Eli tugged Isa up his body and kissed her, his tongue dancing with hers. Much as he liked her touching him, he wanted her kissing him more. When he pulled away, satisfaction brimmed in her dark eyes. Satisfaction he’d put there. After the scare she’d had last night when he’d insisted she come home with him and lie safe in his arms, in his bed, he considered this happy, sated look a success.
“I was going to return the favor,” she murmured against his lips, her hand flat on his stomach and inching lower.
“Were you now?” Her touch was amazing, but it wasn’t what she was doing to his body that had him losing his breath; it was what she’d done to his heart. This exotically gorgeous woman draped over his body, drawing a line down the underside of his arm, had sneaked in there without his knowing.
He cared about her. In a way that was different from anyone before her.
She traced the muscles along his abs. She’d said he was “beautiful” but he knew what beautiful was, and it was Isa. Still, he couldn’t help feeling a modicum of pride that she admired his body.
He’d built muscles because he’d needed them. The more strength he had in the rest of him, the easier it was to maneuver with his new leg. But she hadn’t differentiated what parts of him were beautiful. She saw and accepted all of him. It was a sobering realization, and not one he was used to.
“I like you like this.” Her hand moved back up to his chest and her full mouth, lush and welcome, smiled at him.
“Like what?” His voice, craggy and low, held a note of lust. Whenever she touched him, it infiltrated the space between them.
“Relaxed.” She opened her mouth like she was going to say more, then shut it. Which wasn’t like her. Isa said what was on her mind regardless of what Eli wanted or what he thought.
“And?” he found himself asking.
Her eyes screwed to the ceiling, before she admitted, “I was going to say open, but you’re not open, are you? You’re more like a screen over a window. I can see in, but I can’t get in.”
Isa’s honesty made him want to squirm. She wasn’t wrong.
“I’m…not skilled at being open,” he said, feeling his brows pinch over his nose.
“You’re kidding.” She gave him a good-natured eye roll.
Open spaces were a threat. As a military man, they were a matter of life and death. As a man who’d lost his mother tragically, they were a matter of internal pain he couldn’t escape. Letting someone in—letting himself out—equally dangerous. He knew well the feeling of putting himself on the line and feeling the slap of disappointment, of heartbreak.
His mother had broken his heart into bits when she died.
After a gap of a few breaths, Isa spoke again.
“I’m not sure what we have here.” She pushed up on one elbow, not bothering to cover her body with the sheet. Goose bumps prickled her tan skin, her breasts rising when she inhaled. If anyone had practice at being open, it was Isa. In that way she was a hundred times braver than he was.
“I like you, Eli.”
He held his breath and waited for the but. For her to tell him it was over. Maybe she’d worried as he had after last night that he hadn’t been able to keep her safe—that his scaring off a mugger was a little too close for comfort.
His heart hammered an uneven pattern. He worried she’d tell him she couldn’t be with him because he wasn’t enough. He’d never be enough for the woman who deserved everything.
“But…,” she started.
His heart seized like it’d been peppered with buckshot. He didn’t want her to go. Not after winning her back.
“…I can’t keep guessing what’s in your head,” she finished.
He was so shocked she wasn’t reciting a Dear John letter, he blinked at her in silence. Maybe it was that relief that made him offer her more. “What do you want to know?”
“Do you really believe you’re bad luck?”
He blew out a laugh, but it was a desperate attempt to keep her from knowing that she’d hit the nail pretty damn close to the head. “Not exactly.”
He chewed on his thoughts another few seconds before committing what to share.
“Good things…don’t chase me.”
“Life is about you chasing good things, Eli, not the other way around.”