was five. Fifteen? Maybe. But that’s a story for another time.”

  “No, this will make our skin soft and smell nice.” She dropped the “bomb” into the water, and it fizzed like a giant Alka-Seltzer, turning the whole tub an odd, bubbly blue.

  “Is that really safe to submerge ourselves in?” Now the scientist in me took the driver’s seat.

  “I do it all the time. Come on. Off with the clothes.” She tugged my shirt upward, and I helped by lifting my arms. She wasn’t tall enough to finish the job, so I pulled it over my head and tossed it onto the floor while she set to work on the button on my shorts. I stood still and watched her slim fingers work the fastener loose and pull down the zipper. She made the most mundane tasks sexier than I could withstand. I closed my eyes and dropped my head back while she slipped her hand into the waistband of my boxers, running her fingers around to the back before stopping.

  We just stood there. Taylor’s hands in my underwear, while she was still covered in her slinky little robe, bathwater running and fizzing in the background. All the while, I concentrated on not ejaculating from the mere anticipation of her silky skin touching mine.

  Her warm breath on my neck caught my attention, and I opened my eyes gradually. She licked my neck while she pulled my boxers down, carefully freeing my cock when it got hung up in the fabric up front.

  “You need to watch where you point this thing, mister. Someone could lose an eye.” She grazed her fingernails lightly over my shaft before abandoning me to turn off the faucet. I caught a stellar peek of her ass when she bent over to test the bathwater, making sure it was ready for us to get in.

  “After you, handsome.” She swept her hand out in front of her, inviting me to get in first.

  “All right. And you’re sure my skin won’t look like a Smurf when I get out?” I asked one more time before stepping into the bubbling blue water.

  “Well, just for a few hours, but it fades,” she answered smartly. “Oh! I almost forgot! I made a playlist for tonight.” She darted out to the bedroom and came back with her phone and a Bluetooth speaker. She set the two on the bathroom counter and pressed Play. After dimming the lights, she came and stood beside the tub where I was now completely submerged.

  “Mind if I join you?” she asked while working the knot loose on her robe.

  “I’d be terribly disappointed if you didn’t.”

  She unbelted her robe and let it slip from her shoulders, revealing her creamy skin. I offered my hand to steady her while she climbed in behind me.

  “I think you’d be more comfortable in front, no?” I asked.

  “No, I’m taking care of you tonight.”

  I turned my head to look at her, puzzled.

  “All week, you’ve been taking care of me. One thing after another. So tonight, I want to just say thank you. Just indulge me a little. Let me care for you.”

  I leaned back against her, and she wrapped her long legs around my waist.

  “See? That’s not so bad, is it?”

  I ran my hands up and down her smooth legs. “Not at all.”

  She used the big sponge that usually sat on the side of the tub as decoration and squeezed water over my shoulders and chest, time and time again. It was relaxing and hypnotic. Combined with the dim lights, soothing music, and the scent of the bath bomb, it was a very calming experience.

  “I like this song. It really says a lot of what I think I would say to you if I wrote a song.” She seemed to be thinking out loud, or just talking absentmindedly, the way her voice sounded so far off in thought. So instead of questioning her more, I just listened to the words. It was a young guy singing—and hitting a fierce falsetto, I might add. He sang about his lover being patient with him. The chorus repeated as he begged his lover to be patient while he made the changes she needed him to make to be the kind of man she wanted him to be. Shit, even I felt bad for the dude the way he plaintively delivered the lyrics after the second go-around.

  “Who’s singing this?” I finally asked.

  “Charlie Puth. Have you heard of him?”

  “I think so. I think I’ve heard him on the radio. Not this song, though.”

  “Yeah, it’s a deeper track,” she answered wistfully. “I thought of you the second I heard it. I really couldn’t have said the words better myself.”

  “But Taylor, you are what I need. You’re everything to me exactly the way you are,” I insisted. Why couldn’t she see that?

  “But when you wrote that letter—”

  “I could cut my own hand off for writing that damn thing. It feels like twelve years ago at this point, doesn’t it? We’ve been through so much since then. You’ve been. I’ve been. And together, we’ve been. I wouldn’t change a second of it, as strange as that sounds, because it’s all part of our story now.” I toyed with her fingers under the water while I spoke.

