Doing It for Love (All About Love #1) (21 page)

Theresa hasn’t left my apartment since the robbery. She puts on a brave face around all of our friends, but I can tell she’s still shaken. Last night she slept with a bat between our bodies and kept waking me up with, “Did you hear that?”

With two days till the wedding, I’m getting nervous about if she’ll be okay in her apartment again, or if she’ll end up bunking with Jaycee or Penny. She hasn’t said anything, and I’m not sure if or when to bring it up. Don’t want to seem insensitive.

Alec twists the lock on the front door of Bed Bath & Beyond and carries the umbrella over our heads while the snow pelts downward. I squeeze in tight and try to keep up with his long legs.

Headlights flash in our direction, and both Alec and I squint through the flurry to Landon’s car as he pulls up and rolls the passenger window down.

“I’ll take that beautiful woman if you don’t mind,” he says with a grin. But it’s the grin that’s not really a grin. More like he’s trying to hold his lunch down.

Alec hurries me over and keeps the umbrella over my head while I get in. “Thanks!” I call out over the weather.

He nods and turns to leave, but Landon stops him, “Hey! Would you mind heading to our place and keeping Theresa company for a bit?”

“Sure.”

“Thanks, man.”

Alec shuts my door and jogs off to his car. I turn to Landon, swiping at my snow-covered coat. “Where are we going?”

“I want to show you something.”

The snow lightens as we head downtown. Landon rarely drives in the city, so as I’m warming my fingers by the heater I start taking wild guesses on where we’re going.

“You’re not going to get it,” he says after my fiftieth guess. He’s giving me a real grin now. “And we’re here.”

I look at the building I totally knew we were going after guess three, but I was having fun.

“I thought you were done shooting.”

“We are.” He cuts the engine and squeezes my hand twice. “Come on.”

I squeeze back before unbuckling and stepping out. There’s about a pound of ice melt on the cement, so I’m not too worried about falling as we make our way up the stairs and into the side studio at the school.

It’s pitch black, so Landon and I both pull out our phones and light up the hallway to a door a few feet down. He unlocks it and lets me in first, snapping the light switch on the side wall.

“Pretty awesome,” I lilt, letting my gaze drift over all the high-techy stuff. Four giant screens light up with parts of Landon’s movie, and the one in the middle is open to a Google account. I jolt when Landon knocks a zombie doll off the chair in the back. He quickly sets it on its perch. I try to move my eyes from the freaky thing.

“It’s ready,” he says, tucking his fingers into my coat from behind. He helps slide it off, then he takes care of his. “I just have to push send.”

“
The Walking Stiff
? It’s done?”

“Finished final edits four days ago.”

I trail my fingers over the keyboard, checking the desk chair for any more freaky dolls before I sit down. “And how long has it been sitting in this email to the festival judges?”

“Four days.”

I smile and turn to him running his hand over the back of his snow-covered hair.

“Why don’t you just send it?”

“I’m nervous.”

“It’ll be great.”

He shakes his head and takes a seat next to me. “It’s just…no one has seen it except for people who’ve been involved. So they’re obviously biased—”

“Can I watch it?”

“You think you can be unbiased?”

I laugh a little and gaze at the top screen, which is paused on a scene of Chantal swinging a shovel at a zombie with one leg. “No. But I bet it’s more nerve-wracking for you to let me watch it, right?”

“Definitely.”

“Then if you can let
me
, you can let a few judges.”

He studies me for a moment, and I give him a cheesy grin that makes him crack a smile. “Okay…” he says, and reaches over me and hits the play button.

“Not
now,
” I say, hitting pause. “I’ll watch it tomorrow with Theresa while you’re entertaining your parents. That way you’re not hovering over me. And it could be a good distraction for her…if you don’t mind.”

He shakes his head and pulls the USB out. “I don’t mind.” He kisses my forehead, lets it linger and melt the cold from my skin. “Thank you.”

I take the USB and tuck it into my coat pocket, zipping it so it stays safe from the weather. My hands are cold, so I blow into them before Landon takes them into his own.

