It would’ve been easy to look away, to deflect with a joke, to pretend this was just proximity and adrenaline.
Instead, I held his gaze.
“Say it again,” I murmured.
His brow creased. “Say what?”
“That you love me.”
There. No backing down now.
Something raw flickered in his eyes. He didn’t look away. He didn’t hesitate.
“I love you,” he said simply. “I loved you two years ago. I loved you when you were yelling at me in the hotel lobby yesterday morning. I loved you last night when you told my father you were with me, and I damn sure love you right now.”
The words hit like incoming fire, but instead of blowing holes in me, they filled something in.
I exhaled slowly. “Good,” I said. “Because I love you, too.”
His hand tightened on my hip.
“I know,” he said, voice gone low. “You said so. In front of my father. Which is objectively cruel.”
I huffed out a laugh. “Cruel?”
“You dropped the L-word in a room where I couldn’t throw you against a wall, and you know what that does to a man in my condition.”
“Your condition,” I echoed, amused.
“Fragile,” he said gravely. “Emotionally compromised. High risk of doing something stupid for you.”
“That’s new?” I asked.
He smiled—soft, crooked, the one he never let anyone else see. “Fair point.”
His hand slid from my hip to the small of my back, dragging me closer until there wasn’t room for even air between us. The sheet tangled around our legs, the cotton dragging over skin. I could feel every inch of him, hot and solid and very far from fragile.
My pulse stuttered.
He made a low sound in the back of his throat, something between a groan and a laugh, and then his mouth was on mine.
The first kiss was unhurried. His lips were warm, his stubble scraping faintly against my skin, grounding me. He kissed me like we had all the time in the world and no time at all, contradictions layered like everything else between us.
I opened for him, and the kiss deepened.
Flashes of memory sparked. This was different. Still hungry, still threaded with urgency, but there was something else now. A steadiness. A claim.
His hand slid up my spine, under the hem of my T-shirt, fingers splaying against bare skin. I sucked in a breath at the contact, heat licking up my back.
“Still okay?” he murmured against my mouth.
I nodded, words not entirely accessible.
“Use your words, Emerson,” he said, that faint command in his tone sending a shiver through me.
“I’m okay,” I managed. “More than okay.”
“Good,” he said. “Because I’ve been trying very hard to behave.”
