Not perfect, but his words and the way he hugged her to him, rolled them over to where she was lying on him rather than vice versa, holding her close and managing to keep their bodies joined throughout the maneuver as if he couldn’t bear to part from her yet, warmed a part of her that had been cold for a long time. A part she’d buried in the icy recesses of the past to keep the pain from destroying her.
Their bodies stuck together and she hid her face in the groove of his neck, breathing hard. Her heart pounded so forcefully that every finger and toe throbbed in pulsating cadence. Her entire body throbbed, ebbed, flowed.
The intensity began to recede and her brain began to reboot itself, to register the impact of what they’d just done. Her sweaty, spent body was stretched out over Ross’s long, hard body, both of them out of breath, both of them clinging to the other.
Crack after crack she heard the thaw, felt the reality of her vulnerability to Ross become more and more exposed.
Barely here two weeks and she’d already spread her legs and welcomed him inside her body. Did that make her easy?
Perhaps, but if so, she was only easy for this one man because he was the only one with the power to move her so. The only man she’d ever wanted.
Was she wrong to have taken what he’d offered? To have given in to the need within her to be with him?
She hadn’t planned on this. Had planned just the opposite, especially with him living with her and Justice. They didn’t need to be doing this or touching at all. There were too many obstacles between them as it was. Sex would just end up being one more.
Sex?
Was that what they’d just done? Had sex?
Never in the past when she’d been with Ross had she questioned that they were making love. Never.
But then he’d left her and that had changed everything, had changed her. He may have been irresistible, he may have exposed her vulnerable heart, but no longer was she the naive girl who’d fallen in love with him and given him her heart and body.
This time she knew that Ross wasn’t playing for keeps and the good thing was that even if he was, she wasn’t.
He’d permanently cured her of that.
She refused to be like her mother and that one thing would keep her safe from Ross, even if nothing else would.
Despite his tight hold, she rolled off him, lay flat on her back and stared at the ceiling, each breath still coming hard and fast. Ross’s breathing was coming even harder, faster from his position next to her.
He took her hand, squeezed, dropped their clasped fingers to the bed, and took several deep breaths, before blowing everything she’d just thought right out of the water.
“We should get married.”
* * *
Ross didn’t have to turn his head to know Brielle was staring at him as if he’d lost his mind. He felt her horrified glare. Felt the shock pouring from her every pore as she gawked at him.
Not exactly the reaction a man hoped for when discussing marriage with a woman.
“We have sex once and you say we should get married?” She sounded incredulous, as if he’d spoken in a foreign tongue about something impossible and far-fetched.
“Not just once,” he reminded her, expecting her to point out that it had only been once in the past five years.
A deep V cut into her forehead and she just continued to stare at him as if he’d lost his mind. “All those times that we did so much more years ago, when I loved you with all my heart, and none of the previous times inspired you to want to walk down the aisl
e with me. Am I so good now that after a single time you feel the need to shroud me in white and listen to wedding bells peal? Pardon me if I don’t buy it.”
He rolled onto his side so he could see her more easily. “Sarcasm? Really? After what we just shared you give me sarcasm when I ask you a serious question?”
She didn’t so much as flinch. “You asked nothing.”
Ross frowned. Hadn’t he?
“You want me to get down on my knee and propose, Brielle? Would that put a nice smile on your face? Would that make you happy? Because if that’s what you want, I will.”
“No.” Her gaze narrowed and he regretted his snappy comment. Only hadn’t she just been right there with him, experiencing the same things he’d experienced? Sex between them had always been good, but that had been... He searched for a word and still failed to define what he’d just shared with Brielle.