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“Stop,” she said softly.
“Yeah. In a minute.” He pressed her hand to his mouth again and kissed her. Except that it was more of a lingering press of her hand against his mouth and less of a kiss.
She swallowed hard. “You know, I only eat hot fudge sundaes once in a while. I can go a long time in between them, because I know I shouldn’t have them more often. But sometimes I just can’t help it.”
His chest rose and fell with a deep breath, and he dragged her hand from his mouth to his cheek. She cupped his face, rubbing her palm over his beard.
“If you really were a hot fudge sundae, I might be able to say that I could just have a taste once in a while,” he said, his voice rough. “You’re more like a drug. One taste and I just want more and more. I’ll get to the point where I simply can’t go without you. And I’ll do anything to have you. Even make really, really bad decisions.”
“Like tying me down? Trying to keep me in Autre even when you think it’s bad for me?”
With her hand still against his cheek, he slid his hand down her arm. Goosebumps erupted, dancing up her arm to her shoulder and spreading. She felt the tingles over her scalp and cascading across her chest, tightening her nipples.
“I just wanted you to have options. As you’ve learned, Autre isn’t always so perfect.”
“The place has to be perfect?”
“For you? It needs to be as fucking close as it can get.”
She believed that he felt that way. She believed that he wanted her to have the best of everything. She also believed that he would give up what he wanted to be sure she had what she needed.
“And if I decide that Autre is what I want and that it is perfect for me?” she asked, ignoring the little niggle in the back of her mind that said,you’re already afraid it’s not. “Then what?”
“I told you, if you’re still there and happy in ten years, we’ll talk.”
“I want more than a talk.”
“Okay. I’ll propose.”
sixteen
Becca sucked in a little breath.That was what she wanted. It hit her suddenly and hard. “And I’ll say yes.”
Heat and desire flared in his eyes. And not physical, chemical desire, but desire forher. All of her. All that the proposal would signify.
“But ten years is too long,” she added.
His hand continued along her arm up to her shoulder and around the back of her neck. “Becca, you’re testing me.”
She wet her lips and nodded. “I don’t want to wait ten years to have you.”
“Seven years.”
She shook her head. “Two years.”
He frowned. “Five.”
“Three. If I’m still in Autre in three years, I’ll know what it’s all about—what living there, teaching there, everything is like in three years. Come on.”
He studied her face for a long moment. “I’m such an idiot.”
The next thing she knew, his mouth was on hers. He was kissing her deeply, his tongue stroking urgently against hers. She arched against him, going up on tiptoe, needing to be closer.
Three years felt like an eternity. Three minutes felt too long.
“There’s no fucking way I can wait three years for you.”
His gruff confession made her heart flip, and she realized that the idea of teaching in Houma was a really good one. If he needed her to be somewhere else, somewhere that he didn’t have to wait to see if Autre would drive her away, then that was the answer to this.
