Page 47 of Pure Temptation

He blinked up at her, his eyes sad. “Did you?”

The last time she had admitted watching his show, Daxon had given her his signature cocky smile. This time he looked almost pained.

“Well, some of it,” she continued, pushing herself to be honest. “I spent the first half staring at the blank TV screen, wondering if you had fallen.”

The stricken look on his face almost made her feel sorry for him. Almost.

“I am so sorry, Kendall,” he said. His expression was grave. “I didn’t really understand this through your eyes until I was up there. Until it was too late.”

Kendall swallowed and nodded.

“I should have,” he continued. “That day when you jumped from the cliff, you were underwater for so long, long enough for my panic to set in. You came up all smiling and happy, but I couldn’t shake that feeling of you being under the water, possibly drowning. The panic didn’t just go away. When I was up there on the mountain, there was a moment when I wondered if you were feeling the same thing, magnified. The idea that I made you go through that, not just for seconds but for the hours of that climb—I can’t do that anymore.”

She shook her head. “You can’t quit for me. I saw the way you looked at me when I told you not to climb that last day. Even if you don’t resent it now, you will in the future.”

He ran a hand through his hair and sighed. “I’ve been thinking about that a lot. It’s possible that I’ll feel that way, even if I don’t think it will happen now. But is that really enough to stop us? It’s also possible that I’ll have a heart attack tomorrow. Maybe you will. We can’t predict all the things that could go wrong, and that’s the reason you and I should push on. If something does happen to you, if you leave me—anything—the happiness of being with you, even for a little while, is worth all the heartbreak I’d feel.”

Kendall swallowed the lump in her throat. She wanted this so badly. Should she take the risk and believe in them?

“I’m falling in love with you,” he said, his voice rough. “I’m not sure how we’ll work everything out. All I know is that I’m willing to listen and make compromises so that I don’t hurt you like that again.”

Kendall’s heart was so full it was bursting. “I’m willing to compromise, too.”

She turned to face him and rested her hand on his cheek. The bristly scruff on his jaw felt different, but his lips were the same as she pressed her mouth against his. Then she met his gaze. “There was a moment when you slipped, and then you stopped and looked away from the camera.”

Daxon pulled back, cringing. “You saw that part?”

She nodded and kissed him again. “All I could think about was that if you fell, I would have spent the rest of my life regretting that I gave up my last chance to see you. I regretted that I turned down your offer to come. Even though I was mad that you asked, that was nothing compared to the way that I felt when I thought you might fall.”

“I promise I won’t do that again,” he said quickly. Then he blinked at her, his eyes wide. “Will you give us a chance to do this right? Try to work something out?”

“I want that,” she said. “So much.”

When Daxon reached for her this time, there was no hesitation. He lifted her onto his lap so she straddled him, and he wrapped his arms around her, pulling her against him. She pressed her face into his neck, and his skin tasted of salt and of him. She found his mouth, hungry, waiting for her. The kiss was slow, filled with longing and regret and something else. Was it love? Whatever it was, she felt it deep inside.

“Calvin must be angry as hell at you,” she whispered.

Daxon shrugged. “He was at first, but now he has a bunch of other ideas, ways we could still keep the Pure Adrenaline brand alive. He even had this crazy idea that we should start something called Adrenaline Vacations, where I scout out low-consequence thrills, make a video and set up a vacation tour. I would do the promo video and maybe make a guest appearance, but the rest of it we’d hire out. I thought it was a pretty good idea, but I didn’t want to say yes to anything until I talk to you first.”

It was almost too much to take in. His words from the top of Moonlight Buttress weren’t just adrenaline-fueled promises. He was making real changes.

“I don’t want you to give up climbing,” she said. “It’s just these climbs with no ropes, or the jumping out of airplanes with no parachute—that kind of danger level.”

He nodded. “I’ve been thinking I’ll try some deep-water soloing.”

She wrinkled her brow. “Sounds a lot like free soloing.”

“But without the high stakes,” he said, pulling her closer. “It’s free soloing over deep water—like that cliff jumping area we visited. It means all of the joy of free soloing and much less worry for you. Hawaii has a lot of potential deep-water soloing sites to explore. More cliffs you can jump from, too.” His soft chuckle sent a flutter of desire through her. “I’m willing to listen to your limits. I know we can work this out, Kendall.”

For the first time, she truly let herself believe it.

She kissed him again. “Are we falling in love?”

A smile spread across Daxon’s face as he nodded. “This is only the beginning, sweets.”

He rested his big warm hands on her thighs. It wasn’t a come-on, though it seemed impossible to be near him without an undercurrent of sex flowing between them. They were simply there on a rock next to the river, his skin on hers, the sounds of their breathing and the sounds of the water all coming together to make something more than the sum of these parts. She rested her hand on the back of his neck and played with the overgrown locks that curled at the ends, sun-bleached and carefree.

He smiled a lazy smile at her, like they had all the time in the world. “Do you like it here at the Kalani, making people’s wishes come true?”