“Be sure about this, Shaw.” God, he didn’t want to hurt her. But he couldn’t let her go. “You barely know me anymore.”
“I know this.” She placed her hand over his stumbling heartbeat. Her soft, sexy lips were only inches away. Her gaze was alert and bright, all vestiges of her nightmare gone. “I want this. It feels so right, like I’ve wanted you—”
“Forever,” he finished for her, the way they’d always talked over each other, sharing thoughts as easily as they’d breathed the same air. That honesty was what he had to make her see was real, when the truth was fully revealed. “I’ve needed you every day since I lost you.”
“Cole, please love me.”
The vulnerability, the fear of rejection in her request made him want to go back in time and beat on her father and brother for making her doubt herself. Maybe even beat himself for not fighting to keep her no matter what she’d said or thought after her brother’s death. Damn, he’d been such an idiot, hating her for so long. He should have stayed and fought to know exactly what had happened. All this time, her love for him had clearly been waiting below the surface of their separation, begging to be set free.
“Show me you want me,” she said. “Show me you remember it, too.”
“I’ve never forgotten.” He stopped what would have been her next words with a kiss. He covered her body with his own, easing her to the bed’s down pillows and ancient quilt. “No matter how much it hurt to know I’d never touch you again. I swear, I never forgot, not for a moment.”
…
Lying in Cole’s arms was a dream Shaw would be happy to stay in forever. The two of them loving each other was a reality she’d fight anyone and anything to keep. Cole, focused on her, needing her and letting her fill the emptiness she’d sensed in him from the start.
“You feel so good.” His weight pressed her deeper into the mattress.
She arched into him. His teeth raked the sensitive line of her neck, finding nerve endings that fired to life. He explored, tasted, branded her.
“God, Cole, what are you doing to me?”
“Wanting you. Every place I remember loving you. Every damn inch of you.”
She was shaking in his arms and reveling in it. This was the strength his desire called from her, helping her conquer the uncertainty she felt everywhere except in his embrace. Her hands slid up his chest, clenching around his shoulders. She was certain that never in her life had she felt safer. Freer.
His lips found her ear. “Are your nipples still sensitive, Shaw? Sexy little points of sensation that make you scream when I play with them?”
Chill bumps of anticipation raged through her at the graphic picture his words painted, igniting a fire that raced to her center. She shook her head, feeling her feminine muscles clench, then soften, growing damp.
“I don’t know,” she said, her hips molding into his.
“Want to find out?” He kissed the corner of her mouth in an innocent caress. Then his hands covered her breasts, his fingers plumping her nipples, closing around them, tweaking, torturing her.
“Yes.” She gasped, taking control of their kiss, her tongue swirling around his.
She cried into his mouth as he continued to play. She inhaled his groan. She gave herself over to the new, the familiar, the perfect feel of him overwhelming her senses. He made her need, and he made her believe she could take.
She pulled his T-shirt over his shoulders and tossed it away. He unbuttoned her blouse and laid the two halves back. He’d touched her already. He’d had to have known she wasn’t wearing a bra. But watching his pupils dilate, his jaw tighten at the sight of her, had her lifting off the bed until her breasts met the heat of his chest. His hands gripped her hips, thrilling her with his greed.
She sank her teeth into the muscles of his shoulder. Sparks flew behind her closed eyelids at the indulgence of it. The sounds he made, the pleasure rumbling through him, told Shaw her instincts had been right on target.
This. His palms smoothed down her back, beneath the loose waistband of her sweatpants, then her panties. This felt so real. She could remember this. She could remember Cole and the way they’d once been, simply by kissing his chest and clutching his hair when he kissed her tender breasts, sending stronger and stronger sensations flaming through her.
She grappled with his belt buckle. She winced. Her still-sensitive fingers jerked back.
“Please,” she begged, panting.
His gaze was hooded, intense, when he looked up. In it, she saw the reflection of everything she was feeling. Hunger. Reverence. Want. Need.
“Please what, darlin’?” He pecked a chaste kiss on the tip of her nose, then drugged her with another endless mating of their mouths.