Shit, the horses were all over the road, spooked and soon to be hamburger.
“I thought I could keep things casual. I thought that’s what I wanted, because what I want more is my career back and it doesn’t leave much time for anything else. But I’m not giving you up. I wanted you in the hotel when the city was on fire. I wanted you at my apartment when it was deadlocked with fear. I missed you when I hardly knew you and I can’t see a time when I won’t want you in my life.”
His hah of disbelief sounded bitter, ungracious. She kissed him, but his doubt hung in the air around them, damp with expectation, and he couldn’t fall into it, his lips staying motionless under hers.
“I should have told you.” She cupped his face with both hands and his kneecaps tightened when he clocked her expression, so severe. “I love you and it scares the hell out of me.”
He took a moment to review that. She was on his lap, holding his face. She’d move in, she’d share the rent, she wasn’t angry with him. She loved him.
“Say something, Mace.”
Words were overrated. There were occasions that simply called for action. He stood with her, stripped her neatly, quickly, of her simple dress and underwear then ditched his own clothes, never taking his eyes off her.
“Mace?”
He lay her back on the day bed with the intention of touching and kissing every pixel of her skin, until she was crazy for him, clawing and moaning and so wet he could smell sex on her.
“Mace, I love this place.”
He started at her foot, his hand under her instep massaging, his lips on her arch. He moved to her calf and it jumped at his touch, while his mouth sucked the line of her shinbone.
“I love you found it for us.”
He st
opped at her knee, moved one hand to her inner thigh and her skin shivered. He grazed his teeth over her kneecap while he smoothed the pulse behind it and she laughed, the sound so free, so right.
“I love you, Mace. I love you and I want you to believe it.”
Maybe he did. He walked fingers up her inner thigh; he strung kisses up her quad. Maybe she was still using him to fill in time. One wild weekend and six weeks together couldn’t change a lifetime of career ambition. It hadn’t changed his.
She sat up abruptly and he followed her upright. “You don’t trust me.” She was flushed and frowning.
Not in this. This was right for now and he’d take it, but he didn’t think she’d want him around when her life was back on track.
“This is my life, right now. You loving me like no one ever has. I won’t live without that.” She was pleading.
He breathed in her insistence but it was too much like hope. “You can’t make that promise. How’s it going to be when you’re CEO of some mega company and I’m working night shift in some shitty call centre pulling a minimum wage?”
She grabbed his wrists. “That doesn’t matter to me.”
It mattered to him. “Maybe not now.”
“Not now. Not later. Mace, please believe me.” She let him go to push her hair out of her face. “I knew I’d blown this days ago. When you got the job and I was so off about it. I was scared you’d move on and not need me anymore.”
“It’s a part-time shift I couldn’t care less about.”
“But that’s the thing. You’ve put your life back together and I still don’t know how to do that. You lost so much more than me. Someone you loved dearly, and your dream. I need to stop waiting and stop running and start living. I’ll move in with you. I’ll prove I love you.”
He pushed his hands into his hair. These words were getting in the way of the pleasure quest of having her, of the roast chicken and her favourite chocolate tart. He’d planned to eat it off her petal skin for dessert and now there was this need to talk about things.
“Mace, Say something.”
“It’d be good if you could learn how to cook a meal.”
“That’s what you’ve got to say.”
“Just one thing. Eggs or—hey.”