Page 42

“Dallas,” she replied, in the same tone. “I don’t want to divorce you. I don’t want to leave. And right now, I think I might throw myself off this hillside if you don’t pick me up, take me to your bed, and teach me what it means to be insatiable once and for all.”

And for a moment, she thought he wouldn’t do it. She thought that he would balk, because he always did. But they had been in close proximity for much too long now. Or maybe, he’d never had as much control as he pretended.

Because she could see how much he wanted her. She could read it all over him.

He sucked in a breath, his blue eyes blazed, and then his mouth curved, hard and hot.

“Yes, ma’am,” he drawled.

And then he swept her up into his arms at last.

Chapter Nine

If this was a dream, Dallas did not want to wake up.

He told himself that dreams didn’t come with scents like her moisturizer or the weight of her in his arms. Dreams didn’t allow him to hear the creaks in the floor beneath his feet or the way his foot fell when he kicked his own door open and carried her into the keeper’s cottage.

And he’d dreamed of this so many times already. He would know.

Dallas didn’t put her down in his cozy little living room that was mostly books. He didn’t stop in his small, efficient kitchen that he rarely used when he had the more expansive one in the inn. He carried her down the hallway, into the room at the end that was arranged on the back side of the lighthouse and looked out into the mountains.

On a night like this, the only thing to see was darkness and snow. And, at intervals, the scrape of the lighthouse’s beam over the mountains that rolled out like the sea and seemed to go on forever. Far past any horizon.

He refused to believe that it was a dream as he brought her into his bedroom and set her down on his bed.

And finally, after all these years, crawled his way up the length of her beautiful body once again and let her pull him on top of her.

They both moaned a little bit as he settled between her legs. Dallas braced himself above her on his elbows, then he set his mouth to hers.

And everything became one great, glorious dance of flame and need.

They kissed for a lifetime, and it was more than he’d hoped for and nothing like enough. He moved his hands so he could hold her face between his palms, and for a while they could drive themselves crazy with only their mouths.

But it wasn’t only their mouths. He could feel her everywhere.

And then the clothes between them were an insult.

It was awkward and rushed and funny, too. They laughed a little bit as they hurried to try to get their clothes off. To take each other’s clothes off. But in the end, all of their layers were tossed aside.

And they were coming back together, reaching out with all of that old greed intensified. With all of their need and longing dialed up high.

It had been so long that it was tempting to just go for it, but Dallas reined himself in. Because he could remember everything that had happened between them, in detail. But as far as Ruthie knew, this was their first time.

And he didn’t want to tell her that their first time had been a wild, frenetic, absolutely smoking hot explosion of passion in the back of that damned RAV4.

He’d always regretted that. Not that it had happened that first night they’d met, but that he hadn’t taken her home. To a proper bed.

Tonight he had the chance to do it over. So he was going to try to redeem himself.

He explored every inch of her body. He tried to remember every single spot that made her hiss in a breath, or moan, or shiver. When he found one, he did it again and again.

Dallas tested the sensitivity of her nipples and those beautiful breasts of hers that occupied far too much of his thoughts. He smoothed his hands down the length of her, groaning at that lush and muscled figure that had always driven him wild.

She was athletic and gorgeous, and he tasted her everywhere. The curve of her hip. Her navel. He flipped her over and bit at the indentation at the base of her spine, then reacquainted himself with the sweet roundness of her ass.

Her thighs were a particular fascination of his, because she was so fit. And he knew exactly how tough she was, too. And still he could make her quiver like she was the softest thing in the world.

Dallas kissed her everywhere, again and again, but made certain to avoid the one place she wanted his mouth the most.