Page 67

But he was done hiding.

He met her gaze and held it. Let her see. Let her read the truth of his heart in his eyes. Maybe then it would be easier to say out loud. God, why was it still so hard to say out loud?

Finally, she drew in a shaky breath and said, “After so many years of not speaking, after all that times I begged you to talk to me and you wouldn’t, to find out you’d read my books, that you had this access to my thoughts in a way I never had access to yours... it felt like just one more time you knew how I felt and I had no idea how you felt.”

He nodded, taking it in, letting her hurt settle over him. "I didn’t mean to hurt you more by reading them. I just wanted to feel close to you again. They were a lifeline. A way to talk to you even though you were gone.”

“You could have called. I spent a long time hoping you would call.”

He shook his head. “I tried a few times. But nothing had changed. I still couldn’t tell you what was happening with Jackson. I didn’t even really know myself back then.”

“Would you have told me if you did?”

He hesitated. He’d always hated hypotheticals, especially when the answer wasn’t likely to make her feel any better. “I don’t know. You worked for the label. You had a responsibility to share with them the things you knew.”

She frowned. “Did you really think I would be more loyal to the label than to you?”

“I couldn’t put you in that position,” he said, needing her to understand. “I didn’t know how to be a good brother and the guy you needed me to be.”

“I only ever needed you to be yourself.”

He skated his hand up her calf, tracing the seam of her jeans with his thumb. “I thought maybe you were writing to me. That you wanted me to read them.” He gave a self-deprecating chuckle, the weight of all those wasted years heavy on his chest. “I tried writing back. But that one song nearly killed me and still didn’t say what I needed it to say.”

“You wrote a song?”

“Barely. I’ve never been a very good songwriter.”

She scootched closer on the couch, draping her legs over his lap, and pushed an errant lock of hair out of his eyes. “You don’t give yourself enough credit.”

“I’d read your books and the men you wrote, they’d say the things I always wanted to say. The things I didn’t have words for. It was like you already knew.” He tugged her closer, wanting as much of his body touching hers as possible. “There is so much I should have told you.”

“Tell me now.”

Somehow he still didn’t have the words for all the feelings that felt too big for words, jumbled up in his head until they became a tangled mess of string. He took her hand in his, running his thumb over the sensitive skin on the side of her wrist before placing her hand over his heart and covering it with his own. As if she could feel it in the rhythm of his heartbeat.

“I want to be that guy, the one you always write. The one who always knows the right thing to say. I don’t want to waste any more time.”

She exhaled slowly, her lips turned down slightly at the corners, and blood rushed in his ears as she pulled her hand away from his chest. “I want that, too, but—”

“No, no but. Can we just stop at you want that, too?”

“I still work for the label, Becks. I still have a job to do—a job I need. What if you wake up tomorrow and decide that means you can’t trust me?”

“I trust you.”

“I can’t—” She broke off, shaking her head. It was agony to wait for her to gather her thoughts. “I can’t get close to you again just to lose you.”

“You won’t,” he said, dragging his lips across her knuckles. “Give me the chance to prove it to you. I’m not going anywhere, Luna. Not without you.”

Her voice was so small, but she swayed closer to him. “I want to believe that.”

“Then believe it.” He took her face in his hands and forced her to meet his eyes, some desperate, wild thing roaring to life in his chest at the idea that he might lose her. Not now. Not after he’d only just gotten her back. “When I woke up this morning and thought you were gone… I would have torn this hotel apart to find you. I won’t let you walk away again, not without a fight. You are mine, Katerina Luna. You’ve always been mine.”

He wasn’t sure who moved first, but it didn’t matter, because her lips were on his. He hauled her into his lap, her knees straddling his waist, and held her in place as he kissed her, pouring every moment of longing, every hour of missing her into the kiss. It was messy and desperate, teeth and tongues and gasping for air, and he would have it no other way because this woman made him feel desperate. Like a soda bottle shaken up and ready to burst.

He gripped her ass and rocked her against him so she could feel how hard he was already. She rewarded him with a soft gasp, as if his desire for her was a surprise. As he dragged his teeth over the column of her throat, she tipped her head back, fingers tangled in his hair, and groaned, “Make me yours.”

He pulled her shirt over her head and tossed it aside. With one hand, he unhooked her bra, letting the simple cotton fall away from her chest as his other hand slid down the back of her jeans, kneading the soft round of her ass. He lifted one rose-tipped breast to his mouth and sucked the stiff nipple between his lips, worrying it with his teeth.