“Hey now. Don’t get all pissy with me just because he showed up and demanded to see you. He tried to push me out of the way to get inside. When I refused to move, he demanded that I give you a message.”
I groaned, dropping my chin to my chest and clenching my fists. “I don’t think I want to know whatever hedemanded.”
“Hey,” he said, moving across the kitchen and resting his back against the countertop beside me. I added salt to the pot set to boil, avoiding admitting how much I enjoyed the closeness—his closeness. Doctor Tom had nothing on the butterflies that had taken flight in my belly when Maverick’s voice dropped, gravely and deep. “I don’t know everything that happened between you two, but no one deserves to be treated the way he’s treating you. You know that, right?”
I raised my head and turned, watching like I was in a bad midafternoon soap opera as he reached forward with one handand tucked a rogue strand of hair behind my ear. “You deserve someone who will put you first, always.”
“Can we just compromise with someone who doesn’t think of me as a burden? Someone who I can count on? Someone who sees me?”
“The right man will never see you as anything but a goddess.”
I didn’t mean to show how vulnerable I felt, but once the words were out in the open, something inside me yearned for exactly what I’d said—and how he’d answered.
I faced him, letting my eyes wander over his sharp jaw and the fine lines around his eyes, wondering why he’d say something so sweet.
His hands reached toward me again, slow enough for me to pull away if I wanted, but I didn’t. He cupped my jaw, tracing his thumb over my cheekbone until I sighed and leaned into his touch. The intimacy of him being so close made my hands shake. And as if he knew what I was thinking, he used the other one to trail down my arm and then threaded those fingers into mine.
“Maverick. Please don’t placate me.”
His hand tightened in mine, and he used the one resting against my face to gently touch my lips.
“I think you know me well enough to know I don’t talk to hear my own voice.”
My eyes widened, and I took a step back, but his hand left my face and grasped my hip, pulling me tightly against his body. The rigid plains of his chest and the supple cotton of his shirt reminded me of his personality—hard and soft, blending perfectly together to create the man I was pressed into.
“Do you have any idea what you’ve done to me since the afternoon I disturbed your shower?”
“Done to you?” I whispered, not trusting myself to say more than a few syllables.
He saw me naked. So what? I passed my prime twenty years ago.
Now? I craved happiness like an unattainable drug. And happiness for me meant carbs, snark, and yoga pants.
“Surely, you’ve seen a naked woman before. You were married too, right?”
Yeah, the comment was insensitive—especially with the little kernels of backstory I’d gotten about his past—but this was a gruff, handsome guy who was good with his hands and put his family first.
Why in the hell would he want anything to do with an almost forty-year-old divorcée living with her father? One who had self-esteem and sarcasm issues, to boot.
He scoffed and rolled his eyes before his grip tightened on my waist and he breathed in, running his nose down the sensitive skin below my ear and toward my throat.
“Yeah, woman. I’ve been married. And even though it was short-lived, from the second I called her mine, I treated her like the queen she was. The same way a man should treat you every damn day.”
His whispered breath and spoken words sent goose bumps along my skin, and like a shameless hussy, I craved the feeling, pushing myself closer to him until our hips were aligned. Oh, my God. I felt it—him.Hard, thick, and long, pressed against my stomach and causing me to whimper with need.
“You feel that, right? Feel what you do to me? Let me tell you something, Summer.”
I made some sort of noise that he must have found appealing, because a second later, the hand gripping mine released and he snaked it around my waist, holding me almost painfully tight.
It felt better than the last five years of my failed marriage, that point of contact where his hands gripped me like I was the mostimportant thing in his life. The feeling was new and scary but also empowering. It made me feel sexy—hemade me feel sexy.
“I never wanted to get married and was always content just taking care of my brothers and mom. But I did it anyway, and it ended before it had begun.”
“Maverick—”
“Stop,” he said, cutting off my apology before it could leave my lips. “Again, I’m not talking to hear myself speak.”
I sighed, wrapping my arms around his upper body and resting my head on the spot where his neck met his shoulder. His scent was stronger here—masculine, and something uniquelyhim.It took every millimeter of strength I possessed not to taste him.
