Fy fan, what a drama queen.
Carefully, he lowered their hands to his lap and angled himself to stare at her. Rather blankly, it must be said. Also, his mouth was open more than a little. The wordgapingmight go too far, but the phraseparted lipsdidn’t go nearly far enough.
English could be a very imprecise language, she’d found.
“You...” More staring. “You want to... move in with me? Because you, uh, love me and plan to move to LA?”
All pronounced in the same tones one would use to say, for example,You want to smother me with jewels and then cook me a gourmet meal before giving me a thousand orgasms? Really intense, long-lasting ones, like you’d been edging me for hours?
Only she was the jewels, the meal,andthe edging-heightened orgasms.
It was all very flattering.
And as long as they were having this conversation, they might as well get everything out in the open, because who knew how long it would take Peter to say it without prompting?
“Correct.” Leaning forward, she planted a smacking kiss on his still-somewhat-gaping mouth. “Do you loveme?”
There he went again. Frozen solid, other than that blinking. Or maybe that wasn’t blinking, but an eye twitch? Well, either way, it was proof of life.
His lips shaped the wordyes, although no sound emerged.
She’d been confident that would be his answer. Completely, utterly certain. But now that she’d seen it mouthed silently, she could admit that her pulse had skyrocketed in that fraught gap between her question and his response, her blood pounding so hard against her temples she’d seen sparks in the dark night.
She refused to believe, however, that the deep, ragged breath she’d just taken meant she’d been holding it until he answered in the affirmative.
No longer on the verge of passing out, she waited uncomplainingly for further, more audible communication. After a time, he cleared his throat and squared his shoulders and met her gaze with a directness that bordered on defiance. Because, for him, thisadmission must require untold amounts of bravery, and she should have remembered that.
She couldn’t imagine he had much recent practice with the declaration. Had he even spoken those words to anyone but Anne since his mother’s death?
“Of course I do,” he finally said with commendable aplomb. “Don’t tell me you didn’t know how much I love you, Maria. How much I’ve loved you for years now.”
His voice was stone-steady, but his hands trembled against hers. And for a moment, she regretted her boldness, even though it had earned her the words she wanted. The words she’d needed to hear so badly, but not because she hadn’t realized he loved her already. Because she had to know he was willing toacknowledgethose feelings, to her and to himself.
Unacknowledged emotion was too easy to dismiss, to set aside in favor of something more important, and the stakes for her were far too high to allow avoidance of hard questions.
She wasn’t moving half a world away from her native country and her family for a man who couldn’t tell her he loved her. It didn’t matter how many good reasons he might have for his reticence. It didn’t matter how much hedidactually love her. It didn’t even matter how much she loved him in return, and how much—how very, very much—she wanted him in her life.
Okay, so she’d had one or two remaining doubts.
But now they were all gone. Really.
He’d given her what she needed, and in return, she’d give him everything she had.
Carefully detaching her hands from his near-painful grip, she cupped his face, his beard scratchy against her sensitive palms, his eyes wary but hopeful on hers.
Her thumbs stroked his cheeks slowly. Lovingly.
Then she leaned in and kissed him. Soft brushes of her mouth against his, damp and warm and tender. Patient, because she now had all the time in the world for him.
“Jag. Älskar. Dig. Sötnos,” she said, punctuating each word with another kiss.
“Don’t know why,” he mumbled against her lips. “But thank fuck for it.”
His arms slid around her then, and he pulled her onto his lap and cradled her close as he kissed her back with just as much deliberate care. He explored the corners of her mouth, sipped on her lower lip, and slipped his tongue inside, but not to claim. To coax and slide and twirl around hers until she grew dizzy with the sweetness of it all.
It felt like a first kiss.
Well, no. Her first kiss had been with Arne Gustafsson in middle school, and he’d eaten garlic salami earlier that day, and his tongue had slithered like an eel. Peter, in contrast, tasted like mint and chocolate and smelled like cedar. Furthermore, his clever, agile tongue should be bronzed, but not until after she’d had full use of it upon demand for her entire lifetime.