Her fingers curled further into my shirt, and she sighed softly against my lips, and I drew back just enough to meet her eyes. They were soft and dark and entirely steady, looking up at me with a trust so unguarded it made my chest ache in a way that had nothing to do with wanting her and everything to do with knowing I hadn’t yet earned that look.
She deserved to know. She deserved the full picture. The thought was there, clear and insistent, and I looked at her in the low light of the bedroom with the river outside and her hands in my shirt and everything I felt for her pressing outward from every direction at once.
And then something else moved through me, quieter than the guilt but steadier than it, too. The thought that what I felt for her—standing here, right now, in this room—was larger than the job. Larger than the fear of what came after I told her. Larger than any version of the future I’d been trying to protect by keeping it to myself. I had spent a long time building a life I could carry alone, and she had walked into it and made alone feel like the wrong size, and maybe that was the thing I should have been paying attention to all along. Maybe what was between us was not something that would break under the weight of the truth. Maybe it was the kind of thing that was strong enough to hold it.
But not tonight. I would tell her tomorrow, in the daylight, with enough time to say it properly and answer everything she needed to ask.
I looked at her for a long moment in the low light of the bedroom, and something shifted in me that had been restless for weeks.
I had been treating the job and Cara as two things on a collision course, two forces I was going to have to navigate between eventually. Emmett had told me twice now to just tell her.She’s going to find out, he’d said, with the patient certainty of a man who had known me long enough to watch me make things harder than they needed to be.Tell her before it becomes something she has to forgive.
He wasn’t wrong. I knew he wasn’t wrong.
But standing here right now, I made myself a promise instead. If I told her about the job and couldn’t live with it, I would walk away from it. Simple as that. Emmett would argue, and I would let him argue, and then I would walk away. Thinking about the job had given me purpose when I needed it badly. Cara gave me something the job never had and never would, and if it came down to a choice, I already knew which way I fell.
There would be no problem. I would tell her soon. And if the worst happened, I would choose her.
I pulled her closer and let myself stop thinking about it entirely.
Then I hesitated, rethinking, yet again, my choices. “Cara, we should talk?—”
“Don’t ask me if I’m sure,” she whispered.
“I was thinking about it. But there’s more?—”
“Don’t. I’m here because I want this. I want you.” She kissed me again, harder this time, her hands fisting my collar and pulling me closer. “I don’t want to talk anymore,” she breathed against my mouth. “I just want you.”
The words sent heat rushing through me. “Then let’s get in bed,” I murmured, voice low as I removed her glasses and set them by the books on my dresser.
I walked her slowly backward, our mouths never parting. When the backs of her knees met the bed, she sat and gazed up at me in the soft gray light.
I knelt before her on the mattress. Cupping her face in both hands, I kissed her forehead first—the gesture that had always belonged to us—then her temple, the corner of her mouth, and finally her lips, slow and deep. She leaned back onto the quilt, and I followed, her hair spilling across my pillow.
Her sweater felt impossibly soft under my palms as I traced the curve of her waist and hips. When my thumbs brushed the bare skin just above her jeans, her breath hitched. I paused, giving her space.
“May I?” I asked quietly.
She nodded, eyes never leaving mine. “Yes.”
She sat up enough to pull the sweater over her head herself and let it fall to the floor. I kissed her collarbone, the hollow of her throat where her pulse raced, the warm slope of her shoulder. My lips trailed lower, pressing open-mouthed kisses along the gentle swell of her breasts just above the edge of her pink cotton bra. She shivered beneath me, her fingers threading gently into my hair as her body arched toward my mouth.
I reached behind her and unclasped her bra with careful hands. She let it slide down her arms, watching me with quiet courage. I lowered my head again, tasting the soft skin of her breast, circling her nipple with my tongue until it tightened under my touch. A soft, breathy sound escaped her, and her grip in my hair tightened.
“Jasper…”
I moved to the other breast, giving it the same slow, reverent attention while my hand skimmed down her side, over the curve of her hip. When I reached the waistband of her jeans, I looked up at her.
“Are you sure?” I asked, voice low.
“I’m sure,” she said, steady and certain. “I want this. I want you.”
She lifted her hips so I could slide her jeans down her legs. As the fabric fell away, I kissed the inside of her knee, then higher along the sensitive skin of her inner thigh. She trembled under my mouth.
I shed my flannel shirt under her watchful gaze, then stood briefly to remove the rest of my clothes. When I returned to the bed, she reached up and placed both hands on my bare chest, her palms warm against my skin.
“You’re so warm,” she whispered.
I hooked my fingers into the waistband of her panties and looked up at her for permission. She gave a small nod, cheeks flushed. I drew them slowly down her legs and settled between her thighs, pressing soft kisses along the inside of each one before parting her gently.
