a red dress that clung to her perfect curves. I’d taken two steps toward her before I even realized what I was doing when Mia grabbed my arm and dug her nails in my arm. “You realize she’s only sixteen, right?”
“Who?” I’d muttered, annoyed that she was keeping me from my destiny.
“Arella,” she’d hissed. I reluctantly tore my gaze away from my angel and looked down at Mia, still not completely understanding what she was trying to tell me. “The girl you were about to grab and probably disappear with, that’s Arella. And you should really remember that she is sixteen.”
“That goddess is only sixteen?” I choked out as I turned my head back to run my eyes longingly over the beauty standing in a group of her cousins. Her smile lit up the whole room, her musical laugh pulling every gaze to her, and even though I knew the majority of the people in the room were related to her in some way, I wanted to hide her away so no one but I could have the privilege of seeing and hearing all that sweetness.
Mia grabbed my chin and jerked my head back to look at her. “Read my lips, Jordan. Sixteen. S-I-X-T-E-E-N.”
Jerking my face out of her hold, I stepped back from her. “Yeah, fuck. Okay. I get it.” I turned my back on Arella just as she started to look in my direction, telling myself that Mia was right. The girl was too young.
I locked down what I was feeling, told myself to stay far, far away from her, and focused on torturing Braxton and even Barrick a little.
Only, it didn’t work. I couldn’t help looking over at Arella every few minutes. Each time I did, I would catch her looking right back, curiosity shining out of those eyes, the blue-gray my new favorite color.
Blinking away the memories, I grasped Arella’s hand and tugged. She came willingly, and I pulled her naked body into my lap. Cupping her face in one hand, I kissed the tip of her nose then her lips. “I fell for you that night, baby. I fell so hard and so deep that I didn’t know which way was up. I told myself that we could only ever be friends, and I was okay with that. As long as I got a fix of you every now and then, I could survive without you. I threw myself into work, tried to fuck you out of my system with other women…” She flinched, and I kissed her again. “And every time I fucked them, I would feel physically sick afterward until I eventually gave up trying to work you out of my system. But I kept telling myself that I was okay with us just being friends.”
“I’m not sure I want to hear all of this,” she muttered unhappily.
“I’m not sure I want to tell you all of it, but I don’t want there to be any more misunderstandings between us.” I pressed my forehead to hers. “I told myself and anyone who even so much as breathed your name in my presence that we were only friends, but the lock I’d put on my feelings for you was starting to crumble. The closer your eighteenth birthday got, the more I could feel it breaking away, and it scared me. I knew if I let go and showed you how much I loved you, how much I wanted you, it would scare you away. I was worried it would make you run from me, and I didn’t know if I could survive that.”
“Never,” she said with an adamant shake of her head. “I would never run from your love for me.”
“You haven’t seen the full extent of how much I want and need you yet, Arella. It might scare you.” I glanced down at the present and picked it up. “I wanted to buy you a ring, but I figured your dad would have killed me if I’d asked to marry you while you were still in high school. And I still didn’t know if what I was hoping you felt for me was as strong as what I was feeling. My biggest fear was that it was just an infatuation and you would eventually get bored with me and move on.”
Twenty
Jordan
“If you had shown up at my party with a ring, I would have married you that night,” she confessed, blowing my mind. “It wouldn’t have mattered to me if my dad didn’t