Beating Hearts [Knight's Rest #1]

27

"I don't like seeing you like this."

She looked up from her computer to see him standing at the foot of the bed, dressed in only a pair of black jeans. His bare chest did wonders to her insides, and she couldn't help but wonder how she had gotten so lucky to end up with a guy like him. "Like what?" She asked once she was able tare her eyes away from his bare chest and rippling muscles.

He moved forward to sit down on the bed next to her. Darcy tried to shuffle over to make room for him, but he merely pulled her closer to him so she was now sat in between his legs. "Sad." He mused aloud. "Seeing you sad makes me sad." He nuzzled his face against the side of her neck. "I only want to see you happy and smiling."

Her heart melted at that and she feared she would slip through his arms if he continued being so damn adorable.

"Well, you have my father to thank for that." She scoffed, but then sighed in longing. "I wonder what other secrets he's keeping."

Thelonious tightened his arms around her, pressing his lips against the skin behind her ear. "I don't think he mean to keep it a secret from you."

Her nose turned up at that but she didn't comment further. Thelonious had said that talking about it would make her feel better but right now, that was the last thing she wanted to do. Her father had lied to her for several years, and that was that.

She was allowed to be angry at him.

"I think he was just scared to tell you." He mused aloud, opting to be the voice of reason.

"What's there to be scared about?" She asked, sitting up and closing her laptop, placing it down on the bed next to them before she turned around and nuzzled her face in his bare chest. Burying her face in him, she inhaled. Darcy loved the way he smelled; musky and all man, just like him.

"He could have just told me he was seeing someone when it first started." Her voice was small. She shrugged her shoulders, almost as if it was as simple as that, but her heart remained heavy.

It wasn't, and they both knew it.

He pressed his lips against the crown of her head and laid the side of his face against it, his arms still wrapped around her. "Maybe he was worried about what would you think."

Her ears perked up at that. Sighing dramatically, Darcy pushed herself up so she was now lying against the headboard. He moved to lay down on the bed next to her, playing with the drawstrings on the jogging bottoms that she had borrowed from him.

Despite how hard she denied it, she knew that she would have to eventually go home. Having spent the last two weeks staying at the hotel with Thelonious travelling back and forth from university from there, she knew it wouldn't last forever. As much as they both enjoyed it, she couldn't do that to her father.

She still loved him, even if she was angry at him right now.

There was also the fact that she couldn't keep washing the same pair of clothes over and over again, nor could she keep borrowing clothes from Thelonious as while his shirts were oversized, his bottoms just did not fit her at all. And buying a whole new wardrobe of clothes was out of the question; she was a student, after all.

Her frown lightened slightly. "I can't ignore him forever." She suggested, her voice and her eyes downcast, almost as if speaking to herself.

He reached up and laid his head on her stomach, purring slightly when she ran her fingers through his hair. "No," he whispered against the exposed skin from where her top rode up. "He's your father and I think he meant well, but things just didn't play out that way."