Blissful Surrender (18 page)

Sighing loudly, she walked to the door, pausing with her fist tightening around the handle. “It’s for the best, Sean. I’m weaker when I’m with you. You’re getting ready to graduate. I’ve got my final year to finish. I think this is what … we need.” The last few words were shaky at best. I knew that this was her mother’s doing, but there was no reasoning with Sammy when she was this resolute about something.

Walking to the now open door, I stopped right in front of her, cupping her cheeks in both of my hands and lifting her face to mine. “I’m not giving up, Sammy. I don’t understand this, but I know you. I know us. I know that there is more to us than just a college romance. You just need time. I love you, don’t ever forget that.” I brushed my lips gently against hers once, then again, and when I felt her body soften against mine, I slowly swept my tongue through her parted lips, making sure she felt my words deep inside, wanting her to feel everything I was trying to say in that one last kiss.

When I ended the kiss and walked away from her, I looked back once to see the door shutting quickly and my heart stuttered. But it wasn’t until I walked into my house to find Ryan crying on the floor next to my grandfather’s dead body that I knew what it was like to lose almost everything important in my life.

And when I went back to Samantha’s dorm room to find her, to fight for her, at the time I needed her the most, she was gone.

Sam

Helen:
Samantha Grace Richards, where the hell did you disappear to last night? Word is Tanner is pissed off and you were last seen going upstairs at Throb.

Me:
Don’t you full name me! I’m fine, more than fine. I’m with Sean …

Helen:
OMG

A few minutes pass and then my phone vibrates again.

Rico:
Be careful, minha amiga.

I chuckle to myself, earning a sideways glance from Sean as he squeezes my hand that is underneath his on the seat between us.

Me:
So we’re back to the double team text attack?

Helen: What do you expect?!? Girl, you better call me tonight and give me a full run down. I know that the sex must have been out of this world!

Me:
No comment.

Helen:
Oh, come on. Give me something to get me through the day.

Rico:
Please, for the love of God, give her something to shut her up ;)

I think for a moment, do I really want to burst the Sean and Sam bubble just yet. I’d rather have an uninterrupted day to ourselves so that we can work out where we’re going. On that, I send one last text.

Me:
Last night was for me in his office, for him in bed, then for both of us this morning …

Rico:
I think I like this guy already.

Rico:
And you’ve succeeded in shutting Hels up, you’re a legend. Have fun, talk tonight.

I turn my phone off and hand it to Sean, earning a quirked brow. “Don’t give that back to me until tonight when I go home. I don’t want any interruptions today.” I smile at him and his eyes go soft as he lifts his hand and rests his palm on my cheek, giving me a gentle, probing, lazy kiss that I feel right down in my toes.

The butterflies in my stomach flutter once more as we head to breakfast. I know he’s going to want to talk about our past, and to be honest, I’m prepared to go there if it means he can forgive me and move forward. I didn’t miss the guarded approach he took with me this morning when we woke up. He was braced for me to bolt, but the thought didn’t even cross my mind. I want him. I want everything he represents and offers. I want the man, the Dom, the lawyer, the whole damn package.

Whatever I need to deal with today to make him see that, bring it on.

Sam

We’ve been in this out of the way café for half an hour now. Sean chose to sit next to me instead of opposite me and has been very tactile … touching my leg with his, brushing his arm against mine as he reaches for his coffee, and looking at me like he still can’t believe that I’m here. But there is still a slight hesitancy in his eyes. I hate that I’m the reason it’s there and that, despite everything that happened between us last night and this morning, there is still a part of him expecting me to bolt.

I’m done with sacrificing my happiness for the sake of appearances. Trying to appear strong and independent while hungering for more has not been easy, but I did it. “I’m sorry,” I blurt out, not wanting to wait another minute to get what is bound to be a difficult conversation out of the way. “I—”

He splutters into his coffee and looks at me. “Sammy, no …” I see shock, then resignation in his eyes and it cuts me to the core.

I quickly turn toward him, grabbing his hand and squeezing reassuringly. “Oh shit. No, Sean, I didn’t mean … shit. I’m fucking this up.” He furrows his brows and I know that I’ve totally confused him.

“I think you better spell it out for me because right now I’m thinking the worst. I’m expecting you to jump up and walk away from me …
again
.”

“No, Sean, I’m not walking away. I want this, I want
you
.” His lips curl up and his shoulders visibly relax. Thank God!

“About fucking time, Sammy,” he says with a grin as he reaches up, smoothing my hair with his hand. “Because it was driving me insane watching you with that dickhead.”

I snort loudly, then laugh. “Tanner is not a dickhead. He just wanted more than I wanted to give him, to give anyone who wasn’t you.”

He leans back, one arm resting on the back of my chair, the other cradling his coffee cup on the table. He’s wearing a slim fitting white tee and jeans that cling to his butt and thighs like a stripper hugs her pole during happy hour. “So why did you stay away then? I left your bed and got home to find my grandfather dead on our living room floor. I called you. I came to find you.”

I gasp. I didn’t know he’d come back. All this time I thought he’d stayed away, that he didn’t fight for me. “I … I didn’t know. I went straight to my mom’s hotel room, then went back to Kentucky with her for a week to lick my wounds and nurse a broken heart.”

