Rhythm of My Heart: Speed, Book 3 (21 page)

His words caught her in her chest, making her breath falter.

Zachary loved her? Eve? Not the redhead? Her?

She hiccupped and then coughed, not quite able to catch her breath.

“Hey, are you okay?”

Eve nodded, too choked up to speak.

He buried his face in her neck, nuzzled his way up to her ear. “Know how you feel. Seeing you at your sister’s, my love and my fate all melded into one person? Jesus, I don’t know how I held it together. Don’t know how I remained upright. My legs almost gave out on me.”

Oh, God, he was killing her. One beautiful word at a time. Breaking her heart into tiny pieces.

By the time he finally saw her face, Eve figured her heart would be just as badly scarred. The difference? Her face had healed. Hideously, but it had healed. She didn’t think her heart would ever get over losing Zachary Pace.

Chapter Thirteen

“Tiny?” His heart clenched. “Baby? Are you…are you crying?” Zachary tried to turn her around, get her to face him.

“I-ignore me.” She wouldn’t let him move her, wouldn’t show him her face. “It’s just…n-no one has ever told me he loved me before.”

Bullshit.

Impossible.

Men must have fallen at her feet, confessing their love.

“A-and hearing you say it? It’s like a dream, Zachary. A dream I know I’m going to have to wake up from, because it’s just too damn amazing to be real.”

“It’s no dream, sweetheart,” he reassured her. “I’m not just in love. I’m freaking nuts about you. I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t. Wouldn’t go crazy when you weren’t around if I felt any other way.” And yeah, he’d been a little crazy this morning, needing to see her—when they’d just spent the preceding two hours making love.

He caressed her pussy, loved her wetness around his fingers, her beaded nipples beneath his palm. Loved that even in a hot shower, with warm water cascading over them, Eve’s skin was covered in goose bumps.

His cock pulsed between her buttocks. One day, very soon, he’d make love to her there. But for now, he just needed to be inside her, needed to be in her pussy, be a part of the woman he loved. The woman he’d looked forward to finding his whole life. “I waited twenty-four years to meet you, and then fell in love with you without knowing who you really were.”

“We met two days ago. Do you think you really know me? Every part of me?”

The uncertainty in her voice stabbed at his heart, and he cursed whatever moron had come before him, refusing to declare his love to this woman.
Asshole.

“I know enough of you to realize I want to spend the rest of time with you. I’ve waited long enough for this moment. Fuck knows I don’t want to wait another second.”

A soft moan escaped Eve’s throat, and for long seconds Zachary was incapable of speech. How could he talk when Eve rubbed herself against his hand? When her hot, swollen pussy grabbed at his finger as he slid it inside her, trying to hold him there? When the muscles of that hot, swollen pussy made his need to fuck her almost intolerable?

Loath to release her breasts, Zachary dropped his other arm to her waist so he could give her the full benefit of his touch. With one hand he fucked her, relishing the way her pussy clenched at his finger, and with the other he teased her clit, caressing it with ever-increasing pressure, rubbing tiny circles around it, over and over, as the spray poured over them.

Streams of water coursed through her hair, down her back, pooling between their bodies. He licked at her neck, catching some of the drops with his tongue, then closed his lips over a particularly sweet spot and sucked.

Eve came with a loud groan, her pussy pulsing rhythmically. A soft keening filled the shower stall. Eve’s soft keening.

It caught him in his balls, made his dick even harder.

Thank fuck he’d had the foresight to put on a condom before stepping inside the shower, because God knew there was no chance he’d have the strength to stop what he was doing and find protection now.

He let her ride his fingers, ride her orgasm, until her inner muscles eased and her body relaxed against his. Then he took an arm in each hand, leaned her upper body forward and flattened her palms against the wall.

He had to bite back a roar as the position pressed her ass even tighter against his dick, then had to bite back another as he slid clear of her buttocks.

Fuck, she felt good. But not as good as she’d feel wrapped around him, her wet heat enveloping his shaft.

Zachary positioned himself at the entrance to her pussy, and with one thrust, found heaven. Her muscles clamped down on him, holding him inside all that feminine heat.

Once buried inside her, Zachary was forced to stop, to breathe—very deeply—and count to ten. If he thrust again anytime soon, he’d come. Lose his load in her depths.

Yep, they’d made love before, and yeah, it had been good. But this? Now? Sublime. Zachary wasn’t just making love to the woman he’d fallen for over the last few days. He made love to the woman he’d wanted his whole life.

They were one and the same.

He tried to hold himself at a distance, tried to grasp her by her hips and plunge inside her while standing upright. But God help him, he couldn’t do it. How the fuck could any man hold back when the woman he loved stood before him?

He leaned in, pressing his back to her front, and wrapped his arms around her waist, holding her as close as a man could hold a woman. He buried his nose in her neck, let the water pour over her shoulders and his, and rocked into his woman, once, twice, a million times.

He heard the music in his mind. He always heard music when they made love, but Zachary didn’t tap out the rhythm on her skin. Tapping meant he’d have to spend seconds not touching her. Every time he raised his hand would be a second away from her flesh.

And for now, hell, maybe forever, Zachary found himself powerless to release her.

“I love you, Eve.” He didn’t whisper. He needed her to hear him over the spray. “Love you so goddamn much it hurts not to touch you.”

The muffled sound that came from her could have been a moan or a sob. Zachary wasn’t sure. What he was sure about was Eve’s response to his words and his actions.

Again gooseflesh covered her skin. Her nipples were so tight they poked at his palms, and as hard as he drove into her, so she rocked back on him, meeting every thrust with a delicious twist of her hips. “Don’t stop, Zachary. Please, God, just don’t stop.”

Loving her? Or fucking her?

