Bought For A Baby, Kept For A Lifetime-Chapter 273: Do You Love Me?

"Yes I did." She replied, her heartbeat growing faster.

"Did you like them?" He asked, tracing small invisible lines back and forth around her chin where his thumb laid.

"Your gift was a little bit...too extravagant, I don’t think I can keep them." She muttered whisperingly.

"If you refuse to take them, I’ll have them drowned in the ocean." He said so naturally, Anne was genuinely shocked.

"What?"

He smirked wickedly, "No one gets to use things that belong to my wife, if she doesn’t want them it can only be destroyed."

These days, whenever he said the word wife, it didn’t sound as If he was talking about a title on a contract, it sounded...real and that always made her heart have sweet flutters.

"But, that’s not what I was..."

He raised a brow as if nothing she said could convince him otherwise, in the end she no longer argued with him. That wasn’t what she wanted to ask him,

"Actually, those keychains..."

She had meant to bring up the topic about those three letters, thoughts of them were already driving her mind into epically needing to hear directly from him if those letters meant what she thought they meant, but while she was talking, a sharp buzzing sound cut her words short, Anne knew it was his phone ringing because her own phone was still lost somewhere in her bag where last night she hadn’t bothered to fish it out. But if he heard his phone ringing, he made no indication that he actually did.

He had heard a hint of what she intended to ask and his eyes seemed to glimmer with a strange light.

"What about the keychains, sweetheart?" His voice had lowered, and a strange exciting tilt of his mouth made her heart lurch.

She froze at the form of address he suddenly used. And the words she had been about to ask seemed to have remained stuck on her tongue.

He seemed to take advantage of her momentary distraction, when his lips landed against her collarbone where his head had lowered abruptly just to lay a teasing kiss that made a shiver that had nothing to do with cold wrack through her whole body.

"Tell me Annelise, what got you curious about the keychains?" 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝙚𝔀𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝒐𝒎

He was warm everywhere he touched her, but his fingers seemed to carry tiny bolts of electricity that made her tremble, yet still want more. His fingers glided from her shoulders, grazing over the side of her breast causing her breath to hitch before sliding down and over her hip till he touched bare skin where the fabric of her night wear ended had hiked up her thighs, then he began to trail upwards again.

He seemed to enjoy teasing and lightly seducing her in this manner. Deliberately knowing his touch would stir something within her.

"I...the keychains...and those letters." The words became jumbled, she could hardly focus with his fingers moving everywhere.

He stopped his movements, raising his head from where it was buried in the crook of her neck, there was a glimmer of amusement and a glimmer of lust in his gaze.

The sharp insistent buzz of his phone was relentlessly filling the air, it would only stop for a second before it would start to buzz all over again. He continued to ignore his phone ringing, keeping his whole focus on her. It was so persistent, Anne felt the need to tell him,

"Your phone keeps ringing."

"We were talking about the keychains Annelise."

It stopped for a moment and continued to buzz again, Andrew’s teeth gritted and he speedily grabbed the phone which repeatedly interrupted their conversation, picking it up with a sharp, "What?" He snapped at whoever was on the phone without even checking the caller id yet. He knew it was a work call again, but he had so much he already wanted to tell her, so he decided to deal with the incessant calls first.

Anne could hear a voice speaking from Andrew’s phone because he was close to her but she couldn’t fully make out the words the person was saying, not that she intended to eavesdrop on his conversation but the insistent calls made her wonder if it was something extremely important.

The rest of what Andrew said was filled with calculated official terms, as he spoke on the phone, he playfully tangled her fingers with his, there was a relaxed look on his face, it was as if his whole attention was on her. He gave whoever he was talking to some instructions for a few minutes before hanging up.

He glanced down with a small smile at their joined hands, then back at her face and then leaned closer brushing a stray strand of her hair aside from her face, his thumb lingeringly caressing her skin. He rested his forehead against hers. She could feel a slight hesitation in him as if he wanted to say something to her but was contemplating where to start, before his lips moved and he said,

"Whenever you’re around me, I always feel..." He trailed off his words then picked up her hand softly laying it against his chest.

Anne could feel the steady thumping of his heart against her palm, the course warmth of his fingers holding her hand against his chest.

"I feel complete Annelise... there’s always been a gaping hole, right here but it’s filled when you’re near."

The rigid man he used to be had slowly melted away, Anne didn’t realize when it happened, but it did and somewhere in his eyes, something had replaced that coldness whenever he looked at her.

A sharp emotion rose up her throat, and for some reason, tears stung her eyes.

"I don’t know exactly when I started to want things from you, but I wanted things I never thought I someday would. I wanted to see you more, wanted to always keep you close even closer than you are right now,"

The warm whispers of his words washed over her like gentle breeze, Anne found herself smiling softly as she listened to him.

"It’s hard for me not to see you for long, it’s hard for me to think about other things without thinking about you. All these feelings...I didn’t know where they were coming from at first, but I realized they came from here." He pressed her hand on his chest even tighter.

Anne hadn’t expected to hear him say all these things, she couldn’t regulate her breathing as she heard every word. Her heart which had once been a gentle and steady drumbeat now skipped a frantic rhythm, threatening to burst free from her chest.

"I didn’t know what to do with these feelings so I kept them all locked away but not anymore. I’m telling you all this Annelise, because when I make something mine, I never have the intention of letting go. Not my company, not my victories," his gaze intensified, holding hers solidly, "And most importantly not my wife."

He removed his hand from hers against his ches, cupping her face, "You heal me Annelise, you heal me of everything I run away from. You’re mine right now, and I want you to continue to be mine."

Anne’s lips trembled and he quietly searched her eyes, waiting if she had something to say. In that moment, time seemed to stand still, and a whirlwind of emotions all surged through her.

Andrew had watched stock shares fluctuate and fall to dangerously red lines before but he had never felt his heart beating so chaotically, he was nervous...and it wasn’t a familiar feeling.

Would she...want him too?

When she finally spoke, she only asked a single question,

"Do you love me Andrew?"

Those letters had said it, and she hadn’t believed it, his words just now said it, and she realized what the look in his eyes was which she had felt changed, when the coldness he used to look at her vanished, love had replaced it, he looked at her with love in his eyes but she hadn’t dared to name the emotion. Now she wanted to hear it.

He nodded as a reply to her question. He had already kept his heart bare to her, revealed feelings that had tormented him but could have been a source of happiness if he’d only accepted it.

"You haven’t said it." At her words, he realized he indeed hadn’t said the words whose message he had cryptically given her as keychains.

Maybe it was because he was experiencing the unfamiliar feeling of being nervous, but he hesitated a few seconds before voicing words he felt, tried to run away from but ended up catching up to him,

"I love you." He said whisperingly like a devoted vow.