Page 287 of When a Soul Cries

I kissed her, and the wildness between us softened into something slower. Something that felt less like weeks of built-up tension and more like everything I’d been trying to tell her all night.

I wanted her.

Not for tonight.

Not because she needed me.

Her.

The woman.

All of her.

When we crossed that final line together, everything else fell away. I stayed close to her, paying attention to every shift in her expression, every time she pulled me closer, every whispered reassurance between us.

This was Sol.

The woman I’d been thinking about since Cash Market.

The woman whose baby had somehow wrapped me around one little finger.

The woman who had walked into my life when I wasn’t looking for anybody and had me thinking about bedtime routines, family dinners, babies and marriage.

I looked down at her.

“I love you.”

Her arms tightened around me.

I didn’t need her to say it back.

Not tonight.

I just needed her to know.

Everything intensified until thinking became damn near impossible. I felt the moment my control started slipping, but by then we were both too caught up in each other.

My whole body tightened.

I should’ve stopped.

Should’ve thought.

Should’ve remembered the one thing neither one of us had thought about since we’d entered that bedroom.

Protection.

I didn’t.

By the time the realization broke through, it was already too late.

I buried my face against her neck as the last of my control disappeared, holding her close while she came apart with me.

For several seconds afterward, neither one of us moved.

Then my brain finally caught up with my body.

Fuck.