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“I do mean that. You’re a beautiful woman inside and out and I can’t stop thinking about you. I dropped you off last night and it felt so wrong. You belong to me. With me. And I want everyone in the world to know how much you mean to me.”
“What?” I whisper, my eyes wide, my breath barely moving in my frozen lungs.
“I’m in love with you. All I want is to spend the next fifty years or so with you. I want to take care of you. When you’re sick and you look like death warmed over. When you watch a sad movie and can’t stop crying. When you’re mad at me and barely speaking to me. It doesn’t matter which side of you it is. I just know that as long as you’re with me? It’s all going to be alright.”
I stare at him like he’s crazy. “It’s too soon.”
He shakes his head and the smile on his face? It’s like he’s found his reason for living. Like he’s never been happier.
“It’s never too soon for love, baby girl. Sometimes you just know when you find her that you can’t leave her. Can’t picture your life without her.”
“Don’t you have to go back?”
He shakes his head and it feels like a huge weight off my shoulders. “Nope. I’ll have to report in but I’m due to get out soon. And I can’t think of a better reason to get out than to spend the rest of my life with you.”
I shake my head. “I can’t ask you to give up your life like that.”
“I’m not giving up anything. I’m finding something that I lost a long time ago. Hope and love. Everything that your name means. Joy…I’ve never heard a more beautiful sound in the world than your laughter. It makes my heart sing with hope, peace and love. Joy. If you ever leave me…I’ll never recover because that will be the end of all of it for me.”
I shake my head and throw myself into his muscular arms, sobbing when they close around me and I feel his heart under my ear. That big damn heart of his. I can’t believe it belongs to me.
“I will never leave you. Never! You mean too much to me. I’ve been in love with you since I was fifteen years old.”
He leans back, his eyes shocked. “You’re kidding me?”
“No.” I flush and try to pull away. He doesn’t let me, his arms tightening around me.
“I could have been with you.” His eyes are shocked and his full lips hang open.
“You could have. But not for awhile anyway. Not until I was older.”
He nods, “Of course. God, I’m an idiot. I should have waited for you.”
“You have me now. Isn’t there anything you want to do with me?” I lean forward and my lips dance across his cheek, whispering in his ear. “I want you. I want you to be my first, my always, my forever.”
He pushes me over to the other side of the truck, taking a deep breath. “Stay there. Do not move. I’ll take us to the motel. But if you touch me again, I’m not making any promises. You feel too fucking good.”
I giggle and lean against the door, watching his jaw clench. Watching his strong hands maneuver the truck out and onto the road. He’s so calm, careful. Every move of his hands is competent and strong.
I want those hands on me.
I close my eyes and let my mind drift. I can’t stop thinking about how it will feel. Making love to him. The man I love. That I’ve loved forever.
The truck jerks into a parking spot and I open my eyes to find him watching me. His lean cheeks are flushed and his bright blue eyes sparkle with desire. “Are you sure about this, Joy?”
I lean over and my lips trace his jaw which tightens into steel. He swallows hard and I trace that with my tongue. “I am so sure,” I whisper.
“If we do this,” he warns, holding me away from him, “that’s it. You’re mine. And you’re never getting away from me. Try and leave me and I’ll hunt your gorgeous ass down, woman.”
My lip curls. “Go ahead and hunt. I’ll never leave you. But if I was that stupid, I want to know that you’ll come for me. That you’d never let me stay away.”
He closes his eyes and then they open and I feel breathless, like my chest is under a fifty pound weight. His eyes are blazing with hunger.
“You know what this means?” he asks.
I shake my head and he gets out of the truck, stalking around the hood until he can open my door. Then he leans in and it’s like that warm, pine smell of his envelopes me. Cocoons me.
“You’re mine. Forever. From this second on, it’s done. We are one.”