The first one she need never worry about. The second? Yeah, he’d be forced to stop soon—but only because the sensation was too damn incredible, the urge too strong. He was going to come.

His orgasm built, sent him hurtling towards his peak. “Wanna stay like this forever. Never want this to end…but…too…damn…good!”

He thrust harder, deeper. His balls tightened at the base of his dick.

“Z-Zachary!” Her cry was breathless.

Harder, deeper still. Shit, he wasn’t going to last.

“Oh, God, Zachary!”

Eve came, her pussy spasming around his shaft. Great tremors ripped through her body, and she sobbed his name again and again.

It was all too much. Sensory overload. Undiluted bliss.

He climaxed. So fucking hard, the force of his orgasm almost knocked him off his feet.

Jesus, he’d never experienced anything like this. Never wanted a woman so much he hurt. Never wanted to make love to a woman all over again, while still coming inside her.

Never wanted to hold onto anyone so tight she never left his side.

Never… Not until he’d met Eve.

When the last shudder of his release had passed and her pussy pulsed no more, when only the sound of their heavy breathing mixed with the splattering of water on the floor, Zachary pulled out of her and spun her around. Without even opening his eyes his lips found hers, and he kissed Eve soundly for a very, very long time.

It was the taste of salt on his tongue that finally ended the kiss. The taste that forced him to pull away.

Tears? Still?

Opening his eyes wasn’t easy. His lids were so heavy, so sated—just like the rest of him—that focusing his gaze was almost impossible.

But when he managed, when Eve’s face finally converged into a solid shape, it wasn’t her tears that had him gasping out loud.

Zachary blinked, hard. Then he blinked again.

Okay, so his vision hadn’t cleared yet. Obviously water obstructed his view. Still holding her tight, he stepped back, out of the range of the spray, and ran his hand over his eyes, drying them as best he could.

But damn it, when he opened them again, his vision was no clearer.

Or maybe it was altogether too fucking clear.

“Eve…” His voice was a hoarse rasp. “Jesus—”

She looked trapped, terrified. Just like earlier, at Hannah’s party, her eyes shimmered with emotion. Only this emotion tore a hole through his stomach and made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. There was nothing happy about it.

My scars.

Christ, she’d referred to them in plural, hadn’t she? And all he’d seen was one. How could he not have realized? Not have seen what lay beneath the expertise of her makeup?

What he stared at now was not one scar. Not even close. There must have been forty crisscrossing the side of her face, a crazy network of pink lines, some thicker than others, some longer. Some were bordered by tiny pink dots—leftover marks from stitches?—and some were slim enough to almost be unnoticeable.

Yet they meshed together to form a pattern, as though a child had taken a permanent pink marker and scribbled across her cheek at will.

Shock kept his muscles frozen just long enough for reality to set in. But once Zachary understood what he was seeing, once he knew the exploding glass had not just scarred her chest, he couldn’t control the violent tremors that shook his body.

He dropped his hands, freeing Eve, and stumbled back against the wall of the shower. His knees shook so damn hard he didn’t think they’d hold his weight.

There it was again. That unfathomable depth of emotion he always felt around her. Only now he fathomed it. Now he knew why it ran so deep. Eve was his fate. Eve—and all her scars. Her hurt and pain were his.

Zachary closed his eyes and fought the weakness that claimed his limbs. It took long seconds, long minutes maybe, before his arms finally steadied and his legs solidified. But his shock did not wear off. Pain tore at his stomach, and he wrapped his arm around his waist, uselessly trying to ward it off.

Plagued by what he’d seen, and lacking the lung capacity to express his horror, Zachary rolled his hands into fists and without turning around, slammed them, once, twice, twenty times, into the wall behind him.

Eve did not hang around to watch Zachary beat the walls in disgust. Still dripping from the shower, she tugged the first thing she saw from her suitcase—a sundress that fell down to her knees—threw it on, grabbed her keycard and escaped.

Got the hell out of that hotel room, and ran as far and as fast as she could. She raced down the corridor and didn’t bother with the elevator, finding the stairs instead and tearing down them, taking them two or three at a time.

She charged through the lobby and rammed through the doors of the hotel. Flashes of light blinded her, but Eve paid them no heed. Barefoot and desperate, she sprinted away.

Voices called her name. More lights flashed, but she left them behind quickly. Someone might have followed her. There were footsteps for a while, mimicking hers, but she just ran faster until the rhythmic thud behind her ceased.

Stones and pebbles sliced into the soles of her feet. She didn’t care. A few more scars could hardly hurt her now. She stopped running only when she reached the beach, and then only when she found a protective alcove of rocks to huddle beside.

God knew it wasn’t safe, a woman alone on the beach at this time, but Eve was already damaged. There was nothing that could damage her more.

Twice she’d been rejected after revealing her face to the men she’d thought she might have a future with, and both times the disappointment had crushed her.

But neither of them had taken one look at her scars and been repulsed enough to turn white. Neither of them had clutched their stomachs and pounded the wall in abject horror.

Zachary Pace, with all his vows of love and affection, all his talk of fate and future, had done what no one else before him had done. Been too nauseated by her face to even look at her. He’d closed his eyes and shut her out—completely.

Chapter Fourteen

Bree stood in her kitchen trying to get Eve to eat something. After helping her bathe and bandage her feet, she’d set toast and jam on a plate in front of her, cereal with milk, scrambled eggs and finally, in sheer desperation, leftover birthday cake.

Same with the drinks. There were glasses of water and orange juice, a mug of coffee and a cup of tea, all sitting beside a bottle of red wine.

Eve’s stomach turned at the idea of putting anything in it.

She knew she looked terrible. Frightening even. The early-morning jogger who’d lent her his mobile phone had tried not to gawk but failed miserably.