“How are you warm all the time?” I ask. He answers with only a shrug, and then he blows into my palms, warming them almost instantly, yet it still makes me shiver. Something awakens in the pit of my stomach, and I can almost…
almost
…feel the flutters of angel butterfly wings.

“Hey, Liz?”

“Mmm?”

“I…I need to talk to you.”

“Okay.”

His pointer finger trails up the center of my wrist, tracing my veins, giving me the shivers with its equal amount of tickle and pleasure.

“Why do you want to marry me?” he whispers.

“What?”

“Why do you want to marry me?”

I flick my gaze to his, refusing to blink and moisten my eyes even more. The butterfly is dying as fast as it was born. Is he seriously asking me this now? Two days before our wedding? He should know why I want to marry him, because I hope he wants to marry me for the same reason.

“Because…I love you.”

“I know.”

“Then why would you ask me that? Did your parents tell you to cancel the—”

“If they did, I didn’t listen to them.”

“Then…why would you ask me that?” I ask again. Landon keeps his eyes locked with mine, and I hope he says something else.

Change the subject.

Tease me.

Flirt with me.

Or something or anything because I’m not sure how to get into this conversation when I don’t know all the answers other than that I love him. All we need is love, right?

The
Moulin Rouge!
soundtrack is playing somewhere in my head.

Landon’s mouth twitches, and he rolls his chair closer, pressing his knees with mine, holding my hands and tracing finger hearts on my palms.

“You said you were scared on your list thing,” he says to our hands. “But I don’t get
what
you’re scared of…and that’s scaring me.”

“I’m not scared,” I lie. I’m petrified.

“You are.”

“No.”

“Please tell me why you’re scared.” He sighs, bends down, and kisses the center of my palm, and those angel butterflies I’ve missed so much come back with a vengeance.

“That right there, Landon.” I point accusingly at him, and he looks at me completely dumbfounded. “That’s why I’m scared.”

He taps his face, brows pulled in confusion. I shove from the chair, pull at my ponytail, word vomit rising up my throat, and when Landon stands I release it in a flurry.

“We’re peas and carrots!”

His eyebrow rises. “Peas?”

“And carrots.”

“I thought peas and carrots were a good combination.”

“I don’t want to be peas and carrots.” I toss my hands out, accidentally knocking one of the creepy zombie props.

“Okay, what do you want to be?”

“I want to be strawberries and whipped cream.”

He still looks confused as hell.

“Ugh, we’re an
old
relationship! When was the last time you kissed my palm like that? We don’t go on dates like we used to. We don’t flirt or seduce each other. The only reason we do that lately is because—”

“We’ve been off sex.”

“Bingo.”

His confusion starts to dissipate. “And you’re afraid when we start having sex again, we’ll skip over the other stuff?”

“We’re going to be married and hardly touch each other and have to work and work and never have any fun and we’re just going to be okay with it because that’s how life is and that’s how relationships go, but I don’t want that. I want our marriage to be…
fun
. I love joking around while we fool around. I want to hold hands everywhere we go. I want to make out in the back of a movie theater, steal kisses in coffee shops, have sex over every inch of our apartment or house or wherever we live. And I’m scared marriage will change the fun part of our relationship. The part that keeps us young, keeps us in love, and I’m terrified you’ll wake up when you’re fifty and realize you’re stuck with the decision you made when you were twenty-seven, and we haven’t touched in months, we don’t go out. I just want to know when that happens…that you’ll still…”

I pause, the last five months catching up with me. The stress, the planning, being cut off—it never let me forget what I’m terrified of. And when the first teardrop falls from my cheek to my wrist, Landon coaxes me to look at him.

“I’ll still what?” he whispers, his own fear reflecting in his gray eyes.

“You’ll still love me.”

I squeeze my eyes shut, burrow into his chest, and hold on to him like he’s the only thing keeping me standing. His thumbs swipe at my cheeks, push away the tears, and I feel him shaking his head above mine.

“You say all those things like they’re bad.”

“They are.”

