LONG
EXCERPT
DEEP
BLUE ETERNITY by NATASHA BOYD
©NATASHA
BOYD 2014
He
didn’t respond for hours. I was making a salad for dinner and opening a can of
tuna that Fuckhead was going nuts over when he finally walked in, windswept and
disheveled, in jeans and a white T-shirt. I stopped what I was doing to stare,
and the cat leapt over my feet and between my legs, meowing repeatedly.
“Well,
can I?” I asked.
“I
don’t know. I have to do something for someone, but if I don’t, you can.” His
eyes flicked to me briefly.
“Cryptic
much?”
“Sorry,
I just, uh, I just have some stuff going on right now.”
“With
Bethany.”
“No.
Yes. No, not to do with her.” He raked his hands through his hair, taming it,
then headed to the fridge.
“Who
are you?” I asked.
“What?
What do you mean?”
“I
mean, I thought we had a… a friendship or something, and I don’t understand
what I’ve done wrong.” Addressing it made a weird emotional bubble grow in my
chest, and my eyes started to sting.
He
stopped and turned around.
I
blinked rapidly, trying to dissipate any water that was collecting. The cat let
out a mournful moan.
“You
haven’t done anything wrong, Liv.”
“Then
why do I feel like I have? Are…” I swallowed. “Are you disgusted with me now?”
“What?”
he whispered. His face creased, like he was in pain and his eyes did a slow
blink. Then he took a step toward me and just kept coming. And suddenly I was
wrapped up in his arms, my face pressed into his hard chest, breathing him in.
Breathing in his unique scent of laundry and male exertion and the fresh
outdoors. Salt and weathered wood.
I
froze, stiff with surprise from the sudden contact, then endured the brazen
heat that immediately followed and whipped through my belly.
His
head dropped on top of mine, and he breathed into my hair. “I know you don’t
mean that.”
“Mean
what?”
“How
could I ever be disgusted with you? I—”
He
lapsed into silence, just holding me. His chest was warm, his heart beating
hard under my cheek.
Lifting
my arms tentatively, I slid them around his waist. I thought I felt him
shudder. His muscles were bunched tight, or he was tense. I didn’t know. He was
hugging me. I could hug him back, right?
The
cat embarked on a continuous series of desperate meows and threaded his body
between our legs in a figure eight. I willed him to shut the hell up and stop
ruining this moment, but it was no use.
Tom
chuckled and pulled away.
“Fuckhead,”
I growled vehemently at the cat, who proceeded to give me a nice view of his
butt.
I
looked up, and Tom was watching me, amused. He reached his hand up and slid it
behind my head, and I stopped breathing. His gaze flicked to my mouth for a
millisecond. My lips burned. My eyes fluttered closed as he drew me in and
placed a soft kiss on my forehead. His beard, he’d taken to wearing clipped
closer to his skin these days, torturing me with glimpses of his beauty, grazed
my brow.
I
swallowed the painful lump in my throat, my heart hammering.
He
drew away slowly.
I
kept my eyes closed. I couldn’t bear for him to see what mine must look like.
Desperate. Yearning. Drowning in agony.
And
the knowledge that I could never tell him how I felt, that I had to keep it
locked in my heart where it couldn’t ruin this,
was almost a comfort. I would be safe and able to stay here with him as
long as I didn’t mess this up. God, and I’d come so close to messing it all up
when I came on to him.
I
hated the memory of myself, of who I’d been then. How could a person change so
much in so short a time? It was both the beauty and the agony of my lot.
Falling in love with him had forever altered me, but to let it out of my heart
might lose him forever.
