“I wanted to apologize—,” she began.
But he cut her off in a quiet voice. “I would like to go first if I may. So that I don’t pass out before I get out the words. Not that I don’t want to hear what you have to say, but I need to tell you something.”
Loren waited, lacing her fingers together before her.
He looked up at her, elbows on his knees, as he spoke. “Loren, I’m crazy about you. Since the moment I pulled away from you—like an idiot, might I add—I haven’t been able to get you out of my head. You’re all I think about.” He drew in a ragged breath. “You’re all I want.”
Loren’s eyes shone with tears. Her lips parted as she made to speak, but Darien held up a hand to tell her he wasn’t done yet.
“I need you to understand that what I did was only to keep you safe. I neverwantedto be away from you.” He shook his head at how ludicrous that sounded. What man in his right mind would want to be away from her? “That’s the last thing I could ever want. Until you came along, my life never made sense. You are the kindest thing that has ever happened to me. You are…you are my home. And I think it’s safe to say that my life would be a whole lot darker without you in it. You light up my life, Loren Calla.”
She stepped closer, and he spread his knees to accommodate her advance. As she took one of his hands into her own, he slid his thumb beneath the sleeve of her shirt and over the inside of her wrist, feeling the flutter of her pulse.
“What about whatIwant?” she whispered.
He’d been waiting days for her to ask this question. The relief he felt from hearing those words almost made him pass out. “Arthur asked me the same thing. It seems I’m the only idiot who didn’t think to include you in making a decision about this.” He smirked, but the last thing he felt was amused.
Her pulse fluttered beneath his thumb, and even though he could hear every thump of her heart without the contact, he found reassurance in feeling it directly beneath his skin.
“And what are we deciding?” She bit that lower lip he’d had trouble looking away from since that fateful day he’d met her in that alley; since she’d sat across from him at Rook and Redding’s and sipped on the cherry cola she’d ordered.
Since she’d walked into his world and flipped it upside down. Or maybe it was finally right-side up, and he’d been upside down all his life. She’d fixed things he hadn’t even realized were wrong, and he…he needed her.
“I decided,” Darien breathed, hooking his free arm around her waist, and pulling her right snug between his legs, “to letyoudecide.”
Her breathing hitched as she steadied herself with a hand on his chest. “And what happens if you change your mind? What happens when you decide again that this isn’t what’s best for me?” Concern shone in her eyes, and he hated himself for having put it there.
“You’re the only person who can decide what’s best for you, Loren Calla. No one else.”
Loren took the hand she had resting against his chest and ran it through his hair. He groaned at her touch, his head tilting back, eyelids slipping shut.
“I think,” she began in a breathy voice that had him looking up at her again, “thatyouare what’s best for me, Darien Cassel. Where you are is where I belong. And I don’t think you could ever convince me otherwise.” He thought he’d never hear those words, and he’d worried for so many days that he’d smothered the precious spark between them.
“Then you’re going to have a hell of a time keeping me away from you, sweetheart.”
His hand slipped off her wrist, pressing into the dip at the small of her back. He drew her into his lap, so that she was straddling him, those glorious legs on either side of his thighs. And suddenly they were back in the truck bed, finishing what they’d started under a sky full of stars.
Their mouths came together with unguarded passion, his tongue claiming hers with savage and unrelenting strokes. The taste of her filled his mouth, and he groaned as he gathered a fistful of hair at the back of her head, pulling her body harder against his.
Loren was the one who broke the kiss first. “Darien,” she gasped. “I’m sorry for everything. You didn’t deserve to be yelled at—”
“Apology accepted,” he said. “Now use that beautiful mouth for something better.”
He tipped them both back onto the bed, where she stayed astride him, her fingers flying to his belt buckle.
“Wait,” he managed to bite out when she came up for air.
“Don’t youdaretell me to wait again, Darien Cassel,” she snapped, though her fingers had stilled on the buckle.
It wasn’t exactly what he meant, but he almost laughed at the irritation in her breathy voice. It was adorable. And…fuck.This gorgeous girl was trying to take off his pants and he’d just told her towait.Had he finally lost his mind?
But he didn’t want it to happen like this—not from some false sense that she owed him for the bargain he’d struck with the Widow. And as much as he would love to lay back and let her ride him for hours, it wasn’t how this should happen. Not for someone as special as Loren—not this soon, after everything.
“That’s not what I meant,” he said, but she swallowed his words as she came in for another kiss. “As much as I’d love for you to tear off my pants, you don’t owe me anything—”
But she told him to shut up by kissing him again. That kiss snapped his self-control, and this time it washishand that went to the button onhershorts—but he stopped himself from springing it open, fingers instead snaking below the seam at the front, his knuckles brushing against the plane of her stomach.
“I want you,” Loren said, the words wild gasps. “For better or for worse.”