  “You shouldn’t regret telling me those things, though. I needed to hear them. It was hard at the time, but if you hadn’t had the courage and the strength to say what you did, when you did, I don’t think we would be here right now. Together, I mean. I had a bad his
tory of running away when things got tough. I tried doing it the other day again. But you showed me you would be there to help me through it instead of me having to face it all by myself. I owe you so much more than a thank-you for that, Mac.”

  I wanted to see her face while we were having this crucial conversation. I wanted to hold her in my arms and kiss her and tell her how brave she was being and how much I loved her. The current setup in the tub was preventing all of that from happening, however.

  “Let’s get out of the tub. The water’s getting cold.” I didn’t wait for her response. I lifted the drain, and the water started to whirl down to the end of the tub.

  I stood up first and grabbed two towels off the rack on the side of the tub. I helped her up and wrapped her in one of the cloths before wrapping one around my waist. She reached for a second one, patted the water droplets off my chest and shoulders, and then ran it up and down my arms.

  “Turn. Let me get your back too.”

  I did as she asked, and she took gentle passes over my back and shoulders again, making sure I was perfectly dry before asking me to bend forward so she could dry my hair. I did the same for her and left hers looking like a fluffy cloud around her angelic face.

  “I think this is a new look for you,” I said, smiling down into her eyes. She leaned past me to look in the mirror.

  “Yeah, I could totally rock this.” She gave herself a nod of approval before digging into her bag for some lotion. “Come on. I’ll give you a little massage.”

  Who was I to turn down an offer like that? But I really needed to acknowledge everything she’d just said to me in the tub. It was a turning point for us, and I didn’t want it to go unspoken that I’d heard everything she’d said.

  Leaning against the counter, I took the lotion from her hand and set it down beside me. I pulled her between my legs and wrapped my arms around her.

  “First, I want to say a few things in response to what you said in the tub. I don’t want you to think you just opened up to me like that and it didn’t register with me or that I don’t value your honesty. It means more than anything, Taylor, that you trusted me with your heart and your safety. We’ve been working really hard to get to this point.” I paused for a few beats, not wanting to sound like a politician giving a campaign speech. The words were truly from my heart.

  “I will do my absolute best to never take any part of what you trust in my care for granted. I know that a lot of this has been hard for you. You know, so much about our relationship has been uncharted territory for me too.”

  “Really?” She seemed astonished by my admission.

  “Why does that surprise you?”

  “Well, you’ve been engaged before. I mean, that’s pretty serious as far as relationships go. I’ve barely lasted more than six months with the same guy before freaking out and finding a reason to break up with him.”

  Strangely, that just made me feel better, not worse, and I grinned accordingly.

  “Is that funny?” She tilted her head to the side with wonder.

  “Not funny… It just makes me feel—I don’t know… Special?” I smiled fully. “But seriously, when I was engaged…and it seems so silly to even call it that now”—I made a face of distaste, hating that I ever cheapened the very notion of engagement and marriage—“it was for show more than anything. It was…” I paused, trying to think of the right words to use, being very careful to not trivialize the very thing I wanted with her more than anything. “How do I explain this? In that circle of people, at that point in my life, it was the next logical step? You date for a certain period of time, check all the relationship-milestone boxes, get engaged. Does that make sense?” God, I hoped I didn’t just fuck myself with all that.

  “Well, I can’t say that it makes sense, necessarily. But I do understand what you’re saying. Isn’t that terrible, though? That’s how relationships progress? Like ticking things off your grocery list? It shouldn’t be that way.” She shook her head, and I totally agreed.

  “No, it shouldn’t. But you see? That’s why I’m standing here with you and not in some cookie-cutter suburban home in the outskirts of Chicago. She wasn’t the right girl. She wasn’t ‘the one.’”

  Taylor took my hands from her waist and held them in her own. I still marveled at the size difference between us. She was so slight compared to me, yet so fierce and so strong in will and temperament. She was brave and bright, even though this week showed me a rare peek at the vulnerable side of her I hadn’t seen before.

  Once again, as if wading into the stream of my thoughts and fishing out the catch of the day, she squeezed my hands and spoke. “You know, this week was very trying for me. For us both, really. There were some really shitty moments, but every one of those was balanced out by a beautiful gift from you.”

