Page 99 of Can't Help Falling

“That can be arranged,” he told her, stepping close enough for her to be able to see the large gulp that traveled down his throat.

“I like touching you, Ty,” she confessed, the words not much more than a rasp as they left her lips. “And I’ve wanted to, for a long time.”

“You have no idea, love.” He bent at the knee, landed palms on the backs of her legs and lifted her clear off the floor.

Fin, who was by no means short and by no means light, made an eeping sort of sound and clutched at his shoulders. But she felt the strength there. The tensile smoothness of his muscles. He took two long steps and dumped her backward onto her couch, following her down. Fin laughed, her hair flying everywhere, but the laughter stopped when his mouth came down over hers.

This time, they kissed right through that preliminary static shock, groaned into it instead of recoiling. They were in a pile on top of one another, her legs knotted underneath him and one of his feet on the floor to keep them both from tumbling into the coffee table.

Admitting to him that she liked touching him had popped some cork inside of her. Fin felt a rather giddy freedom when she tugged at his hair, used her thumb to trace the whorl of his ear, went palm-flat against his neck. His energy pulsed into her, so Tyler, so kind, so orderly, so unbelievably desirous of her.

She gasped and dropped her head back as his mouth opened up just below her ear.

Always, her whole life, she’d known that when a man wanted something, he took it. But today was different. Today she could feel the tremulous tornado of feeling that Tyler had for her. It was blustery and growing and sweeping them both away. But yet, he wasn’t taking from her. No, his warm mouth was tracing a pattern against her pulse point; he was groaning into her skin, keeping his weight mostly off of her. She felt the slope of his nose against her chin. And then his cheek against hers.

Had he?

Yes, he’d just stopped sucking on her neck in order to give her a quick little hug and... Fin. Was. Finished.

She planted her palms on his shoulders and pushed at him.

He folded back immediately, his weight and heat lifting off of her and making her feel like she might float straight to the ceiling if she wasn’t careful.

“All right?” he asked, panting and sliding a palm across his own chest like he was checking to make sure his heart was still working.

“Yeah,” she panted back, unknotting her legs and propping her knees on the outside of his hips. “Sometimes you throw me off when you’re so sweet. Like with that hug you just gave me.”

“That throws you off?”

“Yeah.” She shifted a little. “Most guys don’t do that. Hug in the middle of making out.”

“Too busy trying for a homer?”

“Something like that.”

Tyler stared down at her, his palms on his thighs, his eyes both seeing her and not seeing her as he worked his jaw, deep in thought.

After a moment, he disentangled them and went to stand, his hands sliding into the pockets of his slacks. Much as he had yesterday, Tyler made a circuit around the living room, touching the crystals she kept on the bookcase, running a hand over the top of one of her photos on the wall. He flicked on a lamp, looked out the window and then turned back to her, his hands back in his pockets.

“I like you, Fin. In a big way.”

She could taste the bright, metallic electricity of his nerves all the way across the room.

“I’m not trying to take something from you. I wasn’t back then and I’m not now.” He cleared his throat and leaned against the window. “At some point, I hope you’ll get used to that.”

Fin sat up slowly. Her hair cascaded around her shoulders, and because she was immediately too grateful for the curtain between her and Tyler, she started braiding it back, knowing instinctually that she needed to be open now. Bared to him.

“Tyler, are we going to tell her?”

“Kylie? Yes.”

Fin tossed her braid back over her shoulder. “You want to tell her tomorrow?”

He shifted against the window, hands still in his pockets. “Yes.”

“That what? That we’re together?”

He took a big breath, strode across the room, slid onto the couch and used one hand to hoist her legs over his lap. It was like he was using her body to pin himself down to the furniture. “Only if it’s the truth,” he said quietly.

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