His hand pressed under my chin, tilting my head up to meet his gaze, before his grip slid down my jawline, brushing my hair over my shoulder. A shiver ran down my spine, his dark brown eyes searching mine.
“If this is too much, too quick, please…tell me.” He inhaled deeply, the reluctance clear across his face as he tried to hold himself back.
I needed him more than I needed my next breath. From the moment he stepped over the threshold, it was like all the pieces of my life had come back to me. Everything I’d given up, the people who’d make me truly happy, they’d found me.
First Scottie. Now him.
“I want you.” My fingers clung to his shirt, pulling tightly to bring him down to my height. To bring his lips close to mine. “Please, Jonah. Don’t make me wait.”
No sooner than I said the words his lips crashed into mine, my body melting against his, an instinct I held onto all those years.
Home. Thirteen years, and I’d been searching for it – trying to build it in my company, trying to remake it in the Highlands – but it found me. The brush of his stubble, the longing in the press of his hands, the murmured curse under his breath.
It’s him.
twenty-four
JONAH
Don’t Reign Me In - Sam Fender, Olivia Dean
It’s her.
And now I had her, I wanted to hold her close, live in her glow, trace every delicate little freckle with my fingertips.
Her lips slid against mine, the delicious taste pulling me back to that winter we shared together. I tangled my hand in her hair, tilting her head to deepen the kiss. Twisting us around, I trapped her against the counter, one hand gripping its edge and the other on her waist. I wanted to remove every millimetre of space between us.
After thirteen years, I’d had about as much distance from her as I could survive.
Kit Sinclair had never left my memory. Not for a single day. There wasn’t a laugh that didn’t remind me of hers. A blue ocean that didn’t make me think of her eyes. A pink that I didn’t compare to her lips.
All this time, I’d been living on half a breath, on restricted air. And now she was in my arms again, I could inhale deeply, that same expensive peach perfume.
Her hands began to pull at my shirt, fingers fiddling with the buttons as my own started to inch up her cotton t-shirt. I wanted to feel her bare against me, feel her weight on mine, ink every kiss against my skin.
“Take this off,” she said, hauling my shirt down my arms, her eyes searching my torso. With a huff of laughter, I complied, pulling it off the rest of the way.
“Whoa, this is new.” Kit grinned. Her gaze raked down my body, taking in the collection of tattoos I’d started to collect across my shoulder, down my torso. Some were inspired by home, little hallmarks to my family; others were following the careers of the players I’d worked with, little marks for Paris and New York that we got together, designs I’d let them choose if they won the bet.
She lifted her hand, touching my chest. I stilled under her touch, realizing what she had found.
“Coordinates?” she asked, a delicate finger tracing over each digit inked along my collarbone.
I nodded, my throat too dry to manage words. I felt overexposed, a little too raw too quickly to admit what I knew she was about to ask.
“Where for?” Her eyes found mine. “Your family?”
I swallowed, pushing away the confession, instead keeping it tucked away for later. “Something like that,” I said, before dipping down, my hands wrapping around her thighs to pull her up onto the counter, bringing our faces level.
I blinked, my brain thrown by her beauty. She’d only grown more beautiful, a stronger version of herself that I wanted to get to know. Inside and out.
“I can’t believe I’m here,” I admitted, my heart threatening to burst out of my chest. “Why didn’t you say it was him?” I asked. It had hit me like a lightning bolt on her doorstep; I could barely move putting all the pieces together; and the realization struckme again. “Her father. I worked for Matteo, I coached your daughter for years, and I never knew. I’d wondered. I’d always wondered. I thought I was making it up, like I was trying to see you in people you weren’t,” I admitted, Kit’s eyes searching my face. They’d looked so similar; it felt too much like a coincidence. “If she was yours”—I had to blink away tears—“Scottie. So much of her reminded me of you. Your strength, and courage, and wit. She’s your daughter.”
I’d ended another relationship when I joined Scottie’s coaching team. Another woman I’d disappointed because I couldn’t return their feelings. Disappearing into my career seemed like the smartest thing to do. Then I’d seen the young tennis player and nearly quit on the spot. It was like meeting the ghost of a woman I’d once loved.
But something had kept me around. Maybe it was the way her father was, driven and hard. Maybe I knew that she needed a responsible coach, somebody who would help her and not push her in the way her father clearly was. In a way, I’d raised her daughter rather than have my own, and that decision had taken me back to Kit. To the woman I’d tried almost everything to fall out of love with.
Her gaze turned inquisitive, her lips swollen from the kiss. “You never looked me up? Never picked up a magazine?”
