“You…wrote a song about me?” she asked, sitting up now, her expression open and curious. His heart hummed at the sight.
He nodded. “It’s pretty rough. Actually, I finished it this morning, after I left you. I think it has great bones, but if it’s bad, you can tell me?—”
“Jamie,” Brinton said earnestly, looking straight at him, truly seeing him, as she always did. “Nothing you do—or write—could be bad. It’s impossible.”
How did he get so damn lucky to find her?
He nodded, injected with the courage to keep going. “All right, then. It’s called ‘Eyes on Me.’”
She tucked her legs beneath her, clasped her hands, and smiled at him like she’d waited for this moment her entire life. It felt like he had.
He pressed play.
The demo was raw but felt more real than anything he’d ever recorded. Her expression shifted from surprise to something more delicate as his stripped-down vocals and mewing guitar enveloped them.
He stared at one of the computer monitors to give off the illusion that he wasn’t losing his damn mind, wondering if she liked it. Or hated it so much that she’d run out of his house in disgust. After what felt like the longest three minutes of his life, the music faded out.
He’d never written a song explicitly about a woman he was committed to, because this was the first time he’dcommitted. To make Brinton the exception felt right. More than right. It felt inevitable.
Jamie’s attention shifted back to the couch, but she wasn’t there. Now, she stood directly in front of him. She nudged a tear from her cheek, a little puffy and glossy in the low light, his shirt a little rumpled as it inched up her thighs. Her braids hung loose, tumbling over her shoulders and chest with reckless abandon.
She never looked more beautiful.
“Jamie…I love it,” she whispered. “I can’t believe you did this for me.”
That’s all she could get out before he pulled her into his lap. Her thighs straddled his hips. Jamie wrapped his arms around her, like he’d rather be struck down dead than ever let her go.
Angling his jaw toward her, she kissed him hard, scorching him to the core.
“I’d do a lot for you, Bee,” he murmured through quick, desperate moans, unsatisfied with every second her taste wasn’t on his lips. His hands gripped her upper back, and her nipples grazed his bare chest through the well-worn T-shirt.
“I know,” she said urgently. When she tipped her head back, exposing her neck, he grazed the edge with his teeth until she rumbled against him.
Jamie was overwhelmed with gratitude. The song revealed to her, in the most intimate way he could, how she made him feel. How much he needed her in his life. And she had accepted him. He’d successfully carved out the rotten parts of himself.
He could still be a good man.
Pulling back, he cupped her face. “I wanna be yours. I wanna be so good to you.”
“Yeah, Jamie, you’re mine. Mine, mine, mine,” sheaffirmed, punctuating each word with a dizzying kiss. “And I’m yours.”
It was all he needed to hear. He dipped his hands underneath that threadbare shirt. He was eager to feel her supple skin, up and down her torso, but stopped beneath her breasts. He reveled in her frustrated whine.
She bunched the shirt over her head and flung it across the room.
“That’s my favorite T-shirt, you know,” he said, generously laving one peaked nipple with his tongue and rolling the other between his fingertips, just how she liked.
“Collateral damage,” she said, giggling.
She arched her chest forward, braced her hands against the arms of the chair behind her, and slowly rocked her body against the solid column in his shorts. Head tossed back and lips parted, she unleashed a succession of rolling moans. It made him shudder so hard that, for a second, he thought he’d come all over himself.
Apparently, old habits and such.
She pulled one of his hands from her ribs and slid it between her thighs.
His breath hitched.
“Oh, honey—fuck,” he groaned, the scalding heat and effortless glide amounting to a sexy sledgehammer to his frontal lobe. He cupped her like she was the most precious gift he’d ever received. But not so precious that he wasn’t eager to fuck her until there was nothing left but sensation.
