Wrongfully Claimed

Chapter Eighteen

Warning: Highly explicit content. Please read with caution.

                           Ryder

Ryder paced up and down the floor, before he came and sat down next to Aurora, readying himself for what he was about to tell her.

Instead of giving her an answer, he decided to pull her towards him, wanting nothing more than to just hold her in his arms.

She was a bit reluctant to let him run his fingers through her hair at first. As soon as he looked her way, he noticed her body locking up the second he touched her, but she gradually warmed up to his affections. It wasn't long before she started to get comfortable with him by letting him hold her without showing any resistance.

As much as he wanted to follow through with what he initially had planned since she came downstairs this morning, he felt content just laying beside her. He much preferred getting lost in this moment with her, wishing it would never end.

Obviously, the amazing, mind-blowing sex was something he couldn't get enough of with Aurora, but sometimes it was the emotional connection, he longed for more than anything else. Rare, intimate moments like these were so few and far in between.

He realised now that no matter how many times he tried to deny it, or how many times he tried to brush it off and convince himself that it wasn't true, he knew the only person he had been fooling was himself.

The truth was the undeniable feelings he had for Aurora were starting to become increasingly stronger and more apparent to him with each day that passed.

He never planned for this to happen. He never believed the day would come where he could find it in himself to possess the capability of feeling anything for another woman after what Marilyn did to him.

It almost made him want to set her back out into the world and rid of her the mental anguish and heartache he had subjected her to for all these weeks by letting her be reunited with her father again.

He could always turn himself in. He could always try to forget she ever existed while she happily continued her life without him, got married to another man, and started up a family of her own, knowing he could never be with her again, but he couldn't bring himself do it.

As much as he wanted her to be happy, the idea of setting her free from his life terrified him more than going to prison and never seeing the light of day again.

Letting her go would mean giving up a part of himself and his life with Aurora. It would mean that all of this had been for nothing.

"Aurora, those men are never gonna rest until they bury me," he stated, feeling her pale, blue eyes locked on him, the second he began to open up to her, shaking her from her fleeting thoughts." They want vengeance because of what I have done. They just can't prove it yet because I always have covered my tracks so well."

Aurora jerked back and peered up at him. He sensed a sudden change in her demeanour, by the way her shoulders hunched and how she withdrew from him all of a sudden, not wanting him to touch her.

"And why is that?" she questioned him.

Ryder shook his head and shrugged his shoulders.

"Why do ya think?"

"I have no idea," she said shooting him a pointed look. " You tell me."

"Because they think I took their women away from them and now they want revenge," Ryder said, fully aware of the fact that he was every bit responsible for each and every one of their disappearances.

Aurora's sparkling blue eyes tripled in size at this moment and she took in a deep breath, shocked by what she was hearing as if she were struggling to compute what he was saying to her.