  I looked at her, not hiding my puzzlement. Okay, there had been the wardrobe replacement, but that couldn’t be what she was talking about. When push came to shove, she’d finally seen the necessity of all that. Moreover, she wasn’t typically fixated on material things. Was all of this just because I’d sprung for some work ensembles and yoga pants?

  Luckily, she saved me from having to solve the riddle on my own. Pretty quickly, she went on. “Every time I was scared, Maclain Stone, you were there to calm my fears. You held my hand and showed me we would get through the darkness to the light on the other side in one piece, and I thank you for that.”

  She lifted my right hand and turned it over, placing a very tender kiss on my palm. When she was done kissing my palm, she put my hand on her sternum, right over her steadily beating heart. It thumped so strongly, I could count the thrums through my palm. I looked up to meet her bright ocean-blue eyes staring back at me. God, this beautiful queen captured every good thing in the world. Every good thing in my world.

  “And every time I was sad this week, Maclain Stone, you were there to hold me and to care for me while I cried. You made sure I ate and slept and had a safe place to exorcise my emotional demons where no one else would see. You healed my heart by making me believe there are good, kind, loving people in the world who do things for one another just because they care about them. For that, I thank you.”

  She left my right hand on her chest and lifted my left one to her lips, just as she had moments ago with the other, turning it over and kissing my palm with veneration, maintaining eye contact with me while doing so. Then, as before, she placed it over her heart, right on top of my other hand.

  She then covered my hands with her own and looked up to me. “Every single time you were there for me this week, Maclain Stone, my heart knew I was no longer lost. That I had finally found my true love. You’ve given me the strength to believe that I’m good enough. That I deserve to be loved, and I deserve to give love in return.” She paused, staring at me while a slow smile spread across her lips. “I love you. I love you with all my heart. Can you feel it? It beats for you. Only you. My arrogant, sexy clown. I love you, Maclain Stone.” She stretched forward and kissed my lips, and I wrapped my arms around her waist and pulled her against me.

  I was absolutely, undoubtedly, the happiest man alive.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Taylor

  Every classic love story had that one moment. A look across a crowded room, the sprint through a crowded airport, or a tearful reunion just when all hope seemed lost.

  I was pretty sure our perfect moment occurred when I saw the look on Mac’s handsome face as my words registered within his very complicated mind. I would hold it in my heart forever. I’d thought about the way I would tell him I loved him for so long, and when I finally said the words, it went nothing like I’d planned. But letting my heart speak for itself, and really tell him how much his support meant to me, turned out to be the best way to express my feelings when all was said and done. Sometimes, overthinking things was one of my biggest character flaws.

  “Now that I’ve told you how much I love you and how much I appreciate you, let me show you.” I backed
out of his embrace, grabbed the lotion from beside him on the countertop, and walked toward the bedroom. I heard him following close behind me, so I loosened the towel that was wrapped around me and let it fall to the ground as I walked. I heard Mac inhale sharply when I bent forward to take a few of the pillows from the head of the bed and tossed them onto the floor.

  “Lie down so I can put some lotion on your back. No one likes dry skin, you know.”

  He followed my instructions judiciously, dropping his towel and scampering onto the bed like an eager little puppy. It was so adorable, I had to hold back a giggle as I sauntered to the other side of the bed to remove the pillows there as well. I dimmed the lights at the wall switch and climbed onto the bed, meeting Mac in the middle.

  He automatically reached to touch my thigh, and I swatted his hand away. “You don’t touch your regular masseuse that way, do you?” I teased.

  “I’m hoping like hell this won’t actually be like a regular massage,” he answered, his voice already low and rumbly like it always got when he was sexed up.

  “Hmm. Good point,” I conceded easily. “Now lie flat so I can start on your back. You’ll have to tuck Big Mac up under you or something.” Honestly, lying on an erection like that couldn’t be comfortable, but I wasn’t about to be derailed.

  “Why don’t you start on my front, and I can put it up in you?” He wiggled his eyebrows suggestively and grinned.

  “While that idea has merit, I don’t think we’d get very far with the lotion.” I squirted a good amount in my palm and rubbed my hands together, making an obscene slick sound.

  “I’m not complaining,” he said, stroking his already fully erect cock.

  “Yes, but this climate is terrible for our skin. If you’d stop arguing, I’d be halfway done already. Turn. Over.”

  “Killjoy,” he mumbled into the pillow after doing as I told him.