I bit my lip as he nipped at my collarbone. “I don’t know. I feel different here. Happy.” I took a deep breath. “I’m scared to go back to feeling… not that. And I’m scared my happiness might be tied to you.”
“Why are you so scared you need me, Lamb?” He cupped my cheeks. “Why not share your happiness with me?”
“I don’t want my happiness todependon you.” I took a shaky breath, and his lips descended on mine. He coaxed me to open up to him. Then he took my love, happiness, and desire for him. I knew he tasted it all—I felt the smile on his lips like he had me.
And he did.
He had all of me, and my heart beat fast with the idea that he could continue to massage and nurture and cater to all my needs.
Except, if happiness only existed when it was shared, what happened when the person you shared it with had to go? What happened if you couldn’t give them what they wanted? Or if you couldn’t make what you wanted together?
Would our families accept this? Would I be able to accept this between us, knowing that we’d lost the one thing a family was supposed to make? For some reason, my body didn’t carry a child of ours well. He could have that with someone else. He could have a totally uncomplicated relationship with a stranger, one outside of our families, one where my brothers wouldn’t grill him, where my mother wouldn’t insist on grandkids, where my sister wasn’t his colleague.
I pulled away. “I need to get ready for work.”
His jade eyes squinted at me, trying to cut through the wall he could probably see me building. His jaw worked before he pushed away and nodded. “I need to work too.”
“What exactly do you work on?” I sat forward in the bed and winced from the ravaging of the night before.
“You’re sore,” he murmured, immediately back in my face, staring me down, running his gaze slowly over me. He sat next to me on the bed, his big hands searching my hips and stomach and all parts of my skin for marks. When he came across a reddened mark, I saw the way his jaw worked. “I’m proud and appalled at the same time, Lamb.”
The realization of love must have made everything shine brighter and everything become clearer for me. “It’s not appalling.” I chewed on my cheek before I let go of the words I was holding in. “I’m happy, Dante. Happy in a way that makes me scared it’s all just a dream—that I’ll blink, and all this will be gone.”
“Lilah, I’ve always been here. I’m not going anywhere.”
“You weren’t always here.” I chuckled at him as I watched him lean over to his nightstand and open a drawer. He grabbed a small vial of oil before he closed it back up, but not before I saw the pink color of my vibrator. “Also, I need that back.”
“If you were fucking your vibrator to my name, I must have been there in your mind. Always. Right?” He motioned for me to turn my back to him on the bed.
I scoffed but did as he wanted because my body was already yearning for his hands to migrate back to it, to smooth out any of my kinks. I was getting used to us bound together by touch, and I wasn’t sure if I was ever going to be able to extricate myself from him when the time came.
I could smell when he opened the glass container and dropped a few beads of a minty scent on his fingers. He smoothed it over a particularly sore spot on my hip.
“Maybe it wasn’t always to your name.” I bit my lip as his hands started working around the sore area and up my back, massaging, kneading, and pinpointing my body in the way only he knew how. My muscles shifted under the pressure of his strong fingers, and I moaned when he turned me to face him and laid me down on the bed.
“I should be getting dressed for work, Dante,” I groaned when he dripped a bit of oil onto my stomach and smoothed it over my skin.
“This should help. I was too rough with you.”
“If you were too rough, I would have used the safe word.”
“You don’t know what’s too much for you, Lamb.”
“Or maybe I know exactly what’s enough.” I winked at him and scooted up and off the bed quickly. “Now, work. I have to get ready.”
I made my statement clear and giggled when he tried to grab me. “You ever play hookie and not go to work? Should we add that to your new list?”
“You can’t keep changing the list.”
“Of course we can. That’s life. Change, adjust, find what you love. Plus, I know this island better than you. You need help navigating it.”
“Is voyeurism part of the island?” I popped a hip and lifted a brow.
Dante’s laugh boomed through the room, so big and bright that it infected me—and the whole atmosphere—with joy.
My heart swelled with it too. I clung to it and hurried to get ready for work.
The night should have gone off without a hitch. We had three great nurses working our floor, and the rest of the team was great.