He's here. In San Francisco. In my building. A thousand miles from his mountain and his cabin and the world where he makes sense, standing in my lobby at ten o'clock at night.
"Send him up."
The elevator takes forty-five seconds. I know because I count every one of them, standing in my open doorway, gripping the doorframe, watching the numbers climb.
The doors open.
Hayes steps out wearing dark jeans, a gray henley pushed up at the forearms, and hiking boots that have no business on the marble floor of a forty-second-floor penthouse. He's carrying a small case in one hand. His hair is messed from travel, his beard is three days past his usual trim, and he looks like he hasn't slept.
Its the sexiest thing I've ever seen.
He stops three feet away. Reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out my reading glasses. Holds them up.
"You left these."
My laugh comes out broken. Half sob, half joy, cracked right down the middle. "You flew a thousand miles to return my reading glasses."
"I drove, actually. Nine hours. The glasses were the excuse." He slides them back into his pocket. "I'm here because you asked for three days to figure out if this was real outside the mountain. It's been three days. I'm outside the mountain. And it's real, Lex. It was real in my cabin and it's real in your lobby and it'll be real anywhere on earth you want to test it."
"Hayes."
"I'm not done." He takes a step closer. "Deck pulled me from your detail. You're right, it was because of us. And I sat on my porch for about six hours being pissed about it before I walked into the lodge and told him he was right. My judgment was compromised. Not because I'm too young or too reckless or too anything. Because I love you, and loving someone makes you a liability in the field. That's not a failure. That's a fact."
"What did he say?"
"He said he got shot protecting Vivian and proposed to her while bleeding from the wound. Then he told me to get my ass off the mountain and go get my woman." The corner of his mouth lifts. "His words."
The tears come. I don't fight them. For the first time in twenty-six years, I stand in a doorway and let tears roll down my face in front of another person.
"I'm forty years old," I whisper.
"I know."
"I have lines on my face and gray roots every three weeks and a body that's not what it was at thirty."
"Lex."
"I'm scared that one day you're going to look at me and see an old woman and wish you'd chosen someone younger."
He closes the distance. Both hands on my face. Thumbs wiping the tears. Those hazel eyes six inches from mine, gold flecked and unwavering and absolutely certain.
"You are the most brilliant, challenging, beautiful woman I have ever known. Your lines are from years of saving lives and building an empire. Your body makes me lose my mind every time I look at it. And if you think some hypothetical younger woman could ever come close to what you are, you're not as smart as I thought."
I grab his shirt and pull him through the doorway.
The door slams behind us. His mouth covers mine and the three days of silence and distance and aching loneliness collapse into this. His arms around me. His body against mine. His tongue sliding against mine with the hunger of a man who has spent seventy-two hours thinking about nothing but this moment.
I pull him through the penthouse without breaking the kiss. Past the chrome kitchen and the designer furniture and the million-dollar view. Down the hallway to my bedroom, where the king bed has crisp white sheets and too many pillows and has never once felt like anything but a place to sleep.
He lifts me. My legs wrap around his waist, the silk robe riding up my thighs, and he carries me into the bedroom with the same easy strength he used in the cabin. He lays me on the bed and stands over me, pulling the henley over his head. The PJ tattoo on his ribs. The lean, hard muscle of his chest and stomach. The trail of hair below his navel disappearing into his jeans.
I reach for the sash of my robe and he catches my hand.
"Let me."
He unties the sash slowly. Parts the silk. The robe falls open, and underneath I'm wearing nothing but black lace underwear. His breath hisses between his teeth. His eyes move over me, my breasts in the dim bedroom light, my stomach, my hips, my thighs, and the look on his face is not a young man's infatuation. It's reverence. Worship. The look of a man staring at something sacred.
"Every inch of you," he says, low and rough. "Every single inch, Lex."
