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“You don’t remember anything about last night?” she asks. There’s no missing the disappointment in her voice. I’ve missed something or messed something up terribly, this I can tell. I just need to search my memory to figure out what so I can make it right.
“Not much. How did you get here?” I ask, praying that I haven’t done something so bad I can’t fix it.
“Danny called me before eight. He asked me to come up to The Beaver and help get you home.”
“You helped me out to your car,” I reply after the pieces of the puzzle in my mind start to fall into place.
“Yeah, you were able to walk well enough to my car, but I had to steer you a bit. I brought you back here,” she starts, but stops talking. I can tell there’s more to the story she’s not saying.
I close my eyes again, letting the delicate contours of her body and the steady beat of her heart ground me as I search in my database for the memory.
And then it hits me.
Pulling her out of her car. Carrying her inside the house. Taking her to my bedroom. Stripping her naked. Not using a condom. Professing my love. It all comes back in a rapid-fire replay of lost time. I suck in a huge breath. I was going to end it with her because I was afraid. I was terrified knowing that, eventually, I would lose her, so the brilliant person that I am thought it was wise to let her go now so it would hurt less.
What a dumbass.
I move, letting her fall flat on the bed. She’s resting on my arm as I hover over her. “We made love without a condom,” I say, gazing down into her hypnotic green eyes, gently running my free hand along her side of her face. She gives me the faintest head nod. I know that it wasn’t sex that we had last night, but something deeper, something truer. “And I told you that I loved you.”
Jaime’s eyes widen and her breath catches in her throat, but still she doesn’t speak.
“I remember,” I confirm. “I told you that I was in love with you, and you said it back.”
“I did,” she finally whispers, all hoarse and breathy.
“Did you mean it?” I ask, my lips hovering above hers.
Her only response is another head nod and eyes that fill with unshed tears. “Did you?” When the words leave her lips, she seems to hold on to her breath, waiting for my answer.
“I meant every word. I’m in love with you, Jaime. I’m an ass for finally saying it when I was three sheets to the wind. Believe me, it was never my intention to tell you like that, but I’m not sorry that I did. I’ll never be sorry for telling you how I feel about you. And how I feel is that I’m so madly, completely in love with you, that the thought of not having you beside me, in my life, makes me feel crazy and out of control. I need you like air. I need your smile and your laugh and your goodness and your beauty surrounding me, because without it, I’m nothing. You make me whole.”
A single tear spills from her eye, disappearing into her hair, and is quickly followed by a second and then a third.
“That might be the best thing anyone has ever said to me,” she admits.
Just the thought of Jaime travelling through life without being worshipped for the magnificent creature that she is, is truly disturbing. It makes me want to find that Gavin guy and beat the crap out of him that much more. Every protective, not to mention jealous, inclination I have flairs to life with a vengeance.
I’d give anything to claim those soft, lush lips once more, prove to her how much she deserves to be adored and savored, but a cold bucket of reality splashes across my face. I haven’t brushed my teeth. Fuck, I smell a nauseating mixture of two-day-old sweat and alcohol. Not to mention the fur that’s growing on my tongue at the moment.
“I really want to kiss you, but I should probably clean up.”
“I hope you don’t mind but I used your cell phone to call that Danny guy who called me last night. I told him you weren’t feeling well and that you’d be a little late.”
“You did that for me?”
“Yeah, but I’m pretty sure he knows it’s the brown bottle flu that’s keeping you in bed this morning.”
“I’m sure he does. And thank you,” I say before brushing a closed mouth kiss across her sweet lips. God, what I wouldn’t give to deepen that kiss.
“You’re welcome,” she purrs beneath me, her body arching upward as if seeking out the friction it craves.
“Stop that, temptress, or you’ll never make it to work.” To show her how serious I am, I rub the entire hard length of my cock against the junction of her thighs. My balls are painfully tight and swelling as we speak. At the rate I’m going, I’ll need to spend a few extra minutes in the shower.
“I have an idea,” I tell her, once again running my lips across hers and down her cheek to her chin, where I nip at the tender flesh on the underside. “Come away with me this weekend.”
“What?” she gasps as I nibble down and along her collar bone.
“We’ll go somewhere down the coast. Maybe a hotel in a small tourist town or a bed and breakfast out of the way where we can just be alone. What do you think?”
