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“Damn,”Cal breathes, rolling off me onto his back beside me on the bed.
I get under the covers and he joins me, wrapping me up in his arms, our bodies tangling naturally without much thought needed from either of us.
“So that’s why you brought me into this spare room,” I jest, stroking my fingers through his chest hair.
He chuckles. “To fuck your brains out?”
“Is that what you think happened?”
“You know damn straight it is.” He dips his hand down between my legs, making me jolt at the feel of his roughened fingers brushing over my over-sensitized clit. “You’re still wet, woman. The evidence speaks for itself.”
“Yeah, that’s tough to deny.”
He removes his hand and sighs peacefully as he relaxes beside me again. “Nah, honestly, it weren’t the original plan, but I ain’t sorry for a second about how it ended up playing out. And I gotta say, this is a way better experience than the last time I was holed up in this room when all that shit was going on with Roxana and Ax with Malcolm Kent on our asses, the club on tenterhooks.”
“It must’ve been weird coming back here to the clubhouse at all with the last time you’d set foot inside being when you were President.”
“Well, by then I’d already spent fifteen years away, so my reign as Prez was way in the past for me anyway. It was good seeing Ax in the role I always pegged him for.”
“Seeing that vision become a reality?”
“Yeah.” That smile fades a little as he murmurs, “So much else of what I envisioned got twisted to hell. At least that was the one thing that didn’t.”
I reach out and stroke his hard chest, running my fingers leisurely through his salt-and-pepper chest hair. “There is another vision that became reality, one that survived being twisted, one that stood the test of time.”
“Us.”
I nod and shift my weight until I’m sitting up, straddling him. His hands automatically go to my hips, stroking softly over his black tee covering my naked body, as he gazes up at me curiously, obviously realizing I’m building to something, needing to get something off my chest with the intense way I’m looking back at him.
He waits patiently, just lying there in his relaxed state, stroking my skin softly.
I summon the courage that I never thought I’d ever have, as the words I swore I’d never utter to anybody come spilling from my lips with fiery conviction, “I love you, Cal.” Clearing my suddenly dry throat as his eyes widen with no small amount of shock, I continue, “The truth is, I’ve loved you for the entirety of my adult life. All those years ago, I knew you were it for me, but back then I didn’t think we had any right to one another. That’s no longer the case, it’s wide open for us now after so long, and I don’t want to waste another moment denying that beautiful truth.”
“Jesus Christ,” he breathes, easing up into a sitting position and pulling me onto his lap. Wrapping his arms around me tightly, he confesses, “I love you too. Goddamn, Charlotte, it’s always been you. Fucking always.”
I can’t contain the overwhelming sensation of euphoria that surges through me at his words, and in the very next moment, my mouth is crashing down on his.
He pulls away all too soon and eases me back with his hands on my arms, basically holding me at bay. “Don’t wanna get lost in more fucking right now, not after what you just said.”
“Cal—” I start, trying to ease the intensity now that I’ve already managed to actually get those three words out there like I intended.
But he cuts me off, giving my arms a gentle squeeze as he tells me, “It deserves more than that.”
“I know. I just—”
“You just hate bringing emotions to the table. Makes you feel vulnerable and out of your depth. You think you ain’t no good at it.” He smiles. “You’re better than you think, but it’s all right either way. You don’t gotta be. I know well who you are and when I say I love you, it’s for the way you are right now, the whole package, everything you are and everything you ain’t. We mesh well together and a lot of it’s because we’re the same in a load of ways. And I love that about us.” He reaches up and cups the sides of my face, the warmth of his touch burning into my skin in the most incredible way. “But I don’t want you to feel like you gotta hide or reel in what you do wanna put out there. It’s okay to do it now. It’s safe to do it now. You’re always safe with me.” He wraps his arms around me and pulls me against him, holding me tightly, almost reverentially.
“I… I like being here in this little town, I like being with you, with your family too.”
“I know you do. Honestly, I thought it was gonna have you turning tail real fast. Not the initial animosity coming off Ax, because, let’s face it, you like a fight. Nah, the part afterward… the real heart of things, getting close.”
“It’s been nice being around a family again, being immersed in that sort of supportive, loving, and loyal atmosphere. It’s been so many years for me since I’ve even come close to touching that.”
“Well, it’s here now and it ain’t going away.”
I lean in to kiss him again, but the sound of my phone ringing has me stilling.
It’s not just the fact of a call coming in.
