Endeared (The Accidental Billionaires #5) - J. S. Scott Page 0,52
I would have been devastated if you’d taken it back, even though I wasn’t sure how to accept it. I’d never want you to think I didn’t love something that you put this much thought and effort into for me. But I know it was expensive, and it’s a really big gift for a woman who has rarely had any gifts at all.”
Most other women would have easily accepted that jewelry and more, and it killed me that Layla apparently didn’t feel like she deserved it.
I made a mental note to myself to buy her gifts more often until she could take them in stride.
Where in the hell had her parents been all these years? I knew she was left to her own devices a lot, but hadn’t they bought her birthday presents? Christmas gifts? Anything?
“I’m sorry, Layla. I’m sorry for every damn gift you didn’t get as a kid, and as an adult,” I said huskily, wishing I could erase whatever had happened in her past and fill it with everything she should have had.
How had such an incredible woman come out of what I suspected had been a pretty joyless childhood?
I got up and pulled her to her feet. When she collided with my body as she came up, I could barely stifle a groan.
“I’m sorry,” she said as she stumbled to her feet. “Did I hurt you?”
I couldn’t tell her that it hurt every time I looked at her but couldn’t touch her. In fact, it was fucking agony. “No. I’m good. Let me put the burgers on the grill.”
“Wait!” she entreated. “I want to figure out how to thank you for the most thoughtful gift anyone has ever given me.”
Just hearing her say that was more than enough thanks for me, but I turned my head and pointed to my cheek. “Thank me here,” I suggested.
Her smile lit up the entire room as she moved forward, put her hands on my upper arms, and planted a lingering kiss on my cheek.
“Thank you, Owen,” she murmured in a husky, sexy alto that made me want to hear that voice thanking me for making her come a dozen times or more.
I gritted my teeth while I fought every instinct I had to wrap my arms around her, push her up against the nearest wall, and bury my tormented cock inside her until we were both satisfied.
“I’ll help you,” she offered as she stepped back.
Unfortunately, making burgers wasn’t exactly the type of help I needed right now.
CHAPTER 18
LAYLA
I have to tell Owen everything.
I wasn’t quite sure when I’d made that decision. Probably somewhere between him ripping my heart out by adopting Brutus, and giving me a piece of jewelry some women would gouge their own eyes out to own. As a memento.
I fingered the beautiful blue diamonds like I’d been doing most of the evening, knowing that Owen had no idea what he did to me with every thoughtful gesture he performed with simply my happiness in mind.
I hated the tension that flowed between us, and it wasn’t something he deserved.
Like it or not, fearful or not, I did want Owen to see my present and my past, and if he didn’t look at me any differently after that, I was going to strip his clothes off and explore that gorgeous body of his all damn night.
We were friends, but we were both feeling the stress of keeping it that way.
That painful lust was always there.
I felt it, and I knew he did, too.
It was a throbbing ache for me that never went away, but lately, not being able to give everything to Owen was nearly killing me.
It didn’t matter that I wasn’t a casual-sex kind of woman. Nothing with Owen would ever be that way, and if we didn’t explore this chemistry between us, I knew I’d always wonder what it would have been like if we had.
I didn’t want to have regrets.
What I really wanted was to break free and be exactly who I was with Owen, and he really needed to know the truth before we could move forward . . . or not.
A lot of my lingering insecurities came from my past, so he really needed the whole picture.
I stroked my hand over Brutus’s deformed ear as he sat at my feet.
“Coffee?” Owen asked from the kitchen.
I already had a Diet Coke beside me in the living room. “No. I’m good,” I called back from my position on the couch.