Free No Returns (The Blankenships Book 6) by Evelyn Glass Page B

Everything was different now. Pretending otherwise was ridiculous.
     
    “I love you,” she said, into the dark as if she weren’t saying it to him.
     
    His fingers froze in their quiet motion, and everything went incredibly still. Zoey thought about turning to face him, but that would have been far too much.
     
    The silence stretched out, slow and sweet. She listened for him, but she found she wasn’t particularly waiting for him to say it back. It was just something she wanted him to know.
     
    He did answer her, though, in time. “It’s kind of funny,” he said. “We’ve been through more in these few weeks than some couples deal with in months and years. But you’re still here.” His arms tightened gently around her, pressing her closer into his chest. “Why are you still here?”
     
    “I like you,” she said.
     
    “Like? I thought you said you loved me, just a few seconds ago.” He nipped at her ear, and she laughed.
     
    “I do love you,” she said, wriggling her hips and earning a light slap on her hip. “I like you, too.”
     
    His voice was so quiet that she almost missed the words. “What’s there to like?”
     
    She rolled over then. He dodged her eyes; she didn’t follow him or try to force the contact. “What do you mean by that, Alex?”
     
    He gave a shrug, one of those soft ones that she’d learned meant there was an awful lot more behind it. She waited, letting him work against the silence until the words started to flow. “I’m failing everyone,” he said. “Cindy came to me for help, and she was killed. Claire was killed. Who’s next? Do I lose you next?”
     
    “No,” she said, snuggling more tightly against his chest and feeling the answering tightness in his arms. “No. I’m right here. We’re going to solve this. We’re going to figure this out.”
     
    He shook his head slowly. “There’s nothing to figure out. Everyone’s dead. Everyone who could be a threat to them is gone. It’s just us. Just us, picking up the pieces and figuring out what happens next. But they’ll never catch whoever did this.”
     
    “You don’t think it was your mother?”
     
    His spine stiffened for a moment and then relaxed. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know how it was or why they did it. We have a lot of theories — too many — but nothing firm or definitive. And that doesn’t answer my question. Why are you here with me, right now?”
     
    His lips brushed over the curve of her ear, the line of her chin, and the soft throbbing of her pulse. “When you touch me, I feel electric,” she whispered, wrapping her arms around his neck as he rolled her softly onto her back. “I feel like I can take on the world, be bigger and better than I’ve ever been. I feel like I can do anything.”
     
    “Why?”
     
    She spread her thighs, wrapping her ankles around his knees, tilting her hips to accept him as he slipped down inside of her. It was a soft and slow coupling, and she reached for the words. “I’ve never known anyone who challenged me, who told me that I could do more without making me feel like less. You see me, and you see all of me. You see things about me that I didn’t even realize yet. And you’re funny, and kind, and we laugh together — I love that we laugh together — and you’re nothing like I thought you’d be.”
     
    He pressed down into her a little more firmly, angling his body to brush up against her sensitive clit. It felt wonderful, filling, delightful, though orgasm seemed a very distant possibility now. This felt more about connection, about rejoining. “You didn’t think I’d be a master lover? Or a brilliant playboy?”
     
    She slapped his ass, and he laughed, his rhythm picking up just a little. She wanted to tell him about how sensitive he was, how kind, how loving, but the deep movements of his body drove her words out, especially when he hooked an arm under her knee and pushed her leg gently up, driving into her at an