I pull Stella tighter against me, and with the caress of her moan against my mouth, the relief I feel catches fire and burns into need.
And hunger.
Andnow.
The kiss becomes wild. It’s her and it’s me, and suddenly I feel it. The ache I’ve been carrying in my chest? The unbearable pull? She’s felt it too. She feels it for me.
And the moan that rises up from the deepest place inside of me—made of remorse and recognition and requiting—is so loud, I startle morning doves in a nest overhead. We jump at their offended, warbling trills.
And then Stella grabs my wrist. “C’mon,” she whispers.
She leads me to the back of the house, through the wrought iron gate, and then we’re climbing the porch steps to her bedroom’s French doors.
I stop. “Stella, wait.”
She looks up at me, and in the golden glow of her windows, I see all the things I don’t want to see.
Doubt. Doubt in herself. As if she doesn’t know how amazing she is. How lucky anyone in her life is just to be in her orbit.
Desire. Desire for me. And I can’t lie to myself. Idowant to see it. But if it weren’t there, I could walk away.
I would walk away.
I’d make myself.
But the most powerful thing I see in the look she’s giving me is her bravery. It blazes there in her eyes behind the doubt and desire.
I know my Stella. I know how hard it is for her to trust. To surrender. To let someone in. And here she is choosing me?
What if I can’t be the kind of man who deserves her?
What if I hurt her?
“Should we do this?” I ask, squeezing her hand, torn between warning her to say no and begging her to say yes.
She tilts her head to the side, and in her eyes is a kind of acceptance that sends a thrill of fear down my spine. “I don’t think we have a choice.”
And when she says it, I know she’s right. We have to go down this path. We have as much chance of avoiding it as the sun has of not rising tomorrow.
The last thing I want is to hurt Stella. I don’t know if that will happen. And I don’t know when. A month from now. A year from now. Or three years down the road. I don’t know if I’ll find myself right back where I was with Zoe—disappointing someone else who wants more than I can give. Only this time, I’d be disappointing Stella who I want to protect with every fiber of my being.
But I know if I walk away now, Iwillhurt Stella. Because she’s digging deep to reach out to me. And there’s no way I can turn my back on that.
And who am I kidding? That’s not why I can’t turn away. I want her. I want this. And like she said, being with her doesn’t even feel like a choice.
It feels like fate. Like the course of nature. The way magma is bound to crystalize. It’s just a matter of time.
“You’re right.” The words come out like a croak. I couldn’t sound more overcome if I tried.
She flashes me a smile that’s almost wicked before she spins to face her French doors. I hear a four-note beep on the keypad lock and the whir of the bolt sliding back. We slip inside.
“Lock that behind you, would you?” Stella whispers over her shoulder, moving on swift feet across her room. She reaches her open door where the sound of Livy and Pen’s voices in the kitchen filter through. But when she shuts the door softly and latches the locks, both the skeleton key at the knob and the sliding bolt Tyler recently installed, the room falls quiet.
Now all I can hear is the beating of my heart. I wonder if she can hear it too.
For all of her wicked smiling and come-what-may bravado, when Stella turns back to me, she looks nervous. Like she’s not so sure I’ll accept what she has to offer.
And, hell no.
