“Then what can you possibly be afraid of?”She looked at him with her brow furrowed.
He laid out the truth for her.“I loved my wife.I thought she loved me.Yet I found her in bed with another man.And even when she saw me in the doorway, she didn’t stop.So let’s just say I don’t always believe what a woman tells me.”
“Are you afraid I’m in it just for sex?”
“Yeah.Totally.And I’m afraid that even if we’re together for a few weeks or months or even a year, you’ll heal from whatever—” He waved a hand in the air.“—your ex-husband did to you.And you won’t want someone like me.”
She held his face in her hands.“It will never be possible for me not to want you.”
“But what if you can’t love me the way I love you?”
She stroked his lower lip with her thumb, and he actually trembled when she asked, “Do you really love me?”
“With all my heart.”
“But it’s only been a few weeks.”
“My heart knows.And if my head hadn’t known it before, on Saturday, when I saw that piece of shit shove you, I knew it in every cell of my body.I wanted to beat him into the ground.I would have if Court hadn’t gotten there first.”He pulled her up, held her in his arms, and whispered against her hair, “But first I needed to make sure you were okay.”Then he held her away, lasered her with his gaze.“I thought I would die when you wouldn’t talk to me all weekend.I’m just as afraid as you are.”He kissed her again, relished the sweetness of her lips.“But if we’re together, maybe we can help keep each other’s fears at bay.”
“You mean together without rules?”
“Your rules scare me.”He caressed her shoulders, wanted to haul her against him, but she needed to see his eyes.“Rules mean you don’t trust me.Rules mean that I’m always on the outside looking in, that I’ll be afraid every day I’ve done something wrong, pissed you off, that you won’t take my calls, and you’ll lock your door against me.”
She looked at him, her eyes misty.“But you’re so confident.So sure of yourself.”
“But I’m so damned arrogant.”
When she smiled at his admission, his heart wanted to explode.“That’s part of your charm.”
“But I make up all the naughty plans, I tell you what to do, and order you around.”
“You take my fantasies and turn them into adventures.You tell me what you want me to do and don’t punish me for liking it.Or for not liking it.”
“I don’t want to punish you, especially not with sex.I want to make the things we do together the best they can be for you.”
Leaning in, she rubbed her nose lightly against his.“Everything we’ve done has been the best.”
“What I can’t handle is if you freeze me out.”
“You mean like I did this weekend?”
He shook his head before she got the wrong idea.“It was agonizing, but I knew you needed time to think.You felt threatened.I understand that.But I will never knowingly hurt you or force you to do something you don’t want to.I’ll always ask and you can always say no.At the picnic, though, I didn’t ask when I kissed you.And I’m sorry for that.”
“Holt told me this morning that he can’t throw stones at anything we want to do.”
Knox laughed.“He sure as hell can’t.None of them can.No one cares what we do because they’re doing it themselves.”
She laughed softly.“Ruby told me to get the hell out of the office and call you.”
His grin seemed to stretch across his whole face.“I’ve gotta hand it to Ruby.”He pulled her in for a tight hug, breathed his vows against her ear.“I want you.I need you.I love you.My feelings won’t change after a month or a year or fifty years.You’re in my blood now.”
She went up on her tiptoes to throw her arms around him.“I’ve been afraid of falling in love with you.”Her voice trembled, her tears close.“I kept telling myself I couldn’t stand it if you started telling me what to do, as if I wasn’t good enough the way I was.Or if you punished me for a mistake I didn’t even know I’d made.I couldn’t bear it if you didn’t take my calls.”
He held her so tightly that she would have to feel the wild beat of his heart.“I will always take your calls.I will never punish you.I will always love you.”Because he had to see her, he held her away and asked, “Can you love me without reservation?Without rules?Can we do this without being afraid?”
She swallowed.“I’m not sure I know how to live without being afraid.”
He cupped the back of her head in his hands, kissed her long and sweet, the taste of her filling him up.“I’ll help you through your fears.And you’ll help me with mine.And we’ll be so much stronger together because of it.Say you love me and put me out of my misery.”
