Page 132 of Cruel Kiss

"We hang it together."

"Correct again." He looks up at me. "You get to choose whether it goes up at all. And if it does, you get to choose what you see in it. I just want to be standing next to you while you look."

My eyes sting. "You ass," I accuse with a giggle. "You're playing dirty."

"I assure you, Ms. Meadows, I can playmuchdirtier than this."

We proceed to hang it together. He does the drilling and I hold the level and tell him it's crooked when it isn't, just to watch him adjust it anyway, because I like how his strong hands look when he does manly handyman type things. The whole process takes twice as long as it should because we keep stopping to kiss.

But eventually, it's up. Level. Solid.

And there we are in it.

Both of us are bright and clear in the frame. The woman who once stood in a Phoenix hotel and catalogued everything wrong with her belly and her hips and her thighs, alongside the man who couldn't stand to watch her do it, so he stole every mirror in the house. Side by side and equal.

I look at myself. I wait for the old criticizing voice to speak up, but it doesn't come. She's gone now, that self-hating version of me. Simply gone. There's just the happy version now, flushed and laughing with drill dust on my hands, and this huge, blue-and-gray-eyed wonder of a man behind me with his chin on my shoulder, watching me look.

"I'll never stop telling you you're beautiful," he murmurs against my ear. "But in case I'm ever not around, you can always come here and see for sure."

I turn in his arms and kiss him.

He kisses me back slow at first, then not slow at all. His hands find my hips and pull me in, and I feel him everywhere. The drill dust is still on my fingers when I slide them up under his shirt.

"The kids are with your mother?" he asks.

"All night."

"God bless that woman. I'm going to build statues in her honor."

He spins me back around to face the mirror. His arms come around me from behind, one hand flat on my stomach, and he watches me watch us in the glass.

"Keep your eyes open," he whispers against my neck. "I want you to see every last detail."

He works the buttons of my blouse loose one at a time. When it falls open, he pushes it off my shoulders and lets it drop to the bathroom floor. Then the bra, unclasped with two fingers. I watch it all happen in the mirror, my own body appearing piece by piece, and Ronan behind me, his eyes never leaving my reflection.

"Look at you," he praises. "The most beautiful thing I have ever put my hands on."

He's said it before. I believe it now.

His hand moves lower, past my stomach, unbuttoning my jeans and sliding them down my legs until I step out of them. Then I'm just standing there in the light, in front of the biggest mirror in the house, and I don't want to fold up small. I want to be exactly this size.

"Watch," he tells me again.

His fingers slip between my legs and I gasp, gripping the edge of the sink. My knees go a little weak, but his arm around my middle holds me up. I keep my eyes open like he asked, watching my own face come undone, watching his jaw clench with focus behind me.

"You're doing so good," he says. "Look how good you take it."

I can't answer. Thankfully, he doesn't need me to. His fingers work me steady and unhurried, the way he does everything, and I feel it building fast because I've been thinking about this for weeks, because I love him, because there's nowhere left to hide and nothing left to survive.

"Ronan—"

"Hush now,kotyonok.The only words I want to hear pass your lips are 'I'm coming.'"

Well, alrighty then.

I can do that.

The pressure builds and builds until there's nowhere left for it to go. I watch it happen in the mirror—my head tipping backagainst his shoulder, my mouth falling open, my whole body arching into his hand—and I don't look away from a single second of it.