“I don’t know if I can do this.” She gestured back and forth between the two of them. “With everything else I’ve got going on with Junior, with the dreams, with work and money.”
Was she trying to tell him the bond growing between them was over? He had trouble breathing. His heart had trouble beating. “What do you mean?”
“Are you going to make me say it?”
“Yeah.” If she didn’t say it, he wasn’t sure twenty guesses would give him an accurate answer.
“I thought there was something special between us. But you were only protecting me.”
“You think the only reason you’re here is so I can protect you?”
She nodded, her lip pushed out in a deeper pout.
He cupped her face in his hands and then waited for her gaze to find his. “You’re here because I need to be near you. You’re here because I couldn’t leave the diner last night without you. You’re here because I need you in my life to feel normal.”
I need you.
Fuck. He sounded like a toddler with separation issues, but the words had flowed out of him on a wave of swear-on-a-holy-book truth.
“You need me?” Her gaze searched his face with all the thoroughness of a polygraph machine.
“I do.” He couldn’t have lied to her—about this. He’d already committed the sin of lie-by-omission too many times with her.
She reached up to him, placing her cool hand against the tattoo on his cheek. Reality shifted. Time got lazy and loitered along. He lost himself in her eyes—in the silver flecks swirling against the midnight-blue irises, like stars forming the mythical constellations aligning to tell their story—hers and his. A story of something eternal that had no name but was vast beyond time and place and reason.
A swell of silky heat effervesced through his veins.
Her hand slid from his tattoo into his hair. The vision, the trance, whatever it was, vanished and all he felt was the gentle tug of her hand on the back of his head, pulling him to her mouth.
The sweet pressure of their lips touching was a beautiful death—the ending of one thing, so another even more magnificent kiss could be birthed by their tongues thrusting wildly against each other.
The taste of her exploded in his mouth, permeated the air around them, surrounding him with the essential essence of her. Desire zinged along his nerve endings, converged, and swelled in his groin.
She wrenched his T-shirt from his jeans and slipped her hands inside, smoothing them up his chest, down his sides. His heart drop-kicked to his groin, back to his chest, down to his groin. He wanted more, more, more.
He tore his mouth from hers and ripped the shirt over his head. Anticipation heated his skin. Only her touch would soothe him.
But her attention wasn’t focused on him; it was zeroed in on his chest. The tattoo. He stood still, let her stare her fill. The artwork was complicated, not the kind a thing a person could take in on a glance.
“Who are they?” she asked.
“Us. The us that was before.” He didn’t know why he said that, but the truth of it resonated deeply within. Taking the words back would’ve been blasphemous.
She sat up, moved to the edge of the bed, and touched the tattooed outline of the male figure. Up the male’s calves, over his buttocks, his shoulders to his head. She caressed the male’s cheek as if he were in the image of a loved one. Damn, if he didn’t almost feel her stroking the skin of his actual cheek.
Goose bumps covered his skin. He was never cold. Never. But now he felt feverish and freezing at the same time. Skin chilled. Insides sweltered. Dick burning with a need for her cooling touch. As if she’d read his mind, she released the button of his jeans and wrangled down the zipper. His erection scraped against the metal—a perverse pleasure.
He stepped back, kicked off his boots, shucked his jeans. In nothing but the raw, he stood in front of her, not moving. He wanted this to be about more than just fucking. He wanted this to be about her. About showing her the depth and breadth of his feelings, so she would know she would never have to be alone again. “You’re in charge.”
She cocked her head ever so slightly, almost as if she were listening to the words he hadn’t spoken.
“Take my clothes off.” She stood in front of him. Waiting.
Maybe he should be nervous—he was a thirty-three-year-old virgin. But this felt destined. Written in the fucking stars in her eyes.
His hands were as steady as those of a seasoned brain surgeon. He reached for her leggings and pulled them down her seven-mile legs. Those legs… How would it feel to have them wrapped around him? Rapture. He pulled her sweater over her head. She wore a simple white bra and white panties. Nothing fancy. And yet they were sexier than any fantasy.
“What’s next?” He wasn’t certain he had a voice when he spoke.
“Bra and panties.”
To his ears, her words were disjointed, but his eyes saw her heart reflected in her face, and his nose smelled her honeyed musk. He drew the scent in and savored it.
He didn’t remember taking the last of her clothes off, but he must’ve because she stood in front of him. Naked. Beautiful.
Her breasts were capped with raspberry-colored nipples. Would they taste like raspberry or honey or some erotic flavor uniquely their own?
The sharp ripple of her ribs demarcated the plane of her stomach. The short-trimmed black hair between her legs… Fuck, the ability to think vanished.
With his mind’s camera he captured a picture of her and tucked it away, knowing it would be an image he would cherish until the last feeble beat of his heart. Before he’d met her, he’d resigned himself to being alone. To never sharing intimacy with a woman. But here she was—an eccentric combination of fragility, strength, and beauty. His miracle.
“It’s been awhile for me. You too?” She stepped closer. Only a foot separated them.
“Forever.” Nope. Hadn’t lied.