Read Online Skin Like Dawn by Jade Alyse - Free Book Online Page B

 “Remember that it’s just us two out here…and I happen to be a very good listener.”
    “I never forgot that,” she murmured.  “Trust me.”
    IN LESS THAN AN HOUR, they were in another cab, and the air was chilly.  She instinctively wrapped her arms around herself, and gazed out the window.  
    Green…that’s all she could see really.  An amalgamation of greens, and hazy summits off in the distance, and the smell of pine and old water.  Murals covered exposed brick, the people looked differently.  
    She felt different again – a Georgia peach with honey brown skin and a snarky southern attitude, culturally obscured and displaced.  
    She released a heavy sigh and Brandon gazed in her direction.  She milked his gazed for all it was worth, as some earthy acoustic music played from the cabbie’s radio.  
    “I love you,” he mouthed to her.  
    She smiled. 
    “For doing this,” he continued audibly.
    What was it other than love that drove her to this?  What was she if she wasn’t with Brandon?  In the most unspoken terms, he completed her far more than any other person before him…or after him either.
    But she steered away from thinking it, letting it absorb into her brain.  
    She couldn’t stand a life without him – it wouldn’t make sense. 
    She picked up his hand, laced his fingers around hers, and kissed each of his knuckles.
    “Silly boy,” she murmured against his skin.  “I go where you go…”
    She then heard him release a heavy breath of relief. 
    She kept herself from admitting that up until that point, she’d had habitual dreams about leaving him in the middle of the night and starting over.  But when she left him and quietly sauntered out of the house, she tumbled into a gray abyss, skin covered in a murky overcast of sorts, as if the mere audacity of her escape was ludicrous.  
    She’d awaken in a cold sweat, tearing at the collar of her tank top, as though she was desperately attempting to find her own heartbeat.  
    That was dramatic, even for her.  Their silly cat-and-mouse, back and forth bullshit never really amounted to much.  She loved the fact that the gambit normally ended with her splayed helplessly on her back and him well adjusted to the space between her thighs.  He’d look down her, all earnest and shit, writhing beneath him, pretending as though she wasn’t completely enamored with the feel of his weight pressing down on her body.  
    She sighed at the thought, and reached for his hand again, the moment that they stepped out of the cab in front of the leasing office in Northwest Portland.  She gazed upward – the sky had a blue haze, the light of the sun, fighting its way through thick, pallid low-hanging clouds.  
    Her husband sighed heavily and a smile appeared at the corner of his big mouth.  He was the adventurous one – she didn’t worry about him.  To Brandon, this was a step toward something better, a new life he’d created for her and the baby.  Their baby.  An unknown blurb in the center of her, that represented all that they were; their moments in time, their heartache, their fate, their love.  He was the true visionary – he could see how their life would be together.  
    She, he and their little one.  
    Brandon pulled her close to him, and pressed his lips into her hair.  
    “I’m okay,” she said.  “I’m okay, baby…”
    He chuckled a little bit and tugged him behind her toward the door.  
    There was a youngish redheaded woman who sat at a small desk by the window, who looked up the moment that they stepped in.  The office was relatively small, and there really didn’t seem to be a need for a secretary, but she seemed purposeful despite this.  
    “Hello,” she answered with a smile in her eyes.  “You must be the Greenes.  We were expecting you a little later, with the bad weather coming down from Canada.  How are you?  Tired, I suppose.” 
    Brandon and Natalie looked at each other fleetingly before he