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“And I believe you. Or I want to. I just … I don’t trust me, my own heart, I guess.”
“Why?” I asked, taking a slow step forward. If she still had doubts, I had every intention of holding her close, of proving my love to her with every inch of myself until they’d been banished. “What is it saying?”
A half-smile lifted one side of her mouth and her eyes widened. God, I wanted to hold her. But I held back, approaching slowly, trying not to spook her.
“It’s telling me to run into your arms, to bury my head in your chest, to hold onto you as tightly as I can and to stay there as long as you’ll let me.” She dropped my gaze immediately after saying these words. “It’s saying I love you, and it scares the shit out of me.”
“I love you,” I said simply, my heart pounding so loudly I thought they could probably hear it downstairs.
She shook her head and laughed. “This just … It doesn’t happen like this, right? In three days?”
I shrugged. “It did for me.”
The hazel eyes flickered across mine and then dropped again. “For me too.”
“Tess,” I said softly, and she looked up then, meeting me fully in the eye. “Come here.”
She hesitated, lingering a minute more by the soft pink chair in the corner, and then I watched the hesitation fall from her face like a mask, and she rushed into my arms, her hands sliding up my back and pressing hard against me as my skin caught fire again.
Her body was perfect against mine, hot and supple and soft, and I found the zipper holding her inside the rust-colored sheath, dropping it to the ground around her ankles without letting her go. A tiny whimper escaped her as the dress fell, and I swept her up into my arms, carrying her to the bed, where I laid her before me in her purple lace panties and strapless bra. “Perfect,” I might have said aloud.
She smiled then, a happy look that telegraphed her acceptance of this crazy truth, her belief that three days could be enough, that they could be the beginning of forever. I straddled her hips and her hands found the button of my pants, unfastening it and pushing them down over my hips. I stood again to rid myself of them, and my boxer briefs, and then slid back on top of her.
I leaned forward, taking her mouth with mine as her hands searched my body, leaving little lines of fire everywhere they touched me. Her tongue was sweet and eager, sliding against mine hungrily, and I had to break off the kiss as she arched beneath me, worried I might ruin it all much too fast. She was too perfect, too… everything.
I moved to drop kisses along the column of her throat below her ear instead, trailing them down to her collarbone, to the plump swell of her chest. She reached behind herself, arching as she took off her bra, and tossed it aside. Her hands moved to the sides of her chest, pressing her breasts up toward my seeking tongue, and the sight of her hands on her own body nearly sent me over the edge. I covered her hands with mine and took one nipple in my mouth, my body singing as she rewarded me with a breathy moan. My thumb flicked the tight peak of the other breast as I sucked and swirled the one in my mouth, and then I switched. Tess moaned, sending another flare of excitement through me.
My hands slipped along her body, tracing lines and curves, learning every inch of her, and I slid down the bed, pulling off the lacy panties as I went. Every inch of me throbbed at the promise of her sweetness, and I slid back up her body, meeting her glazed eyes.
I leaned down, searching the floor for my pants, for the condom I kept in my wallet, and sighed with relief when I located it, Tess’s wide eyes on me the whole time, and her hands playing tantalizing rhythms across my skin.
I rolled on the condom and Tess watched, her eyes taking in every detail, and then her hands reached for me. Her tight hot hand fisted around me and she pulled me near, guiding me with my own dick like a pet she had tamed. I sucked in a sharp breath at her touch—I loved it.
She slid her hand softly over my length, a teasing touch through the latex skin of the condom, and then she dropped her other hand into her own folds, and a shot of sheer need ricocheted through me.
In a breathy voice filled with promise and vulnerability, she said, “I love you, Ryan.” And then, as she slid me into her depths, her eyes closing as I pressed home, she added, “I just can’t believe I’m in bed with Ryan fucking McDonnell.”
The laugh that came from my chest was genuine and happy, and I pulled out a bit and drove back to the hilt to make her point. I was Ryan fucking McDonnell, and I was currently fucking the woman of my dreams.
“I’m yours, Ryan fucking McDonnell,” she said, her eyes on mine, and a smile on her beautiful face. Less certainly, she said, “Keep me forever.”
In that moment, it was the most romantic thing I’d ever heard. “I will,” I promised, knowing I’d never let her go.
Epilogue
Tess
“Tess?” Gran called from her lair, which had been reestablished in the sunny parlor at the front of the house.
I stepped in, wiping my hands on my apron. “You paged me?”
She shook her head, laughing. “I’m out of Rye. Can you ask that nice boy to pick some up today?”
“God forbid you can’t make a Manhattan at exactly five o’clock,” I chided playfully. “But yes, I’ll ask the nice boy. And his name is Ryan, Gran.”
“I know that.”
Once the party had ended and life had gone back to a semblance of normal, Gran had become grumpier than usual, and it had taken me a week or so to figure out why.
