Page 93 of Click of Fate

I take one small step forward. “I fell hard, Luke. And fast. And it scared the shit out of me.”

His eyes close for just a second. When they open, they’re softer. Not unguarded, but less locked.

“I don’t want to run anymore,” I finish.

Luke doesn’t say anything at first. He just stares at me like he’s trying to decide if he can trust this moment.

Then he steps closer.

His hand lifts, gentle and slow, and brushes a strand of hair from my cheek.

“What changed?” he asks, voice quiet, laced with something that sounds like hope.

I smile, tears thick in my throat. “You. Us. Everything.”

He nods once, like he needed to hear it out loud.

“What now?”

My heart stutters. I shrug, but the smile that comes with it is real. “Now we leap.”

He doesn’t hesitate this time. Luke leans in, pulling me to him like he’s done it a hundred times before. Like he never plans to stop. And I rise on my toes, meeting him halfway.

Our kiss isn’t urgent or fiery, not this time. It’s something better It’s a promise.

It’s a beginning.

He leans his forehead against mine, our breathing uneven, our bodies too close in a space not meant for this kind of heat. His smug smirk brushes against my lips like a dare, and it shoots straight through me.

“You missed me,” he says, voice low and rough.

I inhale sharply, fighting the pull. “You sound real confident for a guy I told to get out of my bed.”

His hand slips to my waist, fingers splaying wide. “And yet here I am... and you’re the one who came back.”

I lift my chin, daring him. “Don’t let it go to your head.”

“Oh, Trouble.” His thumb drags a slow, teasing circle just above my hip. “Too late.”

I try to come up with something clever. Something biting. But then he dips his mouth to my neck, not kissing, just close enough that I feel the heat of his breath and my thoughts scatter like ash.

“You gonna stop me?” he asks.

I don’t.

And then his mouth crashes to mine, hungry, hot, and full of every second we lost between goodbye and this.

It’s not soft or tentative, not this time. It’s heat and hunger, a tangle of emotion that’s been simmering since the moment I first walked into his life and flipped it on its axis.

I gasp into the kiss, my fingers fisting in the front of his shirt as he backs me against the gallery wall, careful to avoid the actual art, but not much else. His hand curls around my waist, pulling me flush against him, and my body answers like it’s been waiting for this moment.

Maybe it has.

“Still scared?” he murmurs against my mouth, breathless.

“Terrified,” I whisper back, my lips brushing his with every word. “But I don’t want to be.”

He groans softly, dragging his mouth down the line of my jaw, to the place beneath my ear that makes my knees threaten to buckle.

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