“Not to me.” He pushes me back to look in my eyes. “If you want to sleep instead of have sex after a twelve-hour shift, I’m okay with that. If we’d rather watch four hours of TV in our pajamas instead of going out, I’m good with that, too. Whenever we’re not having sex, I’m going to be satisfied just being in the same room with you.”

“But—”

“If you couldn’t have sex, who would you want to…not have sex with? Because I’d want that person to be you.” He takes my left hand, tugs at the diamond on my finger before kissing the knuckle. “That’s why I gave you this. Whatever we’re doing or not doing, I want to do or not do that with you.”

“I want to do or not do everything with you, too. I just…”

“Lizzie, I’m always going to hold your hand, and I’m always going to kiss you goodnight. Even when we have kids or when we retire. You don’t have to be scared that I won’t love you through everything. I’m not.”

“Then what are you scared of?”

“That you’ll wake up one day and realize you deserve so much more than I can give you.”

My heart thuds and melts, and now I’m the one who needs to reassure him. Because he should never be afraid of that.

“Can you promise to make me laugh?”

He nods.

“And promise that we’ll have fun?”

He nods again, this time with a smile so devastatingly handsome and beautiful, it chases all my nerves away, making them take flight into somewhere in the darkness above us.

“Then you don’t have to be scared either.”

“Oh, shoot,” Landon says, pushing me to the side when we get through our apartment door.

“Ouch, geez!” I say, catching myself on the card table. So much for the romantic Landon I was with twenty minutes ago.

“Sorry,” he says over his shoulder, “but shit, she wasn’t supposed to drop it off yet.”

“Drop wha—” I stop and furrow my brow at the long white garment bag Landon’s trying—and failing—to hide behind his back. “Is that my dress? Landon! You’re not supposed to look at it!”

“I didn’t. I just picked it up—”

“From the dress place? I didn’t even know you knew where it was.”

“Actually…” he says, swinging it out from behind his back. “It was at Gina’s.”

“Gina…?”

“The costume designer for
The Walking Stiff.
”

“Wha…”

“You said it didn’t fit, right? And the alterations cost a fortune, so I got it from the dress place and—”

“Wait. This is THE dress.” I scurry over, not really worried about him seeing it anymore as I push the zipper down. And there it is. My dress. My gorgeous, too expensive, yet makes my ass look perfect dress.

“What about the other…?”

“I took it off hold for you,” Landon says, and I look up to him covering his eyes with one hand. “Gina did the alterations as a wedding present. She wants to make sure it fits, so you might wanna—”

“You asked for help.”

“Yeah.”

He drops his hand, keeping his eyes closed as he feels around for the zipper on the bag. I help him out, covering the dress, and then prod his face when it’s safe.

“You hate asking for help,” I say in an incredulous whisper. His lip quirks up in the corner.

“But I love you.”

I meet his eyes, heart drumming a tune that you’d play on Valentine’s Day, and it clicks, like someone’s finally turned on the light in the middle of this engagement horror movie, and…it’s not scary anymore. It’s so much more than the ring on my finger, the setting of dates, the buying of dresses, the sending of invitations. More than trying to rekindle something that I thought was lost, but it wasn’t lost, it’s just more now.

It’s about dealing with all the crap and still finding reasons to stick around.

“Theresa!” I shout, scaring him back a few steps. We’re met with silence, and thank the romance gods we’re alone.

“I’m going to kiss you,” I tell him when neither Alec nor Theresa makes an appearance.

He grins. “Good.”

I push the dress from his hands and swing my arms around his shoulders. He pulls me up, matching my intensity, lips and tongues mating like they haven’t in months. Warmth rushes everywhere, through my chest, arms, neck, lower abdomen, and I don’t want it to stop. I’m not going to stop it this time. I lose. I give in. Two days before the wedding, and I don’t care. I don’t think he does either, because I’m against the wall, he’s getting more aggressive, biting, breathing, kissing

deep

deep

deep,

and I’m thinking I hit the jackpot, because there is probably not a single man in this world who can kiss like Landon can.

