“We’re doomed,” Ellie exclaimed, bursting into her bedroom, Matt right behind her. Her fiery red hair was sopping wet from the storm that still raged outside and she was soaked to the bone. She wasn’t sure if it was from the cold or from fear, but she started to shiver. She had to get out of these wet clothes.
“We aren’t doomed,” Matt assured her, hanging his drenched coat on the chair near the fireplace. “Remember what your mom’s letter said? We have to break the cycle.”
Ellie snorted. “What does that even mean? ‘Break the cycle.’ What cycle? The cycle is that James comes along and tries to seduce the women of my family. Well, not just the women, I guess. Mostly, just my reincarnated soul. And from that timeline you showed me, it looks like most of the time he succeeds. And yet, he’s still here, because each and every time it’s not just me that dies young and tragic.” Tears filled Ellie’s eyes as she looked at Matt, willing him to understand. “Don’t you see? It’s not just me he destroys, Matt. You die too.”
“Sshh,” Matt whispered soothingly, pulling her into his embrace. He brushed a hand over her hair as she began to sob. “It’s all going to be okay.”
“How?” she asked against his chest. “How is it going to be okay?”
Matt shook his head. “I don’t know. But we’re not going to let him win. Maybe that’s how we break the cycle. Maybe we somehow stay alive, don’t give him what he wants.”
“Matt, what he wants is me.”
“Exactly.”
Shaking her head, she brushed the tears from his cheeks. “You don’t understand the power he has over me. When he brought me those roses? It was like my mind somehow rationalized choosing him over you until I no longer cared who you were.”
“Yes, that could be a problem,” he conceded, tipping her face up to look at him. “But it wasn’t really you that forgot about me, was it?”
“No.”
“And it was remembering me that broke the spell, right?”
A small sliver of hope shown through the darkness. “I suppose so.”
Matt grinned and she felt a warm glow deep within her heart. She loved that grin of his. “So, then all you have to do is think of me all the time and we win.”
Laughing, Ellie playfully smacked his arm. “You would like that, wouldn’t you?”
“Absolutely.” Leaning forward, he kissed her, slow and deep, gathering her up in his arms. Ellie let herself be absorbed in his touch, in the feel of his soft lips on hers, of his tongue in playing in her mouth. She loved the way the way they seemed to melt into one another, as if nothing else in the world mattered in that moment but the two of them.
“I’m not going to let anything happen to you,” he promised her, his hands pushing her shirt up over her chest and slipping it off her arms. “I’m going to keep you safe.” He lightly brushed his lips over the swell of her breasts, his fingers playing over her nipples beneath the light fabric of her bra. With expert hands, he reached behind her back and unhooked the clasp, letting her spill free in his hands. She gasped when he took her breast into his mouth and lightly grazed her nipple. “I need you to trust me.”
Unable to do anything else, she let him lead her to the bed where he eased her down, undressed them both, and stretched out beside her. His long, muscled body covered hers and she sighed against him when he slipped into the hot wetness of her. She clung to him, her legs wrapped around his waist as he softly moved in and out. “Trust me,” he whispered against her neck, kissing his way down to her collar bone.
How could she do anything but? It was amazing to think that it had only been a handful of days since she’d met him, but already, she couldn’t imagine her life without Matt McKinnon. She didn’t even care if it was her past life that was aching to be with him. He was her soulmate. She knew it from the depths of her heart. Every fiber of her being belonged to him and she never wanted to take it back.
In and out, he moved, his hands roaming gently over her skin as if he were memorizing every inch of her. Though the storm still raged outside, she moaned against him, exalting in the soft, languid pleasure he offered. The long, hardness of him filled her in a way no other man had and she trembled each time he thrust against her.
Was it Matt she had always been waiting for? Was he the reason she had always been too afraid to get close to anyone? The reason she had never before felt that pull of love that she felt the moment she saw him? Could she be brave enough now to allow her heart what it wanted the most?
Matt trembled against her, his hands reaching for hers, their finger entwining together. “I love you,” he whispered over her skin and Ellie felt a thrill wash over her. With one last shudder, she clung to him, moaning, and let herself fall.