“That you’re leaving. This won’t last. It can’t be more than just a fling.”
“Wrong.”
She sucks in a breath, and it’s shaky. I’ve unbalanced her, knocked that little sunbeam right off the stable pedestal she’d been standing on, the one drifting in the middle of an ocean where her heart can’t be reached.
It takes a moment, but I wait for her to whisper meekly, “Then what are you going to say?”
“Rowe.” I take her face. I love taking her by the cheeks and staring into her soft brown eyes. There is no better place on earth. “I’m going to say that you have undone everything about who I thought I was. You walked into my life and upended all parts of it. This wasn’t supposed to be anything other than a project that I worked on for two months and used to claim my inheritance. But it’s become more than that.”
“What’s it become?” she asks, so shyly that I nearly dissolve into laughter.
The smile on my face is so wide my cheeks ache. “It’s becomeyou. Every part of me wants you. And no, not just physically. I need you. I breathe you. You have lodged yourself into my core, and if you left today, if I let you leave without knowing how I feel, I would be destroyed.
“You have destroyed me, and I am here for every single part of it. So I’m asking you, Sunbeam. Will you, for once in your life, let someone else take care of you? You don’t have to do this on your own, and I don’t want to leave you. I want to be with you more than I’ve ever wanted to be with anyone, and I think you feel the same way.”
She doesn’t blink. She doesn’t run.
So I take a breath and keep on. “And if you let me in, then I will spend every moment I can proving that I’m not the other men you’ve known. I’m not going to walk away from you.”
She has hearts in her eyes. They shine bright for two seconds before disappearing. “But what about—”
“I’m not walking away.” I kiss her lips and press my forehead to hers. “Everything else, we can talk about later.”
“Why later?”
I rock back on my heels, knocked over by her. All of her. Just her. Good God, I’m pouring my heart out, and all she can focus on is the details?This woman.“Because right now, I’m taking you into thathouse and doing things to you that I’ve been wanting to do since I first met you.”
Her brows cock. “Oh?”
“Yes. You can say no. Youcan. And I’ll be devastated. But I can wait. For you, I can wait—”
She throws her arms around my neck and presses her lips to mine, sliding in her tongue and making my cock strain against my jeans.
When we part for air, we’re both breathless. She curls her hands around my collar and tugs me close. “Pane Maddox, if I have to wait one more minute for you, then ...”
“You’ll what? Explode?”
“Yes. I will.”
I kiss her again, smiling against her teeth. “Then let’s get you inside.”
