Your loving mother,

Lana

TWENTY-SIX

IN DARKNESS

Melanie

Blackness. Cold. Beeping sounds. I feel alone. I feel empty. I want to move, open my eyes, as I hear voices around me. Why can’t I move? I don’t remember it. I see faces. A woman. A man. Familiar. Familiar voices.

“Melanie?” she asks.

“Sweetheart, do you remember us?”

I blink and the lights burn through my retinas.

Who . . .

WHERE . . .

Panic starts setting in, and that’s when I see the large figure at the other end of the room. My body trembles in reaction, not from fear but from some innate emotion and my heart starts beating really hard. His face is strained, there’s remorse there, and anguish. Seeing the pain there cripples me. I start hurting in places other than my body. Deep inside. I don’t understand how a pain could go as deep as this.

My lips part but I can’t talk, and then the woman presses a straw between my lips. I swallow coldly, my throat raw. The man—he, he is all I want to see—pushes himself from the wall and starts coming over, his eyes taking me in, forehead, eyebrows, nose, lips, cheekbones, neck.

Heat prickles through me hard and fast when he is close enough that I can smell something other than disinfectant. Forest. Forest. My brain screams thoughts at me. Forest. Kisses. Forest. Love. Forest. Danger. A tear trails down my cheek as I open my mouth again, and nothing comes out.

“Oh, I think . . . maybe you should leave,” the woman whispers to him. Not the woman. My mother. My mother, holding me when I was three, ten, fifteen . . . what happened after?

The man hesitates.

THE MAN looks at me like he lost himself and doesn’t think that what he lost can ever, ever be recovered.

“No,” I rasp. “Don’t go.”

His eyes bounce from my parents and back to me, and behind the depth of those hazel-green pools, there’s a roil of feelings in there. Frustration, regrets, and another more powerful feeling . . .

This man loves me . . .

His eyes red, this man looks proud as a rock and nothing will convince me he has not sat in that chair in the corner and cried for me.

He waits and they step back to give us a moment. He starts to whisper achingly softly to me, and the low timbre of his voice torments and heals me, both at the same time. “Hey, princess,” he says, gently running a hand down the length of my braid.

I’m wearing a braid. Someone braided my hair.

Hey, princess . . .

The way he LOOKS at me, I almost can’t take it. He stands there, his body vibrating with tension as he tries to hold himself together. He looks helpless. As broken as I feel. All my senses ache and hurt and my body itches and my arms ache and my soul burns for me to wrap my arms around him. To get closer to him, comfort him, but I can’t move and the wanting to be close is choking the breath out of me, making my heart race.

“Do you remember?” he asks in that achingly soft voice that makes me close my eyes and remember hearing it. Loving it.

“The doctors said you might . . . or you might forget a couple of things.”

I’m mute, desperately trapping his voice in my ears, it’s so beautiful.

“You’re Melanie Meyers Dean,” he says in that low, deeply tender voice, “The couple that just left are your parents. You’re a lovely twenty-five-year-old decorator. You love wearing three colors at the same time. You love things that are bad for you, you love laughing, and you love . . .”

You, my mind screams.

He’s fallen silent, as if he has no words for me, raking his eyes over my face as if he hasn’t had a drop to drink and I’m an oasis in his desert.

“Melanie,” he rasps, searching my face for any sign of recognition, reaching out one hand, but then thinking better of it and easing it away. “I’m Greyson King and I’m your man.”

He waits in silence, flexing that hand into a fist at his side as though that’s enough to keep him from touching me. A huge lump of emotion gathers in my throat, and as we keep staring at each other, he looks more and more desperate. He takes his shirt out of the waistband of his slacks and slides my hand underneath, over his smooth, warm chest, past his scar, to his nipple ring. I feel his skin, his warmth, seeping into me, the beat of his heart against my palm. It beats as fast as mine, and streams of tears streak down my cheeks.

Tears of joy.

Of feeling safe, of not feeling alone, as all the love I feel for him floods me.

“Greyson,” I sob.

A breath shudders out of him as if he’d been holding it in all this time, then he brushes my eyelids with his lips. “Do you remember me? Do you, princess? Do you know what I do? Who I am? What you mean to me?”

Thoughts jumble in my head, one after the other. Me running away from him. Me running toward him. Me, and him.

Me and HIM.

Black gloves . . . diamond necklace . . . kisses in the dark . . . almost-there smile . . .

I feel unexpectedly weak, but not even this weakness can stop me from slowly sliding my hands up to his chest, his thick neck, his dark, stubbled jaw as I look into his eyes, eyes looking at me the way they’ve looked at me from the beginning.

The way Greyson King looks at Melanie.

“Remember you?” I croak. “I came back for you.”

TWENTY-SEVEN

PERFECT

Melanie

It’s the perfect night for a party.

The perfect night for a kiss.

The perfect, most perfect night to be in love.

I’m sitting on a thick limestone terrace railing, my dress hiked up to my waist so that Greyson can wedge his body in between my thighs.

He thumbs my nipple, and I try to keep from moaning as I visually devour him before me—his body clad in a black suit, his hair mussed by my hands, his lips a little red with my lipstick. He stares back at me as he slides his large, warm hand up my thigh and tugs off my panties. I’m breathless as he tucks them inside the pocket of his suit jacket, his hand coming back to cup my sex while the other plays with my aching nipple.

Can you die of pleasure?

Can you die of the way your boyfriend looks and looks and looks at you?

I am. Crazy. About this man.

I would do anything for this man.

And I’ve been waiting for and fantasizing this moment for months.

Behind him, I can see the party getting under way—a party he organized to celebrate my twenty-fifth birthday, an event well over three months old. But trivialities like that don’t matter to a man like Greyson King.

What matters is getting his way.

