And he’d told her he loved her.
Maybe that’s why Faith invited him to share her bed that night. It had been a big decision on her part, but it was the natural progression of things. Not that Kieran seemed to be expecting anything. Other than that earth-moving kiss he’d given her earlier, he’d done nothing to pressure her into anything further than snuggling beneath a blanket. He wanted to, at least physically; there was no mistaking the blatant evidence of his arousal. And as she had such strong feelings for him, it seemed like the right thing to do.
He agreed easily enough, sliding in behind her fully-clothed, but made no move to do anything further. His arm came around her waist and pulled her body against his. She waited, holding her breath, expecting his hand to caress a few inches above or below where it splayed across her abdomen; to feel light kisses along the sensitive skin of her neck or the grind of his hardened length against her backside. Yet he did none of that, settling her in to fit all of his hard planes and dips and nothing more.
“Kieran,” she asked in the darkness. “Don’t you want to...?” She let her question hang in the air; she couldn’t bring herself to say the words. The invitation had been her not-so-subtle hint. Perhaps he had misunderstood?
“More than you can possibly imagine,” Kieran breathed, his breath a sensual caress behind her ear. He pulled her closer, pressing his hips against her so there would be no doubt. “But you’re not ready for me yet, Faith.”
Her body didn’t agree, screaming protests in the form of a radiating ache deep in her center, but her inner self – the one who guarded the securely locked chamber of her deepest thoughts and feelings - was nodding emphatically.
“You seem very certain of me,” she said.
“I am,” he said simply, without a trace of arrogance. “You are my croie, Faith, and I am yours. I will always be able to sense what you are feeling, even if I don’t know your exact thoughts. You will be able to do the same for me, but first you must truly accept this connection we have between us. And when you do, it will be nothing less than magical. Until then, I will just hold you and try to convince you what you are to me.”
His croie? Her? Earlier he had said he loved her, and that had been a revelation. But for him to say that she was his soul mate? That shook her to the very roots of her foundation. Love was fleeting, but soul mates implied a much deeper, unbreakable type of bond; one that, once forged, could never be broken.
She didn’t know what to say to that. It seemed... unbelievable. Too much for her to even contemplate. And he was right. There was no way she could simply accept that and believe it. Not when he just blurted it out like that. Not when she was tucked in his arms, pressed against that fabulous physique that would scatter her thoughts on a good day.
And definitely not while her mind ran rampant with naughty fantasies arising from that especially large, rigid part of him currently nestled against her behind.
Yet he wouldn’t take advantage of her, even though he could, easily. It was unnerving, in a way, that Kieran seemed to know more about what she needed than she did sometimes. And he was right. Though he claimed that he knew she loved him, she had not yet uttered the words herself. Hadn’t confirmed them in any way, in fact, unless he saw her lack of resistance to his care as an unspoken affirmation of sorts.
The fact that it was true was completely irrelevant. She did love him. She’d come to that same, inescapable conclusion herself. So the question then became, why was she unable to say what she knew in her heart to be true? When she knew that is what he wanted to hear?
The answer was simple: she was afraid. Afraid of being wrong. Of opening herself up to love and hope and being devastated again. She had thought she loved Nathan Longstreet, but she had been wrong about that. It had been nothing more than an adolescent crush based on a handsome face and lies; the attention given to a na?ve young girl by a privileged high-school star who saw her as a temporary, disposable fling. Stupidly, she had thought Nathan cared for her, too.
She had also believed that her family loved her enough to forgive her transgressions, to help and support her. Believed it right up until the time she came home from school to find a raggedy old cloth-covered suitcase packed with a few meager belongings waiting for her near the door and those words she would hear in her mind forever: Get out. You are no longer welcome here, whore.
Every time she had believed in love, she had been wrong.