“Get me out of this coat,” I breathe. He tugs on the zipper, and before he can get it off my shoulders, I say goodbye to packing my bikini as I take his hands and force them on my breasts. He jokingly squeezes them twice, and I somewhat laugh around his mouth, then tug his hair, begging him to keep on squeezing, keep playing, touch all over, and he kisses down my cleavage as I jabber on and on. His hands find my hips and pull me up. I tear at his coat, cursing at it because it’s in my way. He accidentally pulls hair from their roots when he rips mine off, but small price to pay to get naked.

“You got bit by something radioactive, didn’t you?” I ask him as he effectively gets our coats, both our boots and socks, and my jeans off, all in record time and without dropping me from my spot on the wall.

“You callin’ me Superman?” He grins and kisses me again, swallowing my return smart-ass comment. He palms my cheeks, slick forehead pressed with mine. His breath is hot, heavy, sweet, salty, spirited, and I slide down purposely on the wall, settle against him.
Press
against him, knowing I’m losing the Bahamas but I’m also winning. I am so, so winning.

“Lizzie…I need this,” he whispers, and I wonder if I’m speaking my thoughts out loud again. “I need this more than Sundance. More than winning. More than anything.”

I press on him farther, nearly tearing the fabric of my panties. “You can have it,” I say, loving the shivers under me, the strong arms holding me up, the heart pounding beneath his graphic tee, the desire sparkling in his gray eyes. He wets his lips, grip sliding slightly on the wall, making me tighten my arms around his neck.

“I’m not talking about sex,” he says on an exhale. “I need…intimacy.”

I blink. My ears buzz. My inner thighs clench. I calm my breathing, because I was about to just hump him to Chocolateville right here in the hallway. But he says the word “intimacy” and I throw the fast ride out the window. Because I need intimacy, too.

Landon’s pulse pounds on his neck, and I lean forward and open-mouth-kiss it, licking away the salty taste of sweat.

“I love you,” I say in his ear. “Do you know how
thrilled
I am to be your wife?”

He shakes his head, and I take his face, kissing his scruff, his nose, his lips.

“I can’t compare the feeling to anything, because I’ve never felt so unbelievably lucky.” I take one of his hands and place it over my heart. “Feel it pounding? It hasn’t stopped since that day you proposed in the shower.”

“Mmm…I miss showers with you.”

A smile stretches on my lips, and I lift my arms over my head. He grins, fists the hem of my shirt, and pulls it up. A strawberry kiss is placed on my chest, right where our hands were.

I slowly slide my legs from his waist. Licking my lips, I toy with the bottom of his shirt before I lift it achingly slowly from his body. I want to drink in his skin, his lines, the sprinkled hair on his stomach, his pecs, his nipples…and not only them but beyond the surface. His heart, his soul, his spirit. Everything I can see and everything I can’t.

He takes my cheeks and kisses me while I work on his pants. I take my time, fiddling with his belt buckle, playing with his zipper, and he continues to kiss my lips from corner to corner.

I dip my thumbs into his waistband, swirl them around to his backside. Low, labored moans float from his mouth to mine, and I echo them, pull him closer, chest to chest, hip to hip. His hands fall to my shoulders, trickle down, leaving goose bumps in their path. He stops at my elbows and squeezes twice. I squeeze his ass once. And then his fingers find the clasp on my bra.

He pulls back, eyes on mine as he unlocks the top clasp. The bra loosens a bit, my breasts gently bounce, and one strap falls from its place on my shoulder, making me feel so damn hot and wonder how the hell we are managing to go so slowly. His other hand runs over my now bare shoulder, and the touch is so light, so warm, so intimate that my eyes roll back and my head hits the wall.

“You’re so gorgeous,” he says, his mouth hovering over my collarbone. I take deep breaths and moan at the ceiling.

“Thank you.”