And from the brand-new Harry Winston diamond necklace dangling from my throat, to the lavish party behind us, to the glimmer in his eyes that tells me almost to the last detail what he plans to do to me tonight, there is no doubt in my mind my boyfriend is getting his way tonight.

And all I can think is, It’s about f**king time.

I’m so anxious that I’m not sure I can wait for us to find our way to our bed.

Maybe if I unzip his pants and get him close enough to ride him . . .

But now hundreds of our friends mingle inside the Ceres Ballroom. These people include my boss and coworkers, my parents, my friends, and Greyson’s old and new business partners. The old ones are the dangerous ones who work for him at the Underground fighting circuit. The newer ones comprise the committee of his King Yacht Corporation he’s founded in honor of his mother.

Anyone could step outside and see us. Him standing before me in his elegant suit, and me . . . my blow-dried hair now in disarray as it flaps in the wind, my body shivering under his hands and his lips, and the way his beautiful hazel eyes look at me.

“Greyson . . .” I say, a plea. He uses his body to shield me from the ballroom doors, towering over me as he ducks so he can trails his lips over my jaw. “You look delectable, Melanie, you taste delectable. Who is it that you’re panting for?”

I grip his shoulders to brace myself from the delightful dizziness taking over me. “Who do you think?”

“I’ve been waiting for this for months, princess. Months.” He tweaks my nipple in his big hand and lifts the swell of my breast to his lips, covering the peak with his mouth.

His tongue rubs against the hard little point, and I die. I die as he suckles, gently first, then harder, causing a rush of desire to shudder down my spine.

I know Greyson is not a man used to loving. I don’t think he’s ever loved another human being since his mother got taken away from him over a decade ago. A decade of feeling nothing . . . until he met me.

He’s hungry now. I have felt his hunger building in him as our return to Seattle approached and my release from the hospital finally happened. He’s hungry and male enough to not give a shit about anything but this hunger of his tonight; for without thought or hesitation, he tugs down the sleeve of my dress to bare my br**sts and moves to suck on my other breast. Quaking in a mass of lust, I grab his thick, copper-streaked hair and pull his head up so his lips meet mine. “Kiss me,” I groan.

He surveys my mouth first—already very well kissed by him. He rubs his index finger across my lipstick, rubbing what’s left of it off.

He takes his goddamned time—his sweet, long time—and I whimper and then sigh when he lowers his mouth to nip my lower lip. We groan and start kissing, his mouth melting everything around us but him.

He takes my hand and slips it around his neck, where he wants it, forcing my fingers to curl around his nape. “Someone could come out any moment . . .” I whisper.

The breeze caresses me softly. The salty scents of recent rain and damp cement and grass reach my nostrils. But more than anything, I smell him: wet forest. Metal and leather. His scents.

“I posted Derek by the doors. Nobody’s venturing out here.”

His whisper is more breath than voice, more groan. He edges back just a fraction, only enough to take me in with hazel eyes that sparkle like all the stars in the sky above.

“What if my friends want some fresh air,” I counter.

“Well, my girl’s taking up all the freshness there is out here.” He smirks and takes in my state of complete disarray. My hair is whipping around me, I can feel tendrils of it on my cheeks. My dress is exposing everything indecent. My heels are digging into the small of his back, my legs curled around him.

“Look at you, all sexy and undone just for me,” he whispers huskily, visually devouring me.

Shivering, I whisper, “What if I forgot how to do this?”

“Then I’ll just have to teach you what goes where. My tongue . . .” He rubs it over my top lip. “You see, my tongue goes here . . .” He eases it, wet and scalding, into my mouth. “My fingers like it here, where it’s warm and wet and clenching around me. Greedy for me.”

“Oh, Grey.” I rock my h*ps when he fingers me with one long, knowing finger.

“I have no problems teaching you. You have this beautiful, perfect cunt that was made for my cock. You’re not bedridden anymore, Melanie,” he murmurs between kisses, rubbing that finger deep inside me. “You’re very alive . . . as alive as you’ve ever been, those green eyes sparkling with life, this body pulsing for me. And this lovely bare pu**y . . . .” he murmurs as he bends down . . . lower . . . and lower . . . and his head dives between my legs.

He flicks his tongue over my cl*t and pleasure rockets through me. He’s stroking a hand down my back while pulling my cl*t into his mouth, rolling his tongue over the sensitive flesh, playing with me.

I’m burning and I need him, need him desperately. I fist my hands on the back of his head, locking him against me by the hair.

Now I feel his lips nipping on my clit, lightly tugging, and my heartbeat gallops faster as he inserts two fingers into my pu**y.

It’s been weeks, over three months . . . in the hospital; first the coma, then the rehabilitation. All this time, he was there for me. He was there for me when I woke, and there every time I fell asleep. My eyes sting as I feel an overwhelming desire to cl**ax at the same time I feel an overwhelming need to make love to him.

“Grey!” I cry out, pulling him back by the hair.

He eases back and meets my gaze, straightening his black tie and smiling at me.

“I love you like this, all f**king hot and wet for me.” He slides his h*ps between my thighs and pulls me into his arms, raining kisses on my face as he embraces me in his thick, muscled arms.

My eyes drift shut. He’s hard against my bare pu**y. Straining the zipper of his dress slacks. But I know he’s waiting for something special tonight. He’s been telling me how he craves to sink in me . . . lose himself in me . . .

So do I!

My pu**y is still damp and gives a little squeeze at the thought of my guy, the only man I’ve ever loved, making love to me. Finally. After months of what feels like a whole life waiting. He’s told me he needs to make love to me without a condom. We’ve talked to the doctors, and I’m on low-dose birth control for a while. They mentioned it could only be for a little while because I’m also on long-term kidney transplant reject medication. But that’s okay. We will make use of these months like nobody’s business.