Another laugh bubbles out of me, but this one sounds dangerously close to a sob. “Youarea pain in the ass.”
“Yeah, well, so are you, Hollywood. We’re well matched.” He kisses me, hard and certain, his mouth on mine, his hands in my hair, and I kiss him back with everything I’ve been holding. Eighteen months of fear. Eighteen months of performing fine when I wasn’t fine, of smiling for cameras while cancer ate a hole in my chest, of rebuilding myself in silence because I was too proud to ask for help and too terrified to admit I needed it.
His tongue tangles with mine, and his hands slide down my back to the edge of my sweater. They slide under, palms warm against the small of my back, and I arch into him.
“I love you,” he says against my mouth, the words rough, like they were dragged up from the pit of his soul.
Dean Kinsella is a man who doesn’t say things he doesn’t mean.
And that’s when the tears start.
He pulls back just enough to look at my face and wipes my tears with his thumbs. His eyes are wet too, and that breaks something open in me I didn’t know was still sealed.
“I love you, too,” I say, and the words come out wrecked, snotty, the ugliest confession in the history of confessions. “I’ve been falling in love with you since the storm. Maybe before. I don’t know when it started. I just know it’s real and it terrifies me.”
“Good,” he says. “It should terrify you. It terrifies me, too.”
He kisses me again, softer this time, his mouth moving against mine with a tenderness that makes my chest ache. I grip the front of his shirt and hold on, because if I let go I might float away, and I have never in my life wanted to be anchored to something the way I want to be anchored to this man. His handsfind the hem of my sweater and pull it over my head. The cool air touches my skin. His eyes drop to my chest, to the scars, and the look in them is the same one I saw on the boat—reverence, not pity—and I believe him.
I believe him completely.
We undress each other. Not the hungry rush of the storm, not the careful exploration of the night he traced my scars. This is something else. Deliberate. Certain. His shirt hits the floor. My hands find the scar on his forearm, and I trace it with my fingertips the way he traced mine.
He lays me down on the quilt. The brass bed creaks. The house settles around us. Somewhere downstairs, a pipe knocks. Shea’s probably in the kitchen, making tea, solving whatever crisis the morning has handed her, and the normalcy of it—life continuing, repairs beginning, the world not ending because I made a mistake—feels like a gift I don’t deserve.
Dean’s weight settles over me. His skin is warm. His mouth finds my neck, my collarbone, the scar below my left breast, and he kisses it the way he did on the boat—slow, deliberate, like he’s reading a map he plans to memorize.
“You’re staying,” he says. Not a question. A fact.
“I’m staying.”
His hand slides between my legs. I’m wet. Have been since he pulled me against his chest. He finds me with his fingers, circles, presses, and the sound I make would embarrass me if anyone but him could hear it.
I reach for him. His cock is hard against my thigh. I stroke him once, twice, my grip firm, and he groans into my neck.
“Condom,” he manages and pushes away from me long enough to find the packet in his jeans on the floor. He tears it open, rolls it on, and I guide him to me.
He pushes in slow. So slow it burns. My body opens around him.
His eyes lock on mine. There’s a question in his eyes—like he’s asking if I’m sure, if this is really what I want—but he doesn’t voice it. He just waits, motionless, buried to the hilt inside me, his hands braced on either side of the pillow, giving me the power to move or stop, to say yes or no or everything in between.
I wrap my legs around his waist, pulling him closer, and that’s answer enough. The rest of the world disappears—no crowds, no angry phone calls from Malcolm, no craters in Shea’s garden or ghosts in my hotel room—just the two of us, the quilt creased beneath my back, the driftwood and brine in the air, and Dean moving inside me with a reverence that goes beyond sex.
I gasp as the angle changes, a hitch in his rhythm making my whole body shimmer. He brings his mouth to my shoulder; the scruff of his jaw rasps heat over my skin. I want to memorize the sound of his breathing, the little low noise he makes just before he loses control. I want to bottle the taste of him, the smell of him, the absolute certainty of him moving inside me and on top of me and with me, like our bodies always belonged together.
Somewhere, absurdly, I wonder if Shea can hear us, and then I don’t care, because Dean’s hand finds the back of my thigh, and he scoops me against him with each thrust.
I come with his name in my mouth and his body pressed against mine so completely I can’t tell where I end and he begins. He follows, his release shuddering through him, his face buried in my neck, his breath hot against my skin.
We lie there afterward, tangled in the quilt, and each other, and the room is quiet except for our breathing and the distant sound of gulls beyond the window.
Dean’s head rests on my chest. His ear pressed above my heart, listening to the beat. He traces idle patterns on my stomach—circles, figure-eights.
“The treasure hunters are still out there,” I say.
“Yep.”
“Malcolm’s still lying.”
