Page 107

“Daniel…” he says as I turn to slide off my bed.

I pause and look at him.

“I love you, too.”

FIFTY

QUINN

If I thought his smiles were bright before, they have nothing on the one he is beaming at me now. He stops moving as it grows and takes over his entire face.

“Say it again,” he says.

My heart pounds. “I love you.”

He shifts back toward me. Crawling up my body. “Again,” he says against my mouth.

I lick my lips. “I love you.”

He kisses me before I can decide if I said it right. It’s messy. My mouth is still tender and swollen from our earlier kisses, and my chin feels slightly raw from his scruff rubbing against my skin. But I don’t care. I thread my fingers into his hair, holding him to me, and he laughs into the kiss.

I pull him back far enough to see his face again. He’s still smiling. I want to make him smile at me like that forever.

“I don’t have better words for it,” I say. “Like and care don’t fit with what my chest has been doing.” My ears are on fire. I don’t look away, I need him to hear everything. “I think I have for a while. I just didn’t know I was allowed to call it that.”

He makes a sound deep in his chest and hauls me against him again as he twists us to his back with me half on top of him, burying his face in my neck. His heart is going as fast as mine, and his naked body feels amazingly pressed to mine, even with the mess of my cum between us.

“You’re allowed,” he says into my shoulder, kissing the skin there. “You’re so allowed. Jesus, Quinn. We’re a pair of idiots, aren’t we?”

“I don’t think you’re stupid.”

“I don’t think you’re stupid either.”

“Good.”

He chuckles and presses a kiss to my forehead this time.

I stay there. His mouth on my hairline. His arms locked around my back. My legs are unreliable, there’s a mess cooling between us, and I’m very aware of both of those facts. Still, I don’t move.

“We should clean up,” I say into his collarbone. I don’t want to move.

“In a minute.” His hand drags up my spine, sending sheets of goosebumps over my whole body. “You’re shaking a little.”

“I ran down the hall to catch you. Then I had sex for the first time. Then I confessed to loving you.” I swallow. “That’s a lot of variables.”

He huffs against my forehead. “Yeah. It is.”

I tip my face up because I want to see if the smile is still the real one. It is. Smaller. Wrecked at the edges. And completely mine.

“I meant it,” I tell him, in case the first two times could be filed away as a post-orgasm error. “I’ll mean it tomorrow, too. I don’t want you to wake up and decide I only said it because you gave me an orgasm. Although, that part was nice.”

His throat works. He nods once, his eyes shining with happiness.

“I’ll be here,” he says. “Tomorrow. And the day after that, and the day after that, if you don’t get sick of me.”

“I won’t get sick of you.”

“You say that now.”