Yield by Cyndi Goodgame

feel.
    “Maybe, but a deal is a deal.”
    I knew there was a punch line I was missing.  “Deal?”
    “I promised Caydon a long time ago that you would hear and see your family ’s heritage regardless of what the circumstances were.”
    But... “You were taking me to Joshlin initially, not to him.”
    Circumstances be damned.  I wasn’t believing this.
    “Even unde r pressure you think so clearly.”   A faint smile emerged from the lips I kind of wanted him to kiss me now.  He eyed where my look was targeted and lifted my chin to make me focus. “I agreed now...and then that you should hear the history that was buried with your parents.  You have the right to know.  Caydon is the only one who can tell you how to get to it.  It is the reason their room is still intact.”
    “So you wouldn ’t go not because you wanted me to go alone, but because you can’t.”
    “Oh, I could go wherever I wish, love.  I just don’t go back on my promises.  I may not like it, but it is the right thing to do.” Ames nudged his nose into my neck. 
    “So there ’s something hidden in my parent’s bedroom?”
    “Of a sorts.”
    “And you know what that is?”
    The heat of his sigh warming my own already dewy skin made my insides crawl with excitement I should not have in this particular moment. 
    “Ames?”
    “Yes, Emma.”
    Whatever it was, he was afraid it would make me want to leave him.   A kind of fear I’d never felt enter my mind lapsed into my soul.  Was there something about Ames I didn’t know?  About myself?
    “One day you will tell me more about all of this.  Like why your handwriting was on the letters Caydon threw in your face.”
    “They weren’t letters.  They were messages.”
    Men and their definitions.  “We ’ll get through it together, Ames.”
    He swallowed long, “We will?”
    “I heard a phrase once told to me by a wise man.”  He stared at me.  “When you run into a wall...”
    He smiled for the first time in hours showing his d imple lifting up on the left, “You push through it.”
    “ We will push through it.  Together.”
                 

AMES
     
    Her hug felt like a million bucks and I was a gold digger.  I wanted to latch on and never let her loose.  But I couldn’t.  Once she knew the truth, I would be left to rot in my own doings.  If I’d only known then what she would be to me now.
    It was my own damn fault.  Hate wasn ’t strong enough an emotion to say how I feel about my stupidity.  I said all along I don’t deserve to keep her.  I was right when I said my past is too tarnished for her goodness.  I was willing to sacrifice her to Joshlin and a life of disgustingly perverted servitude without a second thought.  Changed or not, I was still an evil bastard before she made me see what road I was headed down.  I owed her my life.
    And if she ever had the chance to read the stupid promises I made to Caydon on paper, she ’d hate me more.
    “Why was the other day you came here this angry the day you met me?” 
    She had no idea what she was asking me to admit.  I’d maul that stupid Wicker for telling too much.  A man has to have some save face time.
    “I didn ’t want to admit what I already know.”
    She drew her lips and brow in simultaneously. 
              “I don’t deserve you Emma no matter how you slice it.  And I knew it then."
    Her face lit up like the Fourth of July.  “Are you saying, Ames Cahn, that you were mad you liked me?”
    No, I ’m pretty sure I knew from the first moment that I was in love with her.  She was staring at my lips again so I did what any male with a second brain would do in my place. I relieved her of her need.  I kissed her.  Her mouth was just like the icing on a cake.  It melted against mine and made me want to go back for more.  When she wasn’t pulling back, I did go back for more.  The second her tongue flicked in touching mine, I planted my feet firmer to the