I checked myself internally. Remembered the words Connell had told the reporter earlier. My heart swelled with a solid, strong sense of truth, and I smiled at her. “I appreciate the warning,” I said. “But I think you knew a different Connell.”
She pursed her lips, a slight hint of pity flickering there, but it couldn’t touch me.
She didn’t know him. Not anymore. And honestly, it sounded like she never had. Because him needing more laughs had nothing to do with a need for attention and everything to do with a deep-seated drive to lift spirits and lighten the mood. To clear the darkness from any situation because that is what he’d spent the first part of his life doing and he didn’t know another way to live.
“Maybe,” Ginger said, and I finished my champagne, setting the empty glass on the bar.
“It was nice meeting you,” I said as I crossed the room, my heart full and soaring and pounding with the absolute adoration I had for the man I headed toward.
A newfound sense of energy pulsed through my blood, my soul, and weaved together to create one unbreakable force. My head spun with the knowledge of it, with the release I felt at finally allowing myself to let go.
“Sorry, love,” Connell said the moment I reached him. “Logan is bidding on the European getaway, and he wanted to know if the locations were shite or not.”
“No need to be sorry,” I said, waving him off. I couldn’t stop the smile on my lips as I looked at him, really looked at him with clear eyes and a free and open heart.
“You’re brilliant,” he whispered in my ear, his thumb grazing my bottom lip. “That smile kills me,” he said.
I reached up to meet his ear. “Want to explore the penthouse?” I whispered, sinking back to my level.
His blue eyes sparked.
“I mean,” I said. “Only if you’re done with the party. We can stay—”
He smiled and shook his head, a few of his blond strands falling across his forehead. He intertwined our fingers and tugged us across the ballroom, through friends and strangers alike, until we reached the elevator.
The doors had barely slid shut before his hands snaked around my waist, hauling me against him. I arched my neck, ready to taste his kiss, but he lingered, hovering just above my mouth, his eyes on mine.
My heart beat furiously against my chest, so hard I’m sure he could feel it. Electricity buzzed between us, a white-hot current that pulsed and sizzled, and my stomach flipped with nerves. With need. With the firm realization that this moment was different than all the others.
The way his eyes churned with a sincerity and vulnerability I’d never seen before, he felt it too.
With a feather-light tenderness, he brushed his lips over mine. Soft, smooth, sweet. Nothing to match the hunger humming in our bodies, but gentle enough to bring tears to my eyes. To storm my soul with the emotions I’d let loose from the cage I’d kept them in for far too long.
The elevator dinged and the doors slid open, Connell not missing a beat as he swept an arm under my knees and carried me into the incredibly large room. The city skyline twinkled outside the floor-to-ceiling windows framing the living room, but he passed the area and easily navigated us to the bedroom. The place was big enough to fit two of my master bedrooms in it, and the bed was a luxurious pile of down and silk.
Connell held me, those eyes on mine as he grinned at me, savoring the slow pace he’d set, the burn between us both.
I reached up, kissing him tenderly before pulling back, my breath catching in all that built in my chest.
“You’re trembling, love,” he said, noticing the way I slightly shook against him. My nerves twisting and firing in all sorts of ways.
I laughed nervously, biting my lip to ground my mind.
“I love you.” The words flew past my lips on a breath I felt I’d been holding for as long as I could remember.
His eyes flared, and he crushed his mouth on mine, and I felt his sigh of relief in every inch of my body. “I love you, Annabelle,” he said between kisses. “I love ye so damned much.”
My heart soared at the words, at the way I felt in his arms—safe and desired, and like nothing else existed or mattered beyond this.
We pulled apart, our chests heaving with ragged breath, and we laughed.
Laughed from the freedom in the truth of our admission. In the soaring sensation of falling. Laughed because of the happiness swarming us both.
And then he shifted, sliding me down every inch of his body to set me on my feet, and I gasped at the heat between my thighs. At the hardness begging for release from his tight dress pants.