Accepting His Love

Accepting His Love: Chapter Twenty

When Abigail woke up the next morning to the feel of her fingers intertwined with Derek's warm and calloused ones, she knew that she had done the one thing that she'd sworn not to do the moment she laid eyes on Derek.

She'd gone and given her heart to the darn fool and there wasn't any way of her ever getting it back.

Some way or another, Derek had found a way to break down the walls she had tried so hard to keep up and had carved his name right there on her heart.

And somehow, he'd helped her come to peace with Susahnna's death. He didn't do much talking or do any judging. He had only listened. Sure he said a few words after, but for the most part he just...listened. Something so simple, but it was what she had needed all along even if she had not realized it.

Last night happened to be the first night in a long, long, loong while that she'd slept and not had a single nightmare. She'd actually gotten a good night's sleep and it was all thanks to the man currently snoozing beside her.

She had been wrong to judge him based on his skin color. Being blind even helped her further to see past it. He wasn't like the other white men she had met, and she would be just as pigheaded, close minded and foolish as the judgmental world they lived in if she continued to believe that he didn't genuinely care for her. Derek made her believe that there were others like him. Others who didn't care what color she was.

He had been relentless and downright stubborn, but she was glad that he hadn't given up. She had shot him down, slapped him, and insulted him on almost every chance she got, but that didn't deter him. She was downright glad now that he had persisted.

She was sad that it had taken her this long to finally open her eyes to the truth. And that was that Derek really did love her and that she was just as deeply in love with him as well. With a chuckle, she realized that it was quite ironic and very much amusing that her particular eye opening experience was happening at a time where she couldn't, literally, see a thing.

Abigail untangled her hand from his and reached up to caress his face. She really did miss seeing him and she wondered if she could 'see' him through her sense of touch. She let her hands drift over the straight line of his nose and she realized with a chuckle, that he was now sporting cheeks full of stubble. She must've been too caught up in his kisses yesterday to not feel the prickly hairs.

She remembered the first time she had laid eyes on him. Snorting softly in amusement, Abigail recalled how she had thought that his smile could melt kneecaps. Now she realized that it wasn't his smile that she should have been worried about. It was his kisses that were the real danger. Now those... those had the potential to melt her entire body and set it to flames all at the same time. At that exact moment, her fingertips grazed his firm lips and she gulped.

An overwhelming urge to kiss him hit her and try as she might, she could not quell it. Without thinking too hard on her actions, she brought her face up to plant a gentle kiss on his slack lips.

She didn't think she could ever do this if he was awake and so she lingered a second longer, savoring the moment, before she began to pull away.

But then his arms moved to wrap around her and his lips began to move more urgently against her own. She gasped in shock at first, but it didn't take her too long to melt in his arms as she always did while he took his time sensuously loving her with his lips.

"Damn, Abigail. I hope this isn't the way you wake up everybody else," he mumbled when he finally pulled away for air.

"I thought you were asleep..."

"I was," he said, capturing her lips with another soft kiss. "But then you kissed me. Turns out I'm a regular ol' Sleeping Beauty."

She rolled her eyes and when she tried to move out of his embrace, he only tightened his arms around her and tucked her head under his chin. "Oh no you don't. You're staying right here, sweetheart. "