I feel his mouth turn up in a grin against my skin, and his hips press into mine, locking me in place as he twines our fingers and lifts my arms over my head. His lips are sweet agony, causing angel butterflies to mate in my chest. I wonder if we’ll go all the way now with how he phrased his needs, but as the fiery strokes of his tongue wake every nerve ending of my body, I realize that it doesn’t matter. That the intimacy between lovers is what makes sex special. The giving, the receiving, wanting and needing past the physical aspects of want and need. My body wants a pounding. My lady parts need attention. But
I
want to show him I love him—every single part of him. And I
need
him to show me he loves me just as much as, if not more than, I love him. Even if I don’t think it’s possible, I need him to prove me wrong.

“Landon…” I say past a gulp as his tongue dives into the crease of my cleavage. “You feel so good. So perfect. I’ve missed you.”

His tongue stops its sultry path on my chest, and he plucks his head up and looks directly in my eyes, slight amusement but more hunger in his gray depths.

“You’re not teasing me. I had to make sure I was kissing the right woman.”

I smile, and he flinches, probably preparing for me to lightly smack him, but I don’t. I take his cheeks in my hands, wrap my fingers into the soft hair nearing the base of his neck. “Do you want me to tease you?”

“I don’t know. I like that, but I’m liking this, too.” He trails a finger across my bra strap and finally unclasps the bottom hook.

A sharp gasp flies from my lips, and his mouth quirks up in victory. The straps fall slowly…painfully slowly down my arms, and when I’m completely free from the piece of clothing, I press my chest into his.

“I love your skin against mine,” I say. “I didn’t realize how much I needed your skin.”

He grins. “Yeah, I’m definitely liking this, too.” He leans forward, letting the light scruff of his cheek graze mine while he whispers softly into my ear.

“You are the most gorgeous woman I’ve ever set eyes on. Every night I thank the stars I get to sleep next to you. And every morning I hope I get at least one more night.”

I melt into his voice, and I’m taken into a whole different level of intimacy. It’s where pretty words are married with caring actions. And even though I tend to show my love rather than speak it, I let my mouth fly in response, saying things I always thought but never said, so that my 90 percent body language added to my 10 percent verbal is 100 percent telling him that he is the absolute most important person in my entire universe.

“Will you help me?” I ask.

“With?”

“I want more of my skin against yours.”

His hand dips into the back of my underwear and he palms my ass. “Like this?” There’s a flirting lilt in his voice, and I can’t help but laugh a tiny bit.

“Not exactly,” I say. “I need both hands.”

He obliges, sliding his other hand onto my backside.

“Now bend your knees,” I instruct. He laughs and he kisses his way down my body, slipping me out of my panties.

“But, babe,” he says as I hold on to his shoulders and lift my feet out of my bottoms. “I love your damn cute ankles, but I miss your breasts already.”

“You just can’t help it, can you?” I say with a grin as he stands upright once more, pushing my now naked body flush against his.

“I can’t. I just have so much fun with you, Tumbles.”

His lips start to pattern over my collarbone, combined with long, luxurious strokes of his tongue. My heart beats loud in my ears, and my fingers brush over his pulse, and I concentrate, focus, pinpoint our matching beats, as if we are of one heart.

“Liz…”
he breathes against my skin. I’m not even doing much, just clinging to him, letting him love my neck, and yet he acts as if I’m the one bringing him to the brink of insanity.

“I want more of your skin on mine,” he says. And I let out a breathy laugh and drag my nails down his back. He shivers against me, pushing me into the wall slightly. The skin along his sides is puckered with goose bumps as I pull his boxers down his muscular legs. I wait for him to step out before planting a tiny kiss on his roller-coaster scar, making the very awake Lord Landon twitch.

He pulls me up by my elbows, presses his body with mine, and starts walking us toward the shower. Over the course of our entire relationship I’ve never felt more in tune with him than I do now. That I didn’t just fall in love with him, but I
choose
to fall in love every day. And even more exhilarating, he chooses me every day, too—despite the money arguments, despite the socks on the floor, despite the nagging and the annoying habits and the late nights away from each other.

Despite the fact that we are peas and carrots.

“So is this what marriage will be like?” I muse as he lets go of me briefly to start the water. He comes back to me, though, holding our bodies close.

“This is what
our
marriage will be like.”