He looks at me for a long moment. Then, slowly, the tension starts to drain from his shoulders. He takes a breath, deep and deliberate, like he was doing during yoga.
“Okay,” he says finally.
I gasp, feeling the spiraling emotions abruptly drain out of me and leave me lightheaded. “Okay?”
“Okay.” He looks at his phone on the dresser, then back at me. “You're right. I have a COO. I have a whole team of people I employ. I need to trust them.”
I swallow hard. “And if it falls apart?”
“Then it falls apart.” He runs a hand through his damp hair. “Better to lose a deal than lose my life, right?”
“Right.”
We stand there in his bedroom, the morning sun streaming through the windows, and something shifts between us. Something deeper than attraction or chemistry.
This is the moment it hits me that there is no turning back. I’m going to mother-hen him, and nag him, and do whatever I can to help him. Not because he's handsome or rich or pays me well. But because he's trying and underneath the CEO armor, he's just a man who forgot how to live, and he's fighting to remember, and it’s something that maybe we can figure out together. Because I care. I care a lot more than I should about a man that I met only a few short days ago, but I can’t imagine not caring.
“Thank you,” he says quietly.
I grin to hide just how overwhelmed I am at the depth of my feelings. “For yelling at you?”
“For caring enough to yell at me.” His hand comes up to cup my face, and my breath catches at both his unexpected touch and the warmth in his eyes. “No one's done that in a long time.”
“Maybe they should have,” I whisper.
“Maybe.” His thumbs stroke my cheekbones, and inside I’m quaking. “I'm glad you're here, Jennifer.”
“Me too.”
He slowly leans down, giving me time to pull away. I don't. His lips brush mine, soft and questioning, and I rise on my toes to meet him.
The kiss is everything I dreamed it could be. And yes, I’ve done a lot of dreaming and fantasizing about kissing Seth. It’s a crazy and wrong and completely unattainable thing to want, yet here we are, his lips on mine, so guess maybe it wasn’t such a farfetched thing after all.
His mouth moves firm and sure over my lips with unbelievable gentleness. When his tongue lightly sweeps over my lower lip, I open to him and wrap my arms around his neck as his tongue slides against mine.
He’s so hard, all over, as my body molds to his and the kiss deepens. Need and want twirl in my lower belly as my core heatsup. I could happily kiss Seth forever, but all too soon it ends, and he pulls back.
His eyes are clearer than I've seen them, as pure blue as the lake behind the cabin.
“So,” he says with a grin curving his lips. “You were going to clean. I should probably shower. And then maybe we could take a walk? The doctor said movement is good for me.”
It takes me a moment to understand his words. And another second or two to switch gears from the hope that he would toss me on the bed behind us and we’d spend the afternoon making love to the thought of taking a walk with him. But slow is good. Despite what the throbbing in my clit says.
I smile back. “A walk sounds perfect.”
An hour later, we're on the trail that winds around the lake. Seth is pointing out different types of trees, and I'm pretending I can tell a Douglas fir from a Ponderosa pine.
“You have no idea what I'm talking about, do you?” he asks, amused.
I grin. “Not even a little bit. They're all just trees to me.”
He laughs, and it makes me smile even more. “Fair enough. I'll stop the nature lesson.”
“I don't mind,” I say shyly. “You light up when you talk about things you know.”
His head tilts to the side. “I light up?”
“Yeah. Your whole face changes.” I glance at him, at the way the sunlight catches in his dark hair. “It's nice. You should do it more often.”
