“I can walk, you know.”
“I know. I’m making a point.”
“What point?”
“That I’ve got you.” He set her on her feet beside the bed. The lamp on the nightstand was still on, casting gold across the pillows. “And I’m not letting go.”
She turned, gathered her hair, and lifted it off her neck. Deliberate. An invitation.
He stepped close and found the zipper. The sound of it parting was the loudest thing in the room. He pressed his lips to the nape of her neck as the fabric slipped, and her breath caught, and the sound shot straight through him.
She wiggled the dress free and let it fall. Black silk pooled at her feet. She stepped out and turned.
There was a freckle on her shoulder he’d forgotten about. He’d kissed it a hundred times when they were seventeen, behind the field house, in the library stacks, in every hidden corner of Ashford they’d claimed as theirs. He bent and put his mouth there now, and she exhaled like she’d been holding the breath for years.
“I’ve missed you,” he said against her skin.
She lowered herself onto the bed and looked up at him, her eyes holding a question she wasn’t asking out loud. Her dark hair spilled across his white pillows.
“Stop staring,” she whispered.
“Give me a second.” He couldn’t stop looking. “I’ve been waiting to see you like this for half my life. Let me have the view.”
She reached behind her back, unclasped her bra, and let it fall. “Then come here and do something about it.”
He pulled his shirt over his head. His belt came loose, his pants followed, and then he was over her, braced on his forearms, close enough to count the flecks of amber in her eyes.
“I need you to be sure,” he said. “Because after this, I’m not letting you go a second time.”
She reached up and rested her hand along the side of his face, her thumb brushing the corner of his mouth. “I’ve never been more sure of anything.”
He kissed her. Deep and slow, his tongue sliding against hers while one hand fisted in her hair. She arched into him with a sound that made his hips press forward on instinct. Her thighs opened to make room for him, and the thin lace of her underwear was the only thing between his body and hers.
He was shaking. Actually shaking. Gabriel Sterling, who’d negotiated hostile takeovers without a tremor, was trembling over a woman he’d loved since he was a kid.
She felt the tremor in his arms and didn’t look away. “Gabriel.”
“I know.”
“Are you nervous?”
“Terrified.” He pressed his forehead to hers. “I’ve wanted this for so long, and I don’t want to mess it up.”
“You’re not messing anything up.” She pulled his mouth back to hers. “Keep going.”
He kissed down her throat while his palm found her breast. When his thumb brushed across her nipple, she gasped, and the sound undid what was left of his restraint. He closed his mouth over her and lingered there, learning the way her body responded, the way her hips shifted when he grazed his teeth across the peak and soothed it with his tongue.
“More,” she breathed. “Please.”
He gave the other breast the same attention while his hand slid down her stomach. Her muscles tensed under his palm. When he hooked his fingers in her underwear, she lifted her hips before he could ask.
“Yes,” she said. “Take them off.”
He pulled the lace down her legs and dropped it somewhere behind him. And then she was bare beneath him, the lamplight tracing every curve, and he stopped breathing.
“You’re staring again.”
“I know.” He sat back on his heels. “Let me.”
