Game of Love (The Remingtons, Book One: Love in Bloom Series)

Chapter Fourteen, Game of Love

Chapter Fourteen

ELLIE FISTED HER hands. Her gut twisted. She couldn't let Dex walk out of her life. That was her job. She walked out, not Dex. Dex never left. She watched him turn away and step into the living room.

Get him. Don't let him go. She was frozen in place by disbelief.

He crossed the floor and headed for the foyer.

No! Don't!

She couldn't stop him. She couldn't promise she wouldn't leave. She wanted to promise—God, how she wanted to promise. Anything to keep him by her side—but she didn't know how. How could she make a promise she wasn't sure she could keep?

The door opened, and she listened as the latch closed and locked behind him. The sound started deep in her belly and grew to a low, agonizing moan. It took a second for her to realize it was coming from her own lungs. "No!" She sprinted out the door and pushed the elevator button again and again. "Come on. Come on." She pushed it again. "Hurry. Hurry."

The elevator doors opened, and she flew inside and pushed the button for the lobby. "Hurry up. Come on." He'd be long gone by the time she reached the ground floor. The elevator doors closed as if they had rheumatoid arthritis, slow and painful. She watched the numbers light up as it descended to the lobby. The doors began to open, and she turned sideways and pushed herself through and flew out the front door of the complex, smacking right into the wall of Dex's chest.

"Ellie?"

"Don't go. Dex, please. Don't go." She gasped for breath, clinging to his shirt. "Please."

"I couldn't. I got out here and had to turn back. I was just coming back in."

She couldn't think past her thundering heart. You were coming back. You're here. "You didn't leave," she panted. She ran her hands up and down his chest, making sure of him.

Dex took her hands in his and brought them to his lips. He pressed soft kisses to her fingers, then lowered his mouth to hers. Ellie released all of her fear, and all of her emotion, and let her heart take over. She kissed him like he was the very strength she needed to survive, and in many ways, he was. When he pulled back and looked into her eyes, she knew she'd do whatever it took to learn to stay.

She poked him in the chest. "Don't do that again."

He flashed his cockeyed grin. "Are you kidding me? Look at the reward I got for leaving. If I'd known I'd get a kiss like that, I'd have left every time I saw you."

She poked him again, and he grabbed her finger and pulled her into another delicious kiss. Ellie pressed so close to his body that she thought he must be able to feel the blood flowing through her veins.

In the elevator, words tumbled from her mouth. "You can't leave. Two people can't leave. Someone has to be the strong one, and the other person—the one who leaves—has to be able to count on them to...to...goddamn it. To not give up on them."

He closed and locked the apartment door behind them, and in one swift move, as if he was afraid to delay—afraid she might disappear into thin air—he wrapped his arms around her and took her in another insatiable kiss.

"I..." He kissed her again. "Won't ever..." He brushed his lips over the line of her jaw. "Leave you."

Ellie closed her eyes, pushing away the litany of what-ifs that sailed through her mind, and gave into the desires that she'd been suppressing forever. She slid her hands beneath his shirt and ran her fingers along the firm ridges of his muscles, the delicate lines of his chest, and up and over the arc of his shoulder.