“It was not something I fully understood until I met you.”
He heard her small but definite gasp. Shane glanced sideways at Lacie. She was staring straight ahead, her expression unreadable in the muted lights of the dash. For several moments Shane thought he might have made a grave error. Everything he said was true, but perhaps Lacie wasn’t quite ready to hear it yet. He’d had plenty of time to get used to the possibility of a perfect mate, but it wasn’t so long ago he would have scoffed at the idea.
If their roles were reversed and Lacie had said something like that to him this early in their relationship, he wasn’t sure he would take it well, no matter how strongly he felt about her. Acceptance was a huge, but critical step. In retrospect, he probably should have asked if she believed in soul mates, too, before blurting out the depth of his feelings for her, but it was too late for that now.
By the time he pulled the sedan next to Lacie’s Passat back at the college parking lot, he was a nervous wreck. Lacie still hadn’t said a word. Hadn’t moved, really. He thought he might have seen her blink once or twice, but even that was questionable.
Ten years of military training and covert ops had done nothing to prepare him for dealing with anything like this. For a man so adept at reading people, he was suddenly completely at a loss to even venture a guess at what she was thinking.
He cut the engine and took a deep breath. There was nothing else for it. He was an idiot. Things were going so well. He should have just stuck to the traditional stuff. Flowers, little gifts, midnight phone calls and stolen kisses. He should have just been patient, allowing her time to grow accustomed to the idea of having him around before he dropped a bombshell like that on her.
Shane Callaghan, the soft-spoken, lethal special ops man stared unseeingly at the steering wheel, wondering how the hell he was going to fix this, when he felt the gentlest of touches on his arm. He turned, and his heart went from thumping wildly to nearly stopping completely. Lacie was looking at him, silvery moonlight and soft carriage lights playing across her beautiful face, her eyes impossibly large and blue and filled with... love.
“Did you mean that?” she said, her voice barely more than a whisper, but easily heard in the silence.
“Yes,” he said, his voice thick. “Every word.”
He watched her intently as a slow smile spread across her face.
And right there, in the parking lot of the university, Shane Callaghan kissed his croie with all of the passion of a man who had just found his heart.
Chapter Thirteen
“Do you still want coffee?” he asked sometime later, his head swimming dizzily as he finally broke their kiss.
“No,” she said, sounding every bit as dazed and breathless as he did. “I’ve got a better idea. Follow me.”
“Anywhere,” he breathed.
Lacie grinned and got out of the Lexus. The cool night air was a welcome shock to his senses; kissing Lacie was enough to make a man lose himself.
Shane followed her back to her place. It was a short distance, but it seemed interminable with her in another vehicle. He kept telling himself not to get his hopes up, that it was still too early to consider the kinds of things running through his mind.
His body didn’t listen. Every cell was alive and vibrating with hopeful anticipation. It was going to be ready for her, no matter what his mind said.
He was pretty proud of himself. He made it all the way to Lacie’s apartment without wrecking the car. He managed to get out of the car and walk – fairly normally, too, despite the crippling ache between his legs – over to hers and open the door for her. The smile she gave him made him weak in the knees, and when she entwined her fingers with his and started leading him to her apartment, his mouth went dry.
“Maybe I should say goodnight,” he said when she opened the door. If he went inside, he wasn’t sure he would be able to control himself. Everything about her called to him on a very base, primal level.
“Do you want to say goodnight?” she asked, rising to her toes and kissing beneath his jaw, down his throat, along his collarbone. Her lips were so soft, so warm, and when they touched him right there, the sensation rocketed throughout the rest of his body.
“No,” he said, his voice a strained whisper.
“Then don’t.”
A single tug on his hand and he was over the threshold. Seconds later, Lacie was locking the door and fastening the newly installed deadbolts.