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“You’re welcome.” Kate waited for him to climb the stairs to turn to Declan. “Want some morecoffee?”
He reached for her hand, captured it in his. “I don’t want morecoffee.”
She met his eyes. “No?”
He shook his head and stood, pulling her to her feet. He thought she might laugh, make a joke about Declan wanting something other thancoffee.
She looked into his eyes, her expression somber. The moment stretched between them, weighted with everything that hung in thebalance.
“Let’s go to bed, Kate.” His voice was gruff, working its way around the sudden emotion lodged in histhroat.
She nodded and bent to blow out the candles while he turned off the lights in the kitchen and the greatroom.
They climbed the stairs hand in hand. Anticipation was already humming in Declan’s veins, something that still surprised him. He’d thought being with the same person forever would be boring. That he’d get tired of sleeping with the samewoman.
But he had never allowed himself to ponder a future in which that woman would beKate.
Now he knew he would never be bored of looking at her, of touching her naked body, kissing every inch of her skin. Someday he hoped he would know even her heart like the back of his hand, hoped she would give him theprivilege.
Even then she would be a fascination tohim.
They stepped onto the second-floor landing and turned right to the master bedroom at the front of the house. It sat directly over the great room, a private balcony offering the same view as the one from the livingroom.
He’d been grateful when Nick had taken one of the bedrooms at the back of the house, and again when Ronan had happily dropped his stuff into the bedroom next to Nick’s. Declan and Kate had the front of the house to themselves, and he followed Kate into the bedroom and shut the door behind them, then leaned against it, watching as she made her way into theroom.
She turned around when she reached the bed. “What?”
“I just like looking at you,” hesaid.
She smiled. “You’resilly.”
He shook his head. “You just don’t know how beautiful youare.”
She looked down at herself, at her jeans and the black sweater that highlighted the voluptuousness of her breasts. “Now?”
“Always.” He pushed off the door and walked slowly toward her, stopping when they were only an inch apart. He reached up, dragged his knuckles down the hollow of her cheekbones. “You still don’t know? How lovely you are? How strong? You’reeverything.”
She slid her arms around his waist and leaned her head against his chest. “I don’t deserveyou.”
He stroked her hair. “False. You deserveeverything.”
For a long moment, she didn’t say anything. When she spoke again, her voice was thick with tears. “We only deserve what we can give, Declan. And there’s so much I still struggle togive.”
He touched her chin, forcing her to look at him. “No. Our love isn’t a transaction, Kate. You don’t have to do anything to deserve it. I love you like I breathe — because I can’t help myself. I don’t need anything but you. Just like this, just like you are rightnow.”
He bent his head to kiss her, sank into the softness of her lips. He slipped his tongue into the sweet chalice of her mouth and the kiss morphed from something gentle, almost chaste, into a volcano ofdesire.
She slid her hands around his neck and flattened herself against him until he could feel every soft swell of herbody.
His cock thickened in his jeans, and he pressed it against her stomach as he dove deeper into her mouth, trying to excavate everything that still stood between them, tunneling for the place where nothing mattered but his love forher.
He traced her body with his hands, cupping her breasts, sliding his palms over her stomach, the flare of her hips as he angled his head, desperate to take the kiss deeper, to occupy every shadowed recess of hermouth.
Her palms slid down his chest, over his pecs, and caught at the hem of his T-shirt. She lifted it, breaking their kiss just long enough to pull it over hishead.
Her breathing was ragged, her face flushed with heat he could see even in the dim light of the room, barely lit by the moonless night beyond the glass doors leading to the bedroom’sbalcony.
He pulled her sweater over her head and dove back into her mouth, eager to feel the slide of her bare skin. Her kiss was a match, lighting every fuse in his body, setting him on fire from the insideout.
