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“Packing your lunches…complete with home-baked cookies?”
“Maybe,” he hedges, cracking a small smile. “Yeah, probably. But I helped when I could. And it’s not that hard. I can teach you.”
He means well, but the effort doesn’t stop the giant lump from invading my throat again. “I know you will,” I manage past a newly emotional choke. “But it’s just another thing on the list.”Dear God, such a huge list.“So many things I don’t know.”
He rolls his hands in, over my collarbones, until he’s bracing the sides of my nape. “And so many thingsIdon’t either. But sweetheart”—he presses his fingers in, compelling my gaze to lift and twine with his—“we’re going to learn it all together, okay? Probably more than we ever want to.”
I join a soggy chuckle to his self-effacing one. It feels so good, being in this emotional place with him. Looking into his eyes and seeing that he’s as clueless as me but not going anywhere. Hewantsto be here with me.
“Just tell me you’re not planning on any pop quizzes for any of it.” I’m only half-joking, but he delivers with an amused smirk.
“If I did, you’d ace them. Because even if you burn the cookies, you’ll do it with all the passion in your spirit, the love in your soul, and the colorful brilliance of your amazing mind.” He slides a hand up and flows his fingers across my forehead. “You’re going to be the most incredible mother in the world, Kara Valari. In any and every realm there is. I know it already because I knowyou. Because I see all of you. The beauty of your heart. The shape of your character. The light you shine beyond the confines of your world…seeing beyond that pretty bubble to what really lies beyond. You’ve chosen to be so much more than the walls that were dictated to you. You were terrified about it, but you did it. And I’m still in awe about that. Complete, consuming awe.”
I sit in silence, absorbing all that, for a long beat. Another. I probably need at least an hour to process it all, but no way can I wait that long to answer him. To give him the truth of my soul, begging to be let out for him in response.
“I was only able to do that because of you, Maximus Kane. Because of loving you and experiencing all your love in return.” I climb over, inserting myself totally in his lap. “If you’re in awe of me, it means you’re in awe of yourself too.You’remy light. My strength.”
My profession becomes a verbal magnet, drawing our mouths together. We kiss because neither of us have a choice. Because we’re air and wind. Fire and rain. Even flour and sugar. Alchemy. Destiny. Cosmic intention.
And now, a perfection of passion.
Blazes that combust, mingling our breaths and infusing our blood. Stretching our awareness. Sizzling along our skin. Winding around our muscles and fueling our hunger for even more.
Yes.
Yes.
I’m barely aware of it bursting from my lips as soon as we part, because it hardly matters. My next words are the more important ones—and I make very sure that Maximus hears them before we get enough air to mesh our mouths again.
“Please. Show me more, Maximus.More.”
CHAPTER FIVE
MAXIMUS
I don’t need to hear anything else. I already know what she’s referring to. I already know it because I feel it too. Just as deeply. Just as intrinsically. To the same center of my being. The place where my feelings aren’t just feelings. They’re truths as vast as the oceans and as endless as the stars. They’re the connection I get when sailing on the former or lying beneath the latter. Realities too huge to be afraid of because they justare.
My love for this woman…it’s one of those axioms. Unfathomable. Unfightable. As much a part of me as my hair and eyes, my blood and bones, and more.
All the parts of me that burn for her now.
Yearn for her.
That clamor and scratch and singe, wrapping greedy flames around my muscles and marrow, until I’m clamping her like a wild, desperate animal.
She feels it too. Every degree of the swelling, frantic burn. I see it in her eyes, already nearly full of their photorealistic flames. I feel it in the planes of her exposed skin, like silken sun rays beneath my urgent caresses. I hear it in her sighs, shaky but searing, as I scrape along her back, around her buttocks, and down her thighs.
She helps me out with that part, moving around and then up before mounting me in full.
“Oh! Maximus!”
And just like that, I’m incinerated alive. Yet there’s room for more of the flames, twisting at my muscles as I do the same to the side panel of her panties—and then pull.
“Fuck.” It bursts up from the center of my chest as Kara plants her hand there, returning my favor by tearing down the front of my shirt.
As the cotton gives way, her fiery touch takes over. Exploring my pecs. Thumbing the peaks at their centers. Raking over my ribs…
And lower.
