My eyes close because there it is.
Not the words by themselves, but the way he says them. No cruelty wrapped around them or goodbye sitting beneath them. No sharp edges waiting to slice them away before I can hold onto them.
Simply love. Given. Mine if I choose to. And I do. God help me, I do.
“I love you too,” I whisper.
Zane goes still, every inch of him frozen. His hand freezes against my face and his breath stops. His whole body locks as if those four words have struck something so deep and so long undefended that he cannot move in the wake of their impact.
I open my eyes.
The expression on his face almost ruins me. It is the look of a man who has just been handed back something he had quietly, privately decided he had no right to ask for again.
“Sky.”
I shake my head, smiling through tears. “Don’t make it weird.”
His mouth twitches. “You told me you love me.”
“Yes. Be normal about it.”
His thumb shifts and moves across the scar above my eyebrow.
He kisses it softly—as if it is something worth kissing—and it moves through me in a way that has nothing to do with want and everything to do with the fact that he is the only person who has ever looked at that scar and not seen damage. He has always looked at it that way, as if it is part of the whole me and not something to hide.
Nobody else has ever done that.
I watch his face as he pulls back. The way his eyes drop to the scar for one more second before they come back to meet mine and his mouth comes down to my lips. Soft at first. So soft it hurts. A careful press of lips, as if he is still afraid that one wrong move will send the whole moment scattering across the floor next to the apple that dropped when I was angry with him and put the bag down.
I let him have that first kiss. That careful one. Before I fist my hands in his shirt and pull him harder against me.
He groans into my mouth. The sound moves through me, hot and familiar, and every part of me that has been waiting wakes all at once without apology.
He kisses me more deeply, his hand sliding from my face into my hair, the other closing around my waist and pulling me flush against him. The first hard press of his body against mine knocks the air clean from my lungs in the best possible way.
I kiss him back until there is no space left between us. Until the counter bites into my lower back, his fingers tighten at my waist, and mine slide under his jacket, pushing it off his shouldersbecause there are suddenly too many layers between the truth and my skin, and I am done tolerating that.
The jacket lands on the floor behind me. His mouth leaves mine and moves to my jaw, and afterward to my throat.
I tilt my head before he asks. His mouth is still on my throat as his hands find the hem of my shirt.
He pulls it up and over my head, dropping it somewhere on the floor around our feet. He steps back and looks at me. His eyes move over my skin slowly, taking their time, dragging over every inch of me with the focused attention of a man who knows exactly what he is looking at and intends to stare for as long as he wants.
“Fuck,” he says, his jaw tightening.
I reach for his shirt.
He lifts his arms and I pull it over his head. I drop it and put my hands flat on his chest, feeling the muscle, the ink, the scars, and the hard, steady beat of his heart under my palms. I stare at him and he looks at me.
“You have no fucking idea,” he says voice low, “of what you look like right now.”
I don’t say anything.
His hands move to the button of my jeans. He does it slowly, holding my gaze. The zip follows and he pushes the denim down my hips but does not take it further. He just lets it sit there, before crouching in front of me and unlacing one shoe, pulling it off, before moving to the other. His eyes shift to my face from down there and it makes my breath catch in my throat. He takes the jeans from my ankles and tosses them aside.
Leaning forward, he presses a slow, open-mouthed kiss to my pussy through the black lace. Wet enough that I feel its heat. I hold my breath as his hand rises and his fingers trace the lace, dragging it slowly against me.
“Fucking soaked,” he murmurs, more to himself than to me, his lips still pressed right there, breathing me in like he has all the time in the world. I close my eyes, my hips tilting forward without permission. The want for his tongue to push the lace aside and find my clit is almost unbearable.
