“I could see in his eyes that he was gentle and kind,” Lily had once told Thea. “I desperately needed kindness at that time of my life.” Tears in her eyes, she’d smiled. “Even more, I needed a man who would love you and treat you with care—and on the day Wayan came to ask for my hand, he was waiting in my parents’ garden when you snuck outside.”
Lily’s smile had grown deeper, her voice softer. “He didn’t know I was watching as he dusted you off after you fell, then held you in his lap and told you stories. I knew I would marry him then, honor him, but I didn’t know I would love him until six months later when he laughed while digging my first garden for me and said no one ever told him marriage involved such physical labor.”
Thea could still remember the blinding love in her mother’s eyes as she said, “I looked at him and I thought—why have I never noticed how handsome my husband is when he laughs, this strong, loyal, kind man who loves me?”
Lily had wiped away a tear. “He told me two weeks after our wedding that he’d fallen for me a month before we officially met, when he’d seen me laughing and playing with you outside your grandparents’ house. He said he felt he’d won the lottery with our marriage.”
Thea smiled at the memory of the mischief in her mother’s expression during this part of the story.
“That day in the garden,” Lily had said, “was the first time I was ever forward with your father. Let’s just say he did another kind of physical labor on that half-dug garden patch. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a man so happily surprised.” Delight in her laughter. “Love has many guises, Thea. Sometimes it’s a stroke of lightning as it was for your father, other times a slow building storm as it was for me, but the one thing that never changes is that it must be nurtured. You can’t kick a heart and expect it not to flinch.”
This, Thea admitted, unable to resist brushing her fingers over David’s stubbled jaw, was lightning. She hadn’t permitted herself to notice it when they’d first met, had convinced herself he was simply one of those people who would end up a lifelong friend; they’d had such an instant and strong connection.
Now, on this night when New York slept beyond the windows, she felt a single tear slide down her cheek. “Don’t kick my heart, David,” she whispered, knowing whatever Eric had done to her, David could do far worse. With Eric, the storm had never had a chance to build. With David, it was a wildness in her heart.
“Thea.” A mumble of sound, David’s lashes rising.
She kissed him, halting the questions he might have asked, hiding the vulnerability that pulsed in her. As his arms came around her, his body warm and strong, his scent dark and male, she repeated her plea, this time in silence.
Please don’t kick my heart, David.
David tasted wet salt in Thea’s kiss, and the sign of pain snapped awake his drowsy mind. But it was immediately obvious that Thea didn’t want to talk, her skin silken against his as she poured herself into the kiss. It wasn’t in David’s nature to ignore the hurt of the people who mattered to him, but he decided that tonight, he would speak to Thea not in words, but in actions.
Shifting so he was braced over her, he cupped her jaw and kissed her slow, gentle, with all the love that had been building inside him since the day they met. She was it for him. Today, tomorrow, every day to come. And tonight, his Thea needed tenderness, and he would give it to her, though his cock raged as it always did at her proximity, shoving against her.
“Damn it,” he muttered at the feel of her warm dampness, his spine going rigid. “It’d be easier to keep a handle on myself if we weren’t nearly the same height.”
A startled-sounding chuckle, no tears evident in her voice. “I like that we’re so close in height.” Arms wrapping around his neck, she spread her thighs for him while nibbling on his lips. “Everything’s so intimate when I can always see your eyes, feel your breath.”
Able to make out her face even in the darkness since they were so close, he rubbed his cock against her, watched the pleasure roll over her. Eyes heavy-lidded, she said, “Come in me.”
“I was going for slow.” He kissed his way down her throat, one of his hands on a pert, sensitive breast.
“Slow sounds good—but with you in me.” Raising her hips, she acted the temptress, her voice a coaxing whisper. “David.”
Shit, he was so fucking useless at denying her. Squeezing her breast, he grabbed protection from the bedside drawer and sheathed himself while Thea kissed and petted and drove him crazy. Her moan was deep when he pushed into the scalding heat of her, her spine arching in a graceful curve. Sweat breaking out over his skin, he gritted his teeth and bent his head to pay homage to the breast he didn’t have in his hand.