Chapter 499
Elissa wasn’t sure if she was imagining things, but his technique seemed infinitely more masterful than their first kiss.
It seemed his natural talent extended to absolutely everything he did. He never needed to be taught.
Yet, as he consumed her mouth, every last shred of anxiety in her body melted into a profound, bone-deep sense of peace.
Her only remaining fear was the truth of her bloodline… God, please let her biological parents be anything other than vile, cutthroat smugglers.
If they were, every agonizing sacrifice she had ever made would have been completely in vain. She prayed to whatever God was listening to spare her just this
once.
But right here, right now, she refused to let the darkness taint this moment. She only wanted to surrender to the intoxicating heat of his touch, letting him devour her entirely.
The man she had worshipped her entire life truly considered her the center of his universe.
All her frantic agonizing and terrifying hesitation… it had all been for absolutely nothing. Her own paranoid need to protect herself had been the only thing driving a wedge between them.
Ever since he had forced his way back into her life last year, he had been ruthless with his teasing, but when it came down to it… he had ruthlessly defended her every single time.
A dizzying rush of gratitude washed over her. God, it felt incredible. He had chosen her without a millimeter of hesitation.
If only they had laid everything out on the table like this the night before her wedding… they wouldn’t have spent all these years tearing each other apart.
Sensing the girl in his arms melting against him, Rowan finally pulled back, acutely aware that they were still in the back of a moving vehicle. He gave her a moment to catch her breath.
Lowering his heavy gaze, he caught the dazed, distant look in her eyes. “Where did you go just now?”
“I was just thinking…” Elissa was completely drained of energy, sinking happily into the solid wall of his chest. She tilted her head up, tracing the razor-sharp cut of his jawline. “Was I wrong back then?”
When he abandoned her all those years ago, she had genuinely believed he was disgusted by her. That he couldn’t stand her constant crying, her suffocating neediness, and her arrogant assumption that she owned him.
There had been countless times when Paige had punished her, and he would simply walk past without so much as a second glance.
Her heartbreak had slowly metastasized into absolute, bitter resentment. She hated him for walking away without a word, right when she had needed him the most.
It wasn’t until the drive back from Cresthaven that she finally realized his cruelty had been the ultimate act of protection.
And yet, blinded by her wounded pride, she hadn’t even given him the chance to finish a single sentence before bailing out of his car.
Rowan paused. His long fingers lazily caressed the soft curve of her waist. His voice was still thick with lingering heat, coming out in a rough rasp. “Wrong about what? Being entirely obsessed with some other man?”
Elissa choked. Right. When she had demanded to marry Frank Atwater, she had screamed to high heaven about how madly and completely in love she was with him.
She shot him a fiery glare. “I was not obsessed with him.”
She simply hadn’t had any other choice. She couldn’t survive another day trapped in the Murphy family estate. Her physical health and her blossoming career had been suffocated at every turn by the matriarch.
Marrying Frank had been her ticket to freedom, She knew before the wedding that Frank was in love with someone else, but she went though with it anyway. Her logic was simple: she got her independence, and Frank got a convenient cover.
She had been fully prepared to play the role of the perfect, undemanding wife. But discovering that his secret lover was Marcia Carson-her sister in law-had completely broken her sanity. She refused to endure that kind of public humiliation.
Rowan eyed her, refusing to let her off the hook. “Really? Who was the one
practically begging to marry Frank Atwater again?”
And now, she was carrying Frank’s
child. He had consulted a specialist privately, and learning that an abortion could cause catastrophic. physical damage to her body, he had made peace with it. If Elissa wanted to keep the baby, he was more than prepared to accept it.