Dirty Sexy Alphas (Twenty Book Box Set) - Hannah Ford Page 0,57

was right. I wanted to be good to you but I didn’t know how. When I left, I promised myself I wouldn’t come back until I could be worthy of you.”

I wanted to believe him, but wasn’t sure. “I just wish you’d called me. Or wrote me a letter—anything. Just once so I’d known you cared.”

He moved, so that he was lying against the pillow and staring me in the eyes. “I didn’t think I’d be gone so long. I left town with the intention of making something of myself, but thousands of miles later, I realized I didn’t even know where to start. Leaving didn’t give me direction, it just made me feel lost. For months I buried everything in drinking and women.”

I must’ve flinched. I must’ve reacted to the image of him in bed with another woman, his body over hers like it had just been over mine. Because he reached out, his fingers tracing their way along my jaw, forcing me to meet his eyes. “Every hookup made me feel worse. Every hookup made me feel less worthy of you. That was when Alexa came along. She was the opposite of everything I hated about myself. She was from a big city. From a successful family. Nothing she did was emotional or reckless. It was all so carefully calculated. I thought partnership with her would mean we would be united. I was so blinded by my own self-loathing I couldn’t see her for what she was.”

“But why would you marry someone if you still cared about me?” I said, confused more than ever.

“I lost myself,” Landon replied. “By the time Alexa came along, I was sure that I’d never be the kind of man you deserved. I was sure you were better off without me around.”

“I’m proud of everything you’ve done to achieve your success,” I told him, meaning it. “But you should’ve talked to me a long time ago, come clean. It’s honesty I want. Not your financial success. I need to trust you. No more secrets.”

“No more secrets,” he agreed. And when his hands slid across my body, and he leaned into kiss me, I didn’t resist.

At some point we drifted off to sleep, though I wasn’t sure when. By the time I woke up, daylight was streaming through the still-open drapes, the Texas sky a wide and vibrant blue.

I slid out from under him, but just as I was about to stand, his arm snaked around my waist.

“Don’t go,” he said. I glanced back at him, my hair tumbling down my shoulders, my body still bare.

“I have to be at the lab at nine,” I said.

“Don’t go,” he repeated, sitting up in bed. The sheet fell to his lap as he sat back against the cushioned headboard, exposing his thick arms and defined pecs. It was almost enough to make me say fuck it, and climb back into bed, climb onto his lap.

“This internship is important to me,” I said.

“There’s a better internship waiting for you in Washington.”

I twisted around, staring at him. I knew my own body was exposed, and I didn’t miss how his eyes dipped to take in my breasts. “It’s not better, Landon, it’s just different. I earned this internship. I proved myself.”

“I know,” he said. “But I want you to come home with me.”

The way he said it, said home, made me think that he wanted me to return to his house. Made me think crazy thoughts about a future where we lived together, went to bed together every night so I could wake up beside him.

But he had a wife. His house was half hers, not mine.

“I committed to this,” I said. “My professor vouched for me. And I have to go back to school anyway. How am I going to do that if I turn my back on this?”

“I don’t know. But the only life I can picture is one with you next to me,” he said.

His words made my heart soar and twist at the same time.

He slid toward the edge of the bed, sitting beside me so our thighs were touching, his rough hand rubbing circles on my back. “Come back with me. Make me a happy man,” he said. “Things don’t seem to matter without you.”

His words sounded so dangerously close to a proposal that my heart thrummed against my chest.

“You’re married,” I whispered.

“I’ll finalize the divorce, give her everything she’s pushing for. I don’t care what she takes. She can have it all,