Page 26 of Love Again

I don’t have an answer for her. All I have is the truth. “I love you. I’m in love with you. I think I’ll always be in love with you, and nothing is ever going to change that.”

“But—”

I stop her mouth with an index finger to her lips.

“This is not a problem to be fixed. It’s love.”

She stares into my face like she’s lost and she wants to go home. I take her hand and hold it. It’s light and thin and small, and for a firefighter, so soft. I pull her to the study, my little room in the den at the back of the house.

She’s shaking. Devon Russo, the tiny powerhouse of wonder—that’s how Max described her to me—shivers in my arms.

For a horrible split second, I’m afraid she’s frightened of me, that I’ve done or said something wrong. Then I realize, no, she’s scared of herself.

Devon is not about compromise. She’s all in or not.

The thing is, I don’t want her to compromise. I can only hope she chooses to be all in. I don’t want her to change. I want her to give us a chance.

“Luke, I need to—”

“Need to what?”

She glances at the bed and her face tells me.

She wraps her arms around my neck, looks up, and with her green eyes quivering with unshed tears, she whispers, “I’ve been waiting so long for you. And now I don’t know what to do.”

I lean her back slowly into the blankets, my hand under her neck, and I stretch out beside her.

“Do you want me to touch you?”

A wave of trembling racks her body. “Yes,” she says, clamping her teeth together so they won’t chatter. She was like this the first time we made love. All that power, all that energy, all that self-confidence—gone. In its place was trust. Trust in me and in us. But it scares her.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” she whispers.

I lift her head and neck with one hand and feel her lips tremble against mine. Sliding a hand under her shirt, her skin is hot against my fingertips. I roll it further and perspiration leaves her chest damp.

I was right, she’s not wearing a bra.

I pull her sweatshirt up and yank it off completely. I want to look at her.

Her body is a study in economy. Nothing is wasted. Her BMI must be at about seventeen percent. Her body is all business, hard and sweet and soft in places I can touch and lick and hold. Her heart pounds so fast the skin on her chest quivers. As do her breasts and her stomach and all of her.

“I just want to see you,” I say, leaning over and intertwining the fingers of one hand with hers. This bends her arm near her head, and I see the valleys and curves of her neck. I place the other hand on her cheek and turn her face to mine and dip my head for another kiss.

This one is long and deep. So long we start to breath together. I release and catch her again, and my tongue is against hers, my mouth over hers.

“Now?” I ask.

She lifts her head and kisses me in return, pulling me down on top of her. When I break away, I lay a hand on her chest. Her skin is smooth, her small breasts tighten, and her nipples, already hard, turn to pebbles.

A small sound, like a painful sigh, escapes her lips as I rake my fingertips over her dark peaks. “I’ve missed you, Luke. Oh my God.”

I slide my hand down under the waistband of her jeans to her crotch. She starts to sit up. “Stop. Stop.”

Pulling her shirt back on, she draws her knees up. “I can’t do this.”

“That’s okay. That’s fine,” I say, stroking her leg.