It hit me harder than any bullet ever could.
“I love you,” she said, quiet and serious and devastating.
I closed my eyes for half a beat.
“I love you,” I said back, “in ways that should concern us both.”
She shook her head, but the smile stayed.
And because I could see the exact moment where words had done all they could, I lifted her hand and pressed a kiss to her knuckles, then to her wrist, right over the bracelet.
“This time,” I said against her skin, “if there is ever a choice to be made, it will be ours.”
She looked at me for a long second, and when she finally answered, her voice was soft enough that I felt it more than heard it.
“Ours.”
I kissed her first.
Not carefully, not with the caution that had marked so much of the evening, but with the kind of quiet certainty that came only after a man had been given back something he had no business losing in the first place. One hand came up to cradle her face, the other settled at her waist, and when she leaned into me with a soft, answering sound against my mouth, something in my chest loosened so completely it almost hurt.
She kissed me back with everything she had held tight for too long.
The anger. The fear. The love.
I could taste the forgiveness she had not yet granted, the hope she was still trying not to feel, and it drove me half mad with gratitude. My hands moved of their own accord, sliding over the line of her back, her ribs, the curve of her hips beneaththat dress so carefully chosen, and when I found the zipper and slowly drew it down, I had to stop for one breath just to look at her.
God.
There were no words for the beauty of her, not that would do it justice, not that would not cheapen it by trying too hard. The only thing I knew for certain was that every time I thought I had seen the full damage Emily Hart could do to me, she found some new angle and left me speechless all over again.
I let the dress fall under my hands, inch by inch, watching her skin emerge, the softness of her, the way she looked at me like she knew exactly what she was doing and yet still felt the weight of being seen. It was enough to make my body go tight with want before I had even touched her properly.
“Beautiful,” I said, because that at least was true, even if it was not nearly enough.
Then I knelt.
I needed to touch her like this, needed to feel her above me and remind myself that she was here, that she came, that she was still willing to let me close despite every good reason she had to keep me at a distance.
My hands slid up the backs of her thighs slowly, learning her again through fabric and heat and the little tremor that ran through her when I kissed the inside of her knee. By the time I reached higher she was already breathing differently, and the knowledge that I could still do this to her, still draw that response from her body after everything, nearly undid me on the spot.
I took my time.
I wanted to.
Wanted her soft and shaking under my hands, wanted to hear my name from her mouth in that wrecked little voice that made me feel stronger and more humbled all at once. Everysound she gave me, every move of her hips, every instinctive reach of her fingers into my hair only made the need in me grow sharper, but I forced myself to stay with her, to keep the rhythm slow and deliberate and full of everything I hadn’t been able to say well enough with words.
By the time I carried her to the bedroom, I was trembling from the effort of wanting too much and still trying to make it beautiful for her.
I laid her down carefully, then stripped off my own clothes faster than dignity probably allowed. She watched me the whole time, and there was something open and warm and very nearly trusting in her expression that made my chest ache far worse than desire ever could.
When I came back over her, the first full press of her body under mine felt less like conquest than homecoming.
I kissed her throat, her collarbone, the soft swell of her breast, and let my hands move where they already knew to go, drawing her back toward that place where thought ceased and breath caught and nothing existed except the two of us. She opened for me so beautifully that I had to close my eyes and master myself before I entered her, because the relief of that first joining was almost more than I could bear.
“Emily,” I said against her mouth.
She answered by wrapping herself around me and pulling me closer.
