Page 188 of The Broken Note

My hands cover his.

“Tell me,” he demands, an edge of violence to his voice. “Tell me I haven’t lost you.”

“I showed up, didn’t I?”

His eyes narrow. “I want to hear it.”

I lick my lips and stare up into a face that used to feature in my nightmares. A face that morphed into my secret dream.

“I wanted to hate you. You’re