“You love me.”
I had to say the words. To make them real.
“I do,” she confirmed.
Confusion, then elation, poured through me.
“How?” I sputtered. “Why?”
“Because you’re a good man, Hallum. You’re tense and tight and gruff and also the kindest man I’ve ever known. You care deeply for others, even when you try not to show it. You upended your entire life to help a child who had no one. You opened your home to me. And you have saved me in so many ways. I love you.”
She licked her lips.
“And I know that you don’t love me back. There’s no expectation here. I just…I had to tell you. So…there. I’m done now.”
“You know that I don’t love you back?”
“Well, yeah. Of course.”
“And you are sure of this?”
Her mouth pinched. “Um. Pretty sure.”
“Well, Doctor Lualhati Ortiz. In this, you are entirely wrong.” I cupped her jaw in my hands. “You are the first, last,onlyperson I have ever loved.”
23
LUALHATI
This time when we kissed, it was entirely intentional. Even though I couldn’t see him in the darkness, I could feel him. Feel his hands on my face. Feel his elbows, his shoulders, his neck and his jaw, with my shaking fingers.
He felt so strong. So solid and good.
He wasted no time, immediately urging my lips open with his own. Sighing, I acquiesced, melting into the kiss, letting my tongue play over his.
I loved feeling the spooling tension in him as our lips and tongues swiped and tasted. The muscles in his jaw, the tendons in his neck were taut when I skimmed my fingertips over them.
“Can you get undressed, too?” I breathed against his mouth. “I want all of you.”
I’d wanted all of him for a long time now. I still couldn’t believe that I actually had him. Maybe I’d died in that fire, and this was heaven.
If it was, I hoped I never had to leave.
Hallum shed his clothing immediately. It was a true testament to how much he wanted to return to touching me thathe didn’t fold and arrange his clothes properly. He just left them heaped on the floor with my dress.
“Wait,” I said, just as his mouth breathed over mine once more. “They might hear us. And…And I want to see you.”
It was pitch black in the kitchen without the candles. But even so, I knew the stairway in here led directly to Rivven and Shiloh’s bedroom. They were basically right above us.
Hallum lifted me from the bath, wrapped me in one of Shiloh’s fluffy towels, then carried me into the saloon’s dining room. There was light in here, both from the moon and stars outside the windows and the fireplace. I tensed, waiting to see if the fireplace would send me into a panic, but it didn’t. The logs in there had burned down to nothing but glowing embers. No flames.
Hallum laid me down on my back on the floor, among all the blankets Shiloh and Rivven had set out for us. Reverently, as if unwrapping some holy relic, he pulled away the sides of the towel. I held my breath, completely bared to him as he knelt over me.
“Perfect,” he groaned, his eyes, white and hungry, sweeping from my face to my breasts to my pussy. “You’re so blasted beautiful, Lualhati.” His cock visibly jerked, sending the cock tail spinning desperately. His abdominal muscles were tense beneath his skin.
“Are you just going to stare at me?” I squeaked, feeling colour rushing to my cheeks. I loved my body, but I’d never had someone as demanding and detail-oriented as Hallum examining it like this. What if he got weirded out by stretch marks or cellulite?
He groaned again, wordlessly this time, like speech was just too much for him right now. Then, he lowered his head until his nose was pressed into my intimate curls.
