Blissful Surrender (Bliss #3)(33)
Author: B.J. Harvey

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 f**king 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 f**king 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 c**k 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.