His body goes rigid, and his fingers grip his cup tightly as his eyes go hard and cold. “Sorry and I hope you’ll forgive me for saying this but that doesn’t make it any less true. Your mother was a meddling, two-faced bitch who decided that I was no good for you after an hour of meeting me. Not knowing that I was so far gone for you I would’ve stayed strictly vanilla just to keep you in my bed and in my life. I loved you so damn much, Sammy. I had visions of our life together, of me practicing law and you being by my side as I built us an empire. You were it for me. Then the day I needed you most, I couldn’t find you. I knew that it was to do with your mother, but you wouldn’t talk to me. You shut me out and then cut me out of your life like I meant nothing. I may have been strong and confident, but you were my weak point. You were the one person that could obliterate me. And you did.”

My eyes fill with tears as this beautiful dominant man in front of me bears his heart and soul.

“Sweetheart, I didn’t want you to cry. I never tried to control you or dominate you … well, outside of the bedroom anyway.” The corner of my mouth curls up as I remember just how true that was, and still is now. “I loved that you were strong and independent. That you didn’t rely on me for anything even as much as I wanted you to. I just need you to understand where I was at. Why I have to know now whether you feel the same way?”

By the time I’d got back and found out about his grandfather’s death, it was too late to pay my respects. I did send a card and some flowers to the house, but never heard anything. Then I saw him with another girl at a frat party and my heart sunk. That was when I decided to focus on school and friends and move on with my life, even though I knew that a piece of my heart had been lost.

“So why didn’t you come back to me, Sammy? I got your card but you never called. I never saw you around campus, and then I graduated and our paths never crossed.”

The million dollar question. Even after I realized my mother was wrong and that Sean wasn’t my father, why didn’t I fight for him? Try to win him back? “Stubborn pride? Stupidity? Jealously? Embarrassment? Take your pick.” I shrug my shoulders, looking down because I’m too scared to look at him and see whatever emotion is swirling in his eyes staring back at me.

He leans over and puts his thumb under my chin, lifting my head up until our eyes meet. His gaze is unwavering as he studies my face. “Beautiful, I was waiting. I needed you and you weren’t there. You disappeared and I couldn’t talk to you. I would’ve taken you back in a heartbeat. Hell, if you’d told me in the hospital corridor that you were ready I would’ve stolen you away then and there.”

My heart swells. Here I was thinking that Sean hated me, especially after I’d seen him with that other girl a few weeks after the break up. I thought I meant nothing to him and that my mother had been right all along. “Jennifer Murray. You were with her at that frat party.”

“She was Harry’s new girlfriend. I was watching her back whenever he was elsewhere.” He looks at me incredulously. “You thought I’d replace you just like that? We were together for a year, Sammy. Not once in that year had I even wanted to look at another woman.”

“Oh,” I mutter, feeling totally stupid. “You mean, I could’ve come to you, pleading, and we would’ve been together? If I hadn’t listened to my mother and gone home with her, if I’d just stayed in my dorm room I would’ve seen you again?”

He stands up, pulling me with him and runs his arm up my spine, gently gripping my neck with his hand. His other hand cups my cheek as I take a sharp intake of breath. “If you had walked up to me at any time in the last ten years, Samantha Richards, I would’ve done exactly this …” His mouth is on me, hard and fast, claiming me, leaving no doubt as to the meaning behind it. I wrap my arms around his neck and respond fervently, moaning into his mouth in supplication as he continues to kiss the shit out of me. He’s making sure that I get the message.

He wants me now, he wanted me back then, and by the feeling of his hard cock digging into my stomach right now, he wishes as much as I do that we weren’t in the middle of a busy café right now.

Pulling away, I look at him, fully aware of the stupid, goofily happy grin on my face. “You finished breakfast?” I ask breathlessly, still recovering from that kiss of his that had me melting into a puddle on the floor.

“I’m suddenly hungry for something else. Should we take this party elsewhere?” he asks with that low, deep voice of his that calls to my insides, making my stomach flutter and my thighs clench.

“Fuck, yeah.”

“I love that dirty mouth of yours,” he mutters as he dumps some money on the table and leads me out the café’s front door and toward his condo.

As soon as the door closes behind me, I’m pushed hard against the back of it. His hands slide into my hair and tugs gently as he crashes his mouth down on mine and thrusts his tongue inside. My rigid body automatically relaxes under his touch, my hands gripping his shoulders as I struggle to match him stroke for stroke. My heart pounds in my chest and my nipples throb as he presses me even harder against the wooden door. He bends down slightly, pressing his stone hard cock against my clit as I moan loudly in his mouth.

“Fuck, I need to be inside you. I need to feel you on my cock as I fuck you senseless.” His crude words send waves of lust through me as I stand there, pinned by his body, my hips taking on a life of their own as they rock back and forth against his cock. He trails his mouth down my neck, alternating between gentle scrapes of his teeth and firm sucking of my delicate skin. “Take me to bed, Sean.”

“Abso-fucking-lutely.”

He runs his hands down my back, hooking them under my ass and lifting me up. With nothing else to do, I wrap my legs around his waist and hold on as he effortlessly carries me up the stairs to the living room which is filled with bright sunlight, the wall of windows illuminating the room. “Screw the bed, I can’t wait that long,” he mutters as I bury my face in his neck, desperate to taste him in whatever way I can. He lays me down on the gray leather couch, holding me close as he glides his cock between my legs with hard, and purposefully slow, torturing thrusts. A reminder of what he’s got and how much he knows I want it.