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But there was a new part of me…or maybe a really old part, buried deep, one that hadn’t seen light or air since I was that poor kid in Chicago. A part that she’d coaxed out into the daylight and nurtured. It was awkward and unfamiliar and a pain in the ass but I liked it. And that part wouldn’t be silenced.
“I need you,” I said. “I need you with me. You—” I gazed down at her. Water from her rain-soaked hair was running down her cheeks like tears and I cupped her face and brushed them away with my thumbs. “You’re who I needed to meet, who I always needed to meet, I just didn’t know it until I met you. I nearly lost you once. I can’t say goodbye to you again. And that’s why…I’m not going after the gold when we get back.”
Her wet cheeks moved under my fingers as she cocked her head to one side. “Wh—What?”
“I’m not running away,” I said. “I’ll show the Justice Department where the gold is. They can—” Suddenly, the words got hard to say. Am I really doing this?! But I bulled on through. “They can have it. The four hundred million.”
I’d braced myself but, in the last three words, it hit me. The pain was unbelievable, like someone was slicing deep into my chest.
But then the realization broke across her face like the dawn and the hope I saw there made the pain worthwhile. Jesus Christ, it felt good.
“You’d do that?” she asked in a tiny voice. “For me?”
“I’d only do it for you,” I told her. And then, as the pain hit again, I leaned down and kissed her. I immersed myself in her soft, warm femininity. I drowned my sorrows in the goodness of her, in that irresistible, buttoned-down innocence and that secret streak of urgent lust. The pain didn’t shrink, but I felt myself growing and maybe, with her help, I’d keep growing and so the pain would hurt less.
She melted against me with a little sob of pure joy. Her soaking body pressed full-length against me, her arms wrapped around my shoulders and her head tilted back. Her lips opened and her tongue brushed mine, tentative and light. I teased the tip and felt the need inside her wake: she moaned and pressed against me harder, her tongue dancing with mine. I growled. We rotated on the spot, neither of us able to keep still, my fingertips rubbing slowly over her wet skin and the edges of that tightly pulled-back hair, her hands roaming over my shoulders and back.
She broke the kiss. I grudgingly opened my eyes, breathing hard, and looked down. Her eyes were heavy-lidded with lust and I’m guessing mine looked the same. The tank top I’d given her had turned almost translucent in the rain and her bra wasn’t much different.
“What will you do?” she asked, stepping back. Her voice, normally so serious and precise, had gone throaty with need and it was the hottest thing I’d ever heard.
“This,” I said hungrily, my lips still tingling. It wasn’t a line: I honestly couldn’t think of anything in my future more important than kissing her. I stepped forward.
She dodged out of the way, but with a soft little groan of regret. I was wrong, before: that was the hottest thing I’d ever heard. “I meant where will we go? What will we do?”
I frowned and tried to clear the lust fog from my head. “I’ll join the team,” I said. “I’ve got to, that’s the deal. Ten years. They’re based in Colorado, in this little town, so I guess we’ll live there. We won’t have much money: they seized my assets when I went to jail and what I managed to hide, I spent on my lawyer. Once I give up the gold, I’ll be down to the shirt on my back.” I looked into her eyes. “What do you say: you want to come live in the mountains?”
She blinked up at me, eyes shining. Tears joined the rainwater running down her cheeks. “Yes,” she croaked, and ran back into my waiting arms.
34
OLIVIA
He was still topless, his rain-slick chest strong and wonderfully warm as I pressed against him. He crushed me so close I could feel his racing heart. We were one, inseparable.
His stubble rasped against my cheek and then he nuzzled my ear and kissed the side of my head. He wrapped me in his arms and I’d never felt so secure. “I guess I’m a good guy now,” he mused.
I nestled into his chest, my cheek against the firm slab of his pec.
It started small. I was in dreamy, warm contentment, a lake with a surface as calm as glass. And then there was a flicker, like seeing a tiny fish, deep under the surface.
