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I pull her up further into my arms, settling her legs around my waist so that her face is even with mine. I’m tempted to kiss her again with her this close. But she needs to hear this, and I need to say it out loud.
“I don’t give a damn that we’re not engaged,” I say. “I want you.”
“You…want me?”
“Yes.” I tighten my arms around us so that there’s no space left. “I want you. I want to date you and love you. Because no matter how long it’s been since we met, I can’t imagine my life without you now. You slipped into it perfectly, and I don’t want you out of it. I want you to come with me on hikes and swimming. Be in my bed. I want you to be with me, Erin.”
Her eyes are wide, breath coming in shaky gasps. But she doesn’t scream or run, she doesn’t push out of my arms and tell me to fuck off. She’s just staring in utter disbelief. Of course she wouldn’t believe me. Everything that she’d set up for herself and gone after has fallen apart. The idea that she’s good, just as she is, is foreign to her. But there isn’t going to be a day that I’m with her that I don’t tell her that she is enough. She is more than enough, no matter what.
I walk forward and sit down on her couch so that she’s straddling me. It would be so easy to pull down her loose sweats and thrust up into her perfect pussy. There’s no doubt that she can feel how hard I am already.
“If you don’t want this,” I say gently, “I understand. But I want to tell you that we’ll figure everything out. I will help you in any way that I can. You’re going to get into fucking vet school because you’re amazing and brilliant, and then you’ll get the job of your dreams. Have your own practice. Or you can move to Blue Mountain with me and take care of the animals there. You can do whatever you want, and I will do it with you. Because I want you. I’m falling in love with you.”
Erin still stares at me. I can see the way she’s listening to my words and pulling them apart. Letting them sink in. Her hands grasp my shoulders, and slowly, a smile appears on her face. “You’re falling in love with me?”
“Yes,” I say simply. There’s no other explanation. Every second I can’t stop thinking about her. I breathe her.
Her smile grows wider, and there’s a brightness in her eyes that could light up the whole damn world. And that smile, I make myself a vow to try to see that smile every fucking day. I want her that happy—this glowing—all the time.
“I’m falling in love with you too,” she whispers.
I can’t keep my hands off her now, running my hands up her ribs and pulling the neck of her t-shirt aside so that I can kiss her shoulder. “You’ll be with me?”
“I’ll be with you.”
My arms come around her hard, locking us together again, and I take her mouth. I can’t be without her anymore. But she pulls back for a second. “You got my parents to help you?”
“They helped me seconds after you were gone, when Asher had to wrestle me to the ground to keep me from going after you. They wanted to give you time, and this whole week I’ve been going crazy. It took everything in me not to come before they let me.”
Erin wraps her arms around me and holds me tight. “I thought you just didn’t want me.”
“I will always want you,” I growl. “Always.”
Without another thought, I stand up with her in my arms and carry her into the bedroom. “And we can talk about everything that needs to happen. But right now, we have to make up for lost time.”
Erin grins. “My neighbors might not like it if you make me scream too loudly.”
“They can deal with it,” I say with a smirk. “Because I’m a man on a mission.”
She laughs as we fall onto the bed together—the best sound in the goddamn world.
Epilogue
Erin
Eight Months Later
I’m sitting in the car staring at the nondescript building that feels like it’s the center of the universe. The testing center. I’ve been here before, and the last time that I walked out of this stupid place I was devastated. I don’t want that to happen again.
But my mind is already spinning, even though I’ve studied until my brain felt like it was going to melt. And Hudson helped me study too in…uniquely creative ways. My husband got the idea that I had to earn my orgasms with correct answers to test questions and has taken great pleasure in driving me out of my mind.
