“With your girlfriend?” As soon as the words left my mouth, my cheeks heated. I couldn’t have been any more obvious if I’d tried, something which Gaige was well aware of judging by the pleased smirk he flashed me.
“Nope. I was on my own for this trip.”
“Oh.” Drat, that wasn’t enough information to know for sure if he had a girlfriend or not. He could have been by himself because she couldn’t make it or something.
His thumb stroked across my palm again as he gave me a knowing look. “I don’t have a girlfriend, Arabella.”
“I don’t, either,” I blurted out. His chuckle made me realize what I’d said. Apparently, I didn’t have a filter when it came to him. “A boyfriend, I mean.”
“Good.” He smiled at me. “Not that it’d change a thing if you did. I’ve waited too long to let another guy stand in my way.”
He couldn’t have meant what he’d said how I was taking it, but I found myself asking for clarification and hoping I’d get the answer I wanted. “You waited too long”—I coughed to clear my throat—“for what exactly?”
“For the woman who knocked me on my ass.”
I tilted my head and narrowed my eyes at him. “But —”
“Proverbially speaking, of course.”
There was no doubt about it; he was talking about me. He’d stopped me from literally falling on my butt in the airport, and we’d both been affected by it. He’d been waiting for me, the same way I had him. Even though the odds were against me ever seeing him again, I judged every other man by the memory of that moment with him. Since nobody else measured up, I put all my energy into building my career and left dating until I found the right man. And it looked like my wait was over. I didn’t need to find another man like Gaige. Not when Gaige had found me.
His hand released mine, and he trailed his fingertips over my wrist. When I shivered, he leaned closer as his fingers glided up my arm and across my collarbone to cup my chin and tilt my head back. “Fuck, you’re even more gorgeous than I remember.”
Blushing harder, I nervously pushed my hair away from my face. I knew I didn’t look my best. Even though I was exhausted, I hadn’t been able to fall asleep. I’d tossed and turned, which had left my hair a mess. The make-up that had been professionally applied at the studio had been washed off hours ago. And my robe wasn’t one of those sexy, silk numbers designed to tease a man. It was a rose red, terry cloth robe that my sister had bought me because I’d complained about how cold I was in themornings when I’d moved to New York to study under one of my idols for a year. I’d worn it every day over the last three years. Although it had held up fairly well under all those washes, it was the furthest thing from flattering. “That can’t possibly be true.”
“It is, sweetheart,” he breathed against my lips. My eyes drifted shut just before his mouth brushed against mine. His lips were warm and soft, making me sigh. Then a groan bubbled up his throat, and he slanted his head. He nipped at my bottom lip, and I let out a startled gasp. He didn’t waste the opportunity, and his tongue swept into my mouth to tangle with mine. As the kiss deepened, I ignited in his arms. My hands reached for his shoulders, trying to tug him closer. His grip tightened on my chin, and he tilted his head more to get better access to my mouth.
He switched between quick nibbles on my lips, gentle sucking tugs of my tongue, and leisurely strokes into my mouth. I was out of breath when he lifted his head, but I wanted more. So I slid my hands into his dark hair to try to hold him in place.
“Don’t worry, sweetheart. I’m not done yet,” he murmured against my ear before kissing his way down my neck. “I’ll let us have a little more before I do the right thing and let go.”
I whimpered at the thought of this ending. “Only for now. Not forever,” he promised. Then he scraped his teeth against the skin at my pulse-point. Deft fingers untied the sash at my waist, and he pushed the material aside to kiss his way along the scoop-neck collar of the cotton nightshirt I’d worn to bed. I moaned at the feel of the heat of his mouth against my skin, the sound loud and ragged in the quiet room. It had been too long since I’d been touched by anyone. Years. And the teenage groping back then had nothing on Gaige’s expert caresses.
“Damn, Arabella,” he groaned. “I couldn’t forget you after getting a look at you and feeling your hands on my chest. It didn’t matter that I didn’t even know your name. But if I’d hadeven the tiniest taste of you back then, I never would have been able to let you walk away.”
I grinned at him, feeling about ten feet tall with his admission. “Really?”
“Fuck, yeah. You’re potent, sweetheart.”
“It’s you, not me,” I confessed shyly. “I’ve never been”—I paused because the word he’d used seem so foreign when it came to me—“potent before.”
His mouth crashed back down on mine, harder than before. After he’d kissed me senseless, my lips felt puffy and tingly. He rested his forehead on mine, and his dark eyes burned with jealousy as he growled, “The last thing I want to hear about is you with other guys.”
“That’s not something you need to worry about,” I reassured him. His caveman reaction had me admitting something all the dating books would have told me to keep quiet about. “I haven’t so much as kissed another guy in more than two years. No first dates. No random hook-ups. Nothing.”
My bravery was rewarded when he rasped, “Neither have I.”
4
GAIGE
It had taken everything I had in me to keep my hands off Arabella and get her settled in bed last night. I’d wanted nothing more than to rip off all our clothes and climb in beside her, but I’d managed to hang onto my control for two reasons. The purple smudges underneath her beautiful green eyes were visible proof of how badly she needed sleep. Plus, I didn’t want to run the risk of her thinking that I only wanted sex from her. After spending two years thinking about her, I knew this was going to be more. My gut told me that she was my chance to have what Vaughn had found. That Arabella was the woman with whom I’d build a life. And another thing my experiences in the Army had taught me was to trust my instincts, even when they were telling me something that most people would think was completely insane.
“That’s the last of my stuff,” Arabella called out from the bedroom.
I wandered into the bedroom and shook my head at the two suitcases at the foot of the bed. The rose gold colored, hard-side pieces were an exact match to the four other pieces waiting at the door. “How many days were you planning on staying in LA?”
“Ten,” she admitted sheepishly. “I guess it’s too late for me to hide that I’m a little high maintenance?”
