“I don’t know. I don’t know what I can do here, with us. I don’t know what I can be and I don’t want to hurt you. I think—”
“Don’t.” He put his finger over her lips and curled his other hand around her neck, knowing she needed control like others needed air. “Don’t think. Just be with me. That’s all you need to do. You don’t have to know anything or decide anything. One day at a time. Nothing else will change. You’re not stepping off the line.
“No decisions. Nothing will change. You’ll work, you’ll go to school. You’ll stick to your plan. But don’t run away from what we have because you’re afraid. Or because of someone else’s mistakes.”
Her eyes searched his and he waited for what seemed like forever for her to agree. “Okay.”
Letting out a relieved sigh, he lowered his mouth to hers. After a long, lingering kiss, he lowered himself in front of her. “Get on.”
She did and he carried her the short distance left to the cabin. They made their way laughing, and he was grateful he could still make her laugh after the sudden strike of uncertainty he’d just seen in her eyes. His stumble up the steps had more to do with her teeth on his ear than him carrying her.
Paige got off his back in a slow, sensual slide, but he could still feel her body pressed against him. Her hands crept under his shirt and around to his stomach. His hand froze on the door to the cabin when her fingertips skimmed the waistband of his jeans. Thank God she was anxious, because he was desperate.
With extreme self-control, he covered her hand with his and somehow managed to get them both inside before it wandered any lower. Before the door clicked shut, his mouth was on hers. Before he’d flipped the dead bolt, his tongue swept inside and he tasted her, feasted on her.
“I missed you. This.” He tangled his fingers in her hair like an anchor.
She whimpered, trembling in his arms, her fingers digging into the back of his neck. With his mouth at her throat, he slipped a hand under her shirt. “I need you.”
He got rid of the shirt, then the bra, and went back to her mouth. Need and urgency mixed with desire and this new feeling that he needed her to belong to him, that maybe she already did.
They barely made it into the bedroom before her panties hit the floor. He laid her on the bed, shed his own clothes, then took a second. Completely naked, her chest rising and falling with every breath. “God. Look at you. You make me crazy.”
“In a good way?” she asked, a smile pulling at her perfect lips.
He levered himself over her, dipped his lips to just a breath from hers. “Yes. In a very good way.” The best. Then he proceeded to show her, starting at the top of her head and working his way down. He skipped her mouth so he wouldn’t lose himself in her kiss. And he would if he started there. He could spend hours with that mouth and never get enough. He sated himself with her breasts first, laving one nipple, then the other.
She moaned and moaned again, and her low sound of arousal drove him higher. And even though he wanted to be inside her with a desperation he’d never known, he went slowly, bringing her to the edge again and again. He wanted to give her so much pleasure that she’d know she belonged to him, that her body and heart would know only his. He grazed his teeth down her abdomen and lower, breathing in her scent. With his hands on her thighs, he held her open to him and in one long stroke of his tongue had her crying out his name.
By the time he pushed inside, they were both on fire, both damp with sweat.
And with every thrust into her sweet body, three words pulsed in his mind like the blood pounding through his heart.
I love you. I love you. I love you.
Chapter 24
Hours later, JT slipped out of bed. He should be exhausted and he was, but he couldn’t sleep. He walked through the cabin until he stood on the porch looking out at the dark. It must be nearing morning because the moon that had been so bright before was gone. He could barely make out the woods he knew began several yards from the cabin.
He wondered how Casey was, hoped she was sleeping soundly. He had a sudden urge to call his brother to make sure she was okay, but that would be crazy. If she wasn’t, Stephen would call him. Besides, that was something a parent would do and he wasn’t. He wasn’t her father. So why did he feel so strongly that he should be?
How could it ever be right for him to have it now when he hadn’t wanted it then? How could he want a child, this child, so badly when he hadn’t wanted his own?
What kind of person doesn’t want their own child?
He didn’t know. Or maybe he was afraid he did.
“Hey.”
He turned at the sound of Paige’s voice. Wearing his T-shirt that hung to mid-thigh, she crossed the short distance and slipped her arms around him.
“Hey.” He kissed her upturned face, feeling immediately lighter.
“Couldn’t sleep?”
“I thought I heard my phone, thought it might be Stephen.”
“Was it?”