Emily turned around.
He was standing two feet inside her door, and the look on his face broke her open. Not hungry. Not predatory. Not any of the things she'd imagined in the dark hours when she'd let herself think about this. He was looking at her the way he'd looked at her on the Gulf platform, with everything visible, every wall down, every construction he'd built to move through the world stripped away until there was nothing left but a man standing in her doorway needing her the way lungs need air.
"I don't know how to do this," she said.
"Yes you do."
"I don't. I don't know how to be the woman who wants this much. I've never been her before." Her voice was even and her hands were shaking and both of those things were true. "I've spent my entire life controlling what I experience and when I experience it and who I let close enough to make me vulnerable, and you walked into Ray's office and day later I was sitting in Anna's while she told me you talked about me for an hour, and I haven't controlled a single thing since."
Jake closed the two feet.
He touched her waist. Not pulling. Resting. Settling there like he'd been designed for exactly that spot, the curve of her hip, the warmth of her skin through fabric. Emily's breath left her in a long exhale.
"You don't have to control this," he said.
"I don't know how to not."
"Yeah, you do." His forehead touched hers. His voice was barely above a whisper, and she felt it more than heard it, a vibration that traveled through the places where their skin met. "You drove to a bar you'd never heard of tonight because I was inside it. You sat with me while I told you the worst things I've ever done. You told me nobody gets to take me away from you." His hands tightened on her waist. A fraction. Enough. "You already let go, Emily. You just haven't noticed yet."
She kissed him.
Not the way she'd kissed him before. Not the restrained kisses of the last two weeks, the ones she could file away as reasonable, proportional, the kind of contact a smart woman allowed herself while maintaining the illusion of control. This was the kiss she'd been holding back since the first night at The Anchor, the one that had been building in her like a sound too low to hear, growing louder every day until it drowned out every argument she'd made for keeping him at a distance that no longer existed.
Her hands found his face, rough and warm under her palms. She kissed him and felt him respond, his hands sliding from her waist to her back, pulling her closer with a pressure that was firm and unhurried and devastating in its patience. He kissed her the way he did everything. Like she was the only thing in the room worth paying attention to and he had all the time in the world.
Emily pulled back long enough to breathe. Jake's eyes were dark, his breath uneven, and the control she'd admired in him for two weeks was still there but fraying at the edges, visible in the tension along his arms and the grip of his fingers spread across her back.
"Bedroom," she said. "Down the hall. Second door." She kissed him again. Shorter. Harder. "Now."
Jake Walsh picked her up.
Not dramatically. Not like a movie. He slid one arm under her legs and the other behind her back and lifted her against his chest with the efficient grace of a man whose body had been trained to carry irreplaceable things over difficult ground, and Emily Callahan, who had never in her life been carried anywhere by anyone, wrapped her arms around his neck and let him.
The hallway was dark. He navigated it without asking directions because he'd been to her apartment once and Jake Walsh noticed everything and remembered all of it. The bedroom door was open. The bed was made. The sheets were white and clean and pulled tight because that was who she was, a woman who made her bed every morning even if the world was falling apart.
He set her down on the edge of the bed. Gently. The way you set down a thing you intend to take your time with.
Emily looked up at him. He was standing over her, lit by the ambient glow from the window, and his face held an expression she wanted to memorize. Want held in check by tenderness.Need governed by care. The way he felt for her visible in his eyes, and underneath it the restraint of a man who would wait forever if she asked him to, who had tucked her in four nights ago and locked the door and driven home because being patient with her mattered more than having her.
She reached for the hem of his shirt. Pulled it up. He let her, raising his arms, and the shirt came off and Emily put her hands flat against his chest and felt his heart hammering under her palms.
"You're shaking," she said.
"Yeah."
"I thought you were unshakeable."
"I'm not unshakeable." His voice was rough. "Not with you."
Emily pulled her own shirt over her head. Watched his eyes move over her, watched the way his breath changed, watched the discipline that had kept him alive in places she'd never see lose its war with the need she'd put there. His palms came to her shoulders. Slid down her arms. Slow.
"You're beautiful," he said.
"You don't have to?—"
"I'm not being polite. I'm not saying what I'm supposed to say." He stopped at her wrists. Circled them. Held them gently, thumbs against her pulse points where he could feel her heart racing. "You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen, and I have been losing my mind for two weeks trying not to tell you that every time you walk into a room."
Emily pulled her wrists free. Reached behind her back. Unclasped. Let the fabric fall away and watched Jake Walsh's face and felt, for the first time in her life, what it meant to be wanted by someone who saw all of her and wanted all of it.
