Page 105 of Under an Endless Moon

Yep. Definitely grinning.

“Uh, yeah, darlin’. The grin is real. Want to tell me what’s going on in that beautiful head of yours?” No question, he was trying to feel me out without coming right out and asking it, which was kind of ridiculous considering he’d just had his miraculous fingers shoved deep inside me.

“I’m just grinning because my favorite person is now myextrafavorite person.”

Amusement played across his delicious mouth. “Is that so? And here I was worried that little stunt might knock me down a peg or two.” With the last, his expression dimmed, taking me in like he was terrified he had pushed me too far.

“Never,” I told him. My voice went wispy, unable to find the lightness.

Not when this felt momentous.

He tossed the washcloth to the floor then reached out and fiddled with a stray piece of my hair as he gazed down at me. “You’re sure you’re okay?”

My nod was shaky. “More than okay. I would have stopped you if I wasn’t.”

A wistful silence stretched on between us. He finally broke it when he said, “It’s my honor, you know…that you feel safe with me.”

“I always have.”

His gaze darkened, and a vat of sorrow suddenly poured out. I knew exactly where his mind had gone. To the moment he’d forever fault himself over when there was nothing different that he could have done.

No way to change it.

It had already been set into motion.

I’d tried to stop it myself.

My chest squeezed, and with a shaky hand, I reached up and set it on his cheek. I’d made that simple gesture many times through the years. But it’d always been…reserved. Held in an attempt for it to be appropriate for who we were supposed to be.

But this?

Thiswaswhat we were supposed to be.

He kept brushing his fingers through my hair, appraising me as if he were waiting for one of my fractured pieces to break off. Worried he’d be the one responsible for it.

“Still having a hard time getting my head around the fact that you’ve never been touched before.” He let a bunch of speculation hang unsaid in the air.

A twenty-five-year-old virgin wasn’t exactly a common thing.

“Are you really that surprised? When I barely started dating a few years ago? After all the things you knew about me then?”

He flinched, my bringing voice to the point when a wedge hadbeen driven between us. We’d still remained incredibly close, but an intrinsic piece had been cut off.

Shattered hopes left to decay.

“Think I’d chosen to believe that you’d moved on. That you’d found your way outside of me—the way it was supposed to be.”

Air puffed from my nose. “How, whenthisis the way it’s supposed to be? It’s always been you, Otto. You have always been my safe place. My secret place.”

Energy thrashed.

Our connection whipping a disorder that raged in between.

His eyes were full of truth but his words still reeked of reservation. “I wish I could be more, Raven. Wish I could be everything.”

There was a warning behind it, and I couldn’t stand the idea of him pulling away, so instead, I pulled him toward me. “For tonight, let’s just be, Otto.”

We’d face tomorrow when it came.

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