Page 53 of Coming Home

I hadn't planned on letting the words escape. But they were the absolute truth. My eyes were failing. Everything was going soft at the edges. But not her. Never her.

Her chin trembled violently, her hands rising between our chests until her small fists found the wet fabric of my shirt. She gathered the charcoal cotton in her fingers, pulling me down with a sudden, desperate strength.

"I'm so terrified," she whispered against my collarbone.

"I've got you," I murmured, my hands finding her waist, clamping down like iron hoops. "I'm right here."

"I'm scared that if I finally stop running... every single monster catches up."

"Then let them catch up, Em. I will be standing exactly next to you when the line crosses."

She looked up at me then, and her eyes were blue, wet, and wide open in a way I had never witnessed in all our years together—she was terrified, she was exposed, she was beautiful, and she was mine.

I had spent my entire existence waiting for her to look at me exactly like this.

Her fists tightened on my wet shirt, giving one final pull.

And I went.

Her mouth met mine in the amber light, and the entire world outside the motel room ceased to exist.

CHAPTER 18

Emma

His mouth was still on mine when the world outside that claustrophobic motel room stopped mattering.

I didn't know who crossed the final border. I didn't know if it was his heavy, callused hands anchoring me to the earth or my own desperate fists dragging him into my atmosphere, but the slow, agonizing orbit we'd been stuck in for years suddenly collapsed under its own gravity. His shirt was soaked from the rain, my terrycloth robe was dangerously thin, and the scorching heat radiating from his skin made my breath hitch.

I was done. I was so utterly, beautifully done with being careful.

His fingers found the knot of my robe belt. He didn't pull it—not yet. He paused, his broad knuckles resting against my waist, his forehead pressed so hard against mine I could feel the frantic, heavy thrum of his pulse. His breath came in ragged, hot puffs, mingling with mine in the space of a single heartbeat.

"Tell me to stop, Emma," he commanded, his voice a low, gravelly vibration that sent a violent shiver straight down my spine. "Tell me right now, or I'm taking everything."

"Don't stop; I want this. I want you." I gasped against his lips.

He pulled the knot. The heavy fabric parted, falling away from my shoulders, and the cool, air-conditioned draft of the room slammed into my bare skin. Instantly, every horrific defense mechanism James had beaten into my psyche over the last three years flared to life.

Cover up. Hide the flaws. Retreat into the shadows.

Don't let the light touch the hips, the stomach, the fullness of the thighs that the medication had altered.

A sudden, sharp panic seized me, and I flinched, my arms flying up to close the robe.

But Ralph was already there. His massive hand caught my wrist mid-air—his grip fierce yet gentle, trapping my pulse point against his palm.

"Don't," he murmured, his gaze locking onto mine with an intensity that burned hotter than the humid air outside. He wasn't looking at my body with judgment; his navy-blue eyes were drilling directly into my soul, so dark they looked like midnight. "Look at me, Ems. You're absolutely breathtaking."

The bone-deep conviction in his voice went straight to my core, freezing the shame in my veins. He wasn't trying to be gentle or therapeutic. He was stating a fact—directly, leaving no room for doubt.

My trembling fingers found the top button of his soaked shirt. One. Two. Three. The wet cotton ripped apart under my palms, exposing the broad, sculpted chest I'd spent weeks pretending to ignore. He shrugged the wet fabric off his shoulders, and it hit the floor with a wet slap.

Then there was nothing left but skin, the roaring heat of our breath, and the thunderous beat of the downpour against the windowpane.

He claimed my mouth again, but the tenderness was gone, replaced by a blazing, primitive passion that made my knees weak. His lips slid from my mouth to the corner of my jaw, trailing a path of fire down the column of my neck, finding the precise spot where my blood was racing. His hands slid the robe off my arms until it pooled in a white cloud around my ankles. I stood before him exposed, stripped of my armor, with nothing between us but need.

His large hands began a slow, agonizingly thorough inventory of my skin. His palms traced the curve of my collarbone, the slope of my shoulder, the soft indentation of my waist. He didn't touch me like I was broken. He didn't handle me with caution. He gripped me like I was a real, living, breathing woman he had been starving for. Every touch was an eviction notice to the ghosts of my past, burning away every apology James had ever extracted from me.