“I want a family. He doesn’t.” She brushed her tousled bangs to the side. “Polo was my compromise, trying to see if I could be satisfied without having kids.”
Biting the inside of his cheek, he eyed her. She fiddled with her clasped fingers, chewing on her bottom lip. He reached up to stop that with a finger, caressing the reddened flesh.
“I get that life happens and even if he agreed to having children, we might not be able to.” She blew out a slow breath. “But really? It wasn’t about the baby issue at all. It was about me being the one who’d make all the compromises, and I don’t want to live like that. Mama tried it, and there’s no way I’m going down the same road.”
“It took you years to figure that out?”
“Hope springs eternal.” She shrugged. “I did love him, Colt. Giving up what I hoped for . . . yes, that took a while because I turned waiting for him into a toxic habit.”
Her sigh vibrated on the quiet air.
“So if you’d walked in the clinic and said, ‘Hey, Hols, let's you and me give it a shot,’ I’d have been thrilled.” Her knuckles glowed pale as she ground her fingers together. “Because I’d have had something so much better to hope for.”
“Well, hell, Hols.” Now he felt like a dumbass, loss a painful constriction in his throat. He understood better than most how lost time couldn’t be made up. He had years of it.
“I’m not going to be distracted by sex between us.” A smile trembled at her lips and disappeared. “Because I already know what we can have would be good and strong. Because I know you, probably better than I ever knew Scott.”
He scuffed at his hair again. “Did love him?”
“Did.” Her smile lit up the dim bedroom. “Definitely past tense.”
Flexing his arms above his head, he cracked his knuckles, running his tongue over his teeth. “Huh.”
“You and that ‘huh.’” Her expression softened, and she slid down into the bed, cotton rustling, arms framing his neck. “Amazing you can express so many ideas in a monosyllable.”
“I’m a man of few words.” He dared to trail a fingertip down her spine. “But also a man of action.”
“Action, he says.” She laughed, the sultry sound bubbling between them. “Mr. Let’s-Take-It-Slow.”
“Heard it from Gene and D all my life.” He traced along her hip, beneath the hem of his blue shirt. The way they were going, every shirt he owned would be at the dry cleaners this week. “A man’s got to know when to take his time.”
The slight hitch in her breath vibrated into him. She curled her fingers about his neck, stroking beneath his ears, sending a shiver down his spine to his balls. “You’re a tease, Colt Calvert.”
“Look who’s talking, Holly Callahan.” He shifted to drift a finger down the neckline of his shirt, resting on the top button, barely brushing the soft skin between her breasts. He buried his other hand in her hair, holding her glittering gaze with his own. “Naked except for my shirt, in my bed.”
He murmured the last against her lips, tasting her, his nostrils full of sweet magnolia and orange blossom.
“I can take care of that except-for-your-shirt part.” She sat up and tugged the garment over her head, fighting the cotton, leaving her hair a bright tousle as she looked down at him with a self-satisfied grin.
“Hell, Holly.” She was beautiful, all gilded curves in the shifting light. Anticipation tied his lower belly in a heavy knot. “I might have wanted to take that off you myself.”
She held the shirt up with a lascivious wiggle. “Want me to put it back on?”
“Later.” He dragged it free of her hold and tossed it to the floor before he wound a hand about her nape. “Come here.”
Curling into his chest, she met his kiss without coyness or reserve. She touched him, hot hands shaping his pecs and ribs, finding the hard, sensitive nubs of his nipples. He hissed when she scraped a fingernail over one, and she smiled against his mouth.
“Ilovewhen you make that sound.” She licked the side of his neck and tweaked his other nipple, sending electricity along his nerve endings. A suckle at his collarbone wrung a strangled groan from his throat, and he dug his fingers into her hip, relishing her smile against his skin. “I bet I can find all the places that make you sound like that.”
“I bet you can.” Wrapping an arm over her waist, he rolled, pinning her beneath him. “Maybe I’ll look for all of yours.”
“Mmm.” She stretched under him, a slow, sinuous movement, rubbing breasts and belly against his torso. “I could tell you, but letting you look for them sounds so much more fun.”
“Like reading a poem.” He dropped his head to nuzzle at her throat and chuckled at her shiver. “A guy has to go line by line.”
He punctuated the words with open-mouth kisses, along her neck, over her upper chest, on the slope of one breast. With a humming moan, she stretched again, arms above her head.
“I suppose you think I’m going to lie here and let you read me.” She threaded her fingers into his hair, stroking his scalp.
