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He signals without answering and takes the next exit. Following the road away from the heavier traffic, he finds a quiet turnout screened from the main road by a line of trees.

He pulls in, drives far enough that we’re out of sight of passing cars, and puts the SUV in park. The engine goes quiet.

He stares through the windshield for a moment, his breathing heavier than it has any reason to be after sitting behind a wheel.

I unbuckle my seat belt and turn toward him. “You don’t have to say it because I did. I needed you to know how I feel.”

His eyes close briefly before he catches my hand and turns toward me. “You really think I don’t love you?”

“I don’t know what you haven’t told me.” I curl my fingers around his when his jaw tightens, although the look he gives me stops me from trying to explain any further.

“I’m trying to figure out how to tell you without making a complete fucking mess of it.” He draws my hand across the console and holds it against his chest. “Because I’ve already done enough of that with you.”

Relief pushes a laugh out of me before I can stop it, and I turn my hand beneath his as he threads our fingers together.

“I loved Celeste,” he says, keeping his eyes on mine. “I still love her, and for a long time I thought losing her meant this part of my life was finished. I had my person, I lost her, and I convinced myself whatever came afterward had to be enough because I wasn’t supposed to ask for this again.”

His thumb moves across my knuckles before his grip closes more firmly around mine.

“Then you walked into my office wearing a coffee-stained shirt, completely lost, and within twenty minutes I was rearranging an interview process I hadn’t planned to touch because apparently years away from you hadn’t taught me a damn thing.”

My laugh catches around the emotion tightening my throat, and his mouth curves before he draws our joined hands toward him, his fingers closing more firmly around mine.

“I love you, Emma.”

The words barely have time to register before he comes across the console and kisses me, one hand tangling in my hair as his mouth takes mine hard enough that I gasp.

I grab his shirt and pull him closer. He unbuckles himself, and the gearshift digs between us when he shifts halfway across the console and crowds me deeper into the passenger seat.

My palm presses against his chest, finding his heart pounding beneath it, and whatever I might’ve said next gets lost when he kisses me again.

He’s greedier with me than he’s ever been, his palms moving over my skin and tracing beneath my bra before he shoves my skirt toward my hips, and the speed of it drives the seat belt buckle painfully into my thigh.

I embrace the sting because his hands are already moving higher, bracketing my rib cage as his thumb skims the underwire of my bra and his fingers spread across me.

I need more of him, so I grab his shirt and haul him closer until the console bites into my sternum, leaving an ache I ignore as his mouth moves from mine to my throat.

“You want to know what I felt when you said it?” he asks, the words breaking against my skin as his mouth drags beneath my jaw. “Every fucking thing I used to keep this contained disappeared, Emma. I couldn’t hold any of it back anymore.”

His hand pushes farther beneath my shirt until his palm is against my skin, and his callused fingers graze my nipples hard enough to make me shudder.

He watches my reaction before his mouth follows, kissing and biting at my throat with enough pressure that I know I’ll be able to see where he’s been later, and the thought sends another rush of need through me.

I claw at his belt. The seat belt cuts farther into my hip, slapping at the release until the buckle finally clicks free.

As soon as it retracts, I drag him down over me and spread my knees around the center console, ignoring the gearshift digging into my thigh as my skirt bunches around my waist.

Bane’s hand is already between my legs, his fingers pressing through the thin cotton of my panties as he searches for exactly what makes my hips jerk toward him.

I moan into his mouth when he finds it, and he catches the sound with another hard kiss, his tongue moving against mine before his teeth close briefly around my bottom lip. I grip his shirt tighter and his fingers press harder between my legs.

“Fucking hell,” he rasps against my mouth, his fingers pressing harder between my legs. “I can’t wait, Emma. I can’t.”

“Don’t,” I tell him, tightening my grip on his shirt as I pull him closer.

He yanks my panties aside hard enough to rip them, the elastic popping with a burn where the seam snaps before the ruined fabric is gone and his hand replaces it.

His thick fingers slide through the wet heat of me with greedy possession, and I arch against the seat, grinding shamelessly into his palm.