“I didn’t fall.” My thumb traces the apple of her cheek. “I glided into loving you. Somewhere between the late-night callsand the lake house, it happened. Smoothly. Easily.” I smile. “I just floated right into it.”
Her eyes glisten in the low light, her fingers curling into my shoulder.
“I love you, DK. Not ‘too,’ not ‘also.’ I just love you.” Her voice stays steady, but I feel the slight tremor in her body. “It wasn’t a single moment. It was all of them. Every way you show up for me. Everything you do. Everything you are.”
Emotion swells thick in my throat as I draw her closer. From our first night at the hotel to this exact moment, everything we’ve shared has acted like tiny, invisible stitches. They’ve threaded us together, intertwining our pasts and our lives into a brand-new shape—the shape of us.
It’s an empowering kind of love. It doesn’t demand that we lose ourselves or sacrifice who we are. Instead, it honors the fact that we’re two separate pieces, each completely whole on our own, but infinitely better together. And that’s what makes us stronger.
That’s our unbreakable bond.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Rayne
The sheets feel like a cozy cocoon, warmed by the heat of my man beside me.
I gaze up at DK’s sleeping face. It’s all masculine planes offset by a softness around the edges. He told me he loved me. I already knew it even without the words—his actions had been saying it for weeks—but hearing it out loud turned quiet certainty into a bright, ecstatic thrill.
Voices and movement drift up from downstairs, cutting through my haze of happiness and reminding me where we are.
“DK,” I whisper, trying to slip out of his hold, but his strong arms tighten instinctively around my waist.
He hadn’t taken anything to help him sleep last night, but he’s out cold, which makes me hate to wake him. I know restful sleep is still a rare luxury for him. But the alternative of getting caught together in his childhood bed is not the kind of impression I’m trying to make.
“DK.” I gently shake his shoulder.
He grunts, muttering something garbled, without waking.
I bite down on the meaty part of his bicep.
That gets his eyes open.
“You’ve got to go.” I push at his chest. “You weren’t supposed to stay here all night.”
“So that wasn’t a fuck-me bite?” He smiles drowsily as he cups my breast, plumping it in his hand while swiftly hardening against my thigh.
“Stop that,” I hiss, though it comes out closer to a moan. “Your family is downstairs, probably wondering where we are.”
“Damn, you’re sexy when you’re flustered.”
“DK, I’m not playing.” I pull his hand away. “We can’t do this now.”
“But we’re already here, naked and everything.” He nuzzles into my neck, his beard a dense, arousing rasp.
But I hold strong. “Think of Gogo.”
That stops him cold. He lifts his gaze to mine. “You really know how to deflate a man.”
“Desperate times.” I laugh. “Now go.”
“Fine. Tell me you love me first.”
“I love you.” I smack a quick kiss to his lips, then shove him off the bed.
He catches his balance and stands in all his fine-ass glory, grinning at me. It takes Olympic-level restraint not to drag him right back down onto this mattress. Instead, I lock him out of the bathroom while I shower. I hear him in there afterward and try not to picture his soapy body as I wrestle my curls into some semblance of cooperation. I hadn’t worn my bonnet last night, so they are in need of extra moisture and patient care, which I don’t have time for right now. So I twist them into a messy bun that works with my outfit: denim shorts and a gauzy smock top that has a nice float to it, rocking that boho look.
When I reach the kitchen, it feels like the definition of Sunday morning. Birds sing through the open window, andoutside there’s the steady hiss of the hose as Angelo waters the lawn. Naledi and Gogo stand at the stove cooking, and DK—who clearly made it downstairs first to save me any embarrassment—is already making coffee, dressed in shorts and a T-shirt that hugs his chest and arms just right.
