My throat aches, and my own heart twists, half with hope and half with agony.
“Leaving you was wrong. It felt wrong. Feels wrong now. I just didn’t know what else to do.”
Relief. Oh, fuck, the relief as I reach for her. “Give me this chance, and I’ll never give you cause to doubt again. I promise you things will be different.”
“That’s just it, Oliver. I’ve come to realize that people don’t change.” She looks sad as she brushes the backs of her fingers across my cheek. “Their masks just slip a little.”
“No, that’s not true.” I haul her closer, pulling her body flush with mine, my thoughts thundering, even as her eyes soften with a tender warmth.
“Oliver.” My name is a soft breath on my cheek. “Your masked slipped. You were showing me glimpses of who you were all along. You’re not just Oliver Deubel, the autocratic, blackmailing, asshole tycoon. You’re also the man who loves me beyond anything else.”
“Eve.” Pure joy floods through me, my arms fusing in their hold. “Oh, God. Eve.”Finally.“I love you so much.”
“I know,” she whispers, her eyes bright and wild, glimmering like stars in the night sky.
Our mouths meet. A touch. A slide. It’s everything.
“Why didn’t you come home?” I demand, taking her face between my hands.
“I needed space. Maybe I needed you to come for me. And you did.”
“I’ve got the mosquito bites to prove it.”
Laughing, she buries her face in my chest. I hold her tight, screw my eyes tighter. “I’m so sorry—I must stink. But I’m not letting you go. Not now, not ever.”
Her laughter trembles, tears fall, as she pulls me to the tiny bed. Our legs tangle, and my heart feels fit to burst when I tip her chin. Brush her cheek, stare into the face of my everything. She is perfection and sees me, loves me despite my flaws. Fuck. Love might be the ultimate risk, but I understand now why people seek it, fucking die for it. The payoff is sublime. The connection ...
And then her hand slides between us and connects with something else.
“Here?” It’s not really a question, more a husky confirmation.
“Note how I pulledyouontomybed?”
“I love a decisive woman.”
“Oh, yes, you do.”
“But darling, I have one last confession to make before you can have your wicked way.”
She groans and drops her head back to the mattress.
“I’ve done something.”
“Please don’t say I have to get Pieter to shoot you. Not after you’ve come all this way.”
“Pieter?” My gaze shifts briefly. “I thought the other one must’ve been Tucker.” I give my head a quick shake. “Actually, I don’t want to know. I don’t care what passed between the two of you.”
“Between me and Tucker?”
“Not my business.”
“You’d still have me?”
“In a heartbeat. Though the first time ofhaving youmight only last ninety seconds.”
“That’s the best you’ve got?” she whispers, drawing my lips down to hers. “Because Tucker is a hunk of loving no girl can resist.”
“Eve.”
