‘Well, good for you, but I can’t,’ he snapped, his smile vanishing. ‘I won’t be happy without you. And I won’t stop until you’re at my side.’ He growled at her. ‘I never understood what love really was until I met you. Be brave. Trust me. Turn to me. Need me the way I need you. Love me the way I love you. Like nothing else matters. Because nothing else does.’
He was too compelling. Too honest. And nothing else did matter except that he was standing miles from her and while she’d heard everything he’d said, she needed to feel it too. She needed to experience that certainty in his strong embrace.
He’d fallen silent, watching her process everything, but his smile had returned. She realised he was waiting for her to come to him. Waiting for her to be as brave as he’d asked her to be. And she wanted to be, but her legs trembled as anticipation and ecstatic relief surged through her.
He met her halfway around the stupid desk. Reaching out, he framed her face with both hands and looked down at her for a long moment.
‘Don’t you want to kiss me?’ She gripped his wrists hard, dying at his hesitation.
‘More than anything this whole freaking time,’ he muttered. ‘But I was determined to talk to you. I knew you’d say yes if I made love to you first, but I didn’t want to seduce you that way. I wanted to be sure you listened. And heard. You need to believe in me.’
He kissed her then—a soft, sweet kiss that breathed love and laughter into her once forlorn heart. Oh, Lord, was it possible to die from happiness?
She rose on tiptoe, refusing to let him pull back too far. She needed him near. She needed his touch. ‘You thought you could seduce me into saying yes?’
‘I can seduce you into saying anything.’ He played up his wicked tease, his eyes dancing. ‘Into saying yes, into saying how much you want me...but I wanted you to mean it.’
‘Seduce me anyway,’ she invited. ‘I’ll say it. And I’ll still mean it.’
‘What will you say?’
His question was barely audible, but she read the hunger in his eyes. Suddenly it was easy to be brave.
‘That I love you.’
He too was so very easy to love.
‘I do love you,’ she repeated, no longer caring that she was crying again.
His kisses smothered her words but she kept on chanting them—in her heart, in her touch. And he met her, promise for promise, kiss for kiss, touch for touch.
He pulled her close. She’d missed him so much. They worked frantically, undoing buttons, pushing fabric aside, eager for skin, sensation, surety.
‘No more secrecy,’ he muttered. ‘No more stolen moments.’ He swiftly moved, spinning and lifting her onto the broad desk, his smile both tender and outrageous, his eyes filled with love. She parted her legs and pulled him to her, equally teasing and true.
‘Love me,’ she begged as he kissed his way down the length of her body and back up again.
‘Already do. Always will,’ he answered roughly, grabbing her leg and wrapping it higher around his hip so he could rub tantalisingly harder against her core, almost claiming her, but not quite. ‘You’re mine. I’m yours. Love me back.’
The pleasure was so exquisite she could barely comprehend his words. ‘Yes.’
‘Keep. Saying. Yes.’ He thrust into her with each word, but not all the way, only teasing, arousing her beyond sanity.
‘Yes. Yes. Yes.’ She never wanted him to stop this torture—but at the same time she wanted it all. Now.
‘Marry me,’ he demanded as he thrust into her to the hilt.
She gasped and stared up at him, registering the brutally satisfied look on his face as he pinned her hot, willing body with his.
‘You bully,’ she breathed as she saw the laughing, loving determination within him.
‘Not bullying,’ he corrected with another devastating thrust. ‘Seducing.’
‘It’s too soon.’
‘Always you need convincing,’ he teased. But he smiled tenderly at her and gently kissed away the tears falling fresh from her eyes. ‘No matter. I’ll seduce you every day until you say yes to this. To everything. To me.’