He squirted soap onto our hands, continuing to wash away this afternoon, as if he wanted to erase the possibility of what could have happened.
Carefully.
Meticulously.
His voice was a soft scrape at the shell of my ear, sending shivers down my neck, turning my heart into a thundering orb at the center of my chest. “All that time, I was wishing with every part of me I could change my circumstances. That I could be right for you. Thenthis, Rynna. Then this happened and I don’t fucking care, anymore. Don’t fucking care that this is wrong.”
His eyes captured mine through the mirror. They flashed with a warning. An omen. A prediction.
“I’m not afraid,” I whispered, my promise striking the throbbing air. He gathered my hair in his hand, shifting it all to one side, exposing my neck. He pressed his lips there in the barest kiss. “That’s funny, because I’m fucking terrified of you.” His nose ran up to the back of my ear. “Terrified of this.”
A shiver rolled down my spine, and Rex eased back a fraction, taking the hem of my shirt and drawing it slowly up my body.
That shiver shifted. An avalanche of chills. He peeled it over my head before he did the same to his own, scrubbing at his face before he tossed his shirt to his feet.
My gaze traced him through the mirror, and I swallowed around the emotion that grew thick at the base of my throat.
This complicated, amazing man drove me crazy with desire. Crazy with need. Crazy with this want that had become its own entity inside of me.
He reached up and let his fingertips flutter across my exposed shoulder and down my arm. Tingles spread in a slow slide. All the fear I’d felt earlier transformed into this emotion I wasn’t sure I’d ever felt before.
Something so real it staggered my senses.
He reached back and unfastened my bra, drawing the straps down my arms.
My nipples pebbled as my breasts were exposed, and his chest heaved with a grunt. “So beautiful. So goddamned beautiful,” he murmured.
His fingers pressed under the waistband of my shorts.
“You want this, Rynna? You want me?” There was a tremor in his words. That same warning that flamed in his eyes. “Because I’m done running from you.”
“I want you so badly it hurts.”
He heaved a breath before he dipped down and kissed a path down my spine as he dragged my shorts and underwear down my legs.
“Oh God,” I whimpered, hit by an onslaught of sensations.
Need and want and desire.
But it was that emotion that pulsed in the depths of me that nearly sent me to my knees. Wave after wave. Seeping and saturating. Trembling in my throat and tightening in my stomach.
“Rynna.” It was a groan as he kissed down the cleft of my bottom and unwound my clothing from my feet, the sound so guttural it rumbled against the walls.
Then I was back in his arms and he was carrying me to my bed, lying me in the middle.
He stood with his chest heaving. So much stunning strength. The man so gorgeous and darkly appealing my mouth went dry.
Every thought and reservation fled from my mind. Every pep talk I’d given myself over the last two weeks about forgetting him and moving on scattered in the wind.
Because when it was just him and me?
There was nothing but the beat of our hearts.
Nothing but the call of our spirits. It was something louder than all the questions. Something bigger than his past. Something higher than our obstacles.
Something fierce rippled as he looked down at me completely naked on my bed.
“Are you sure?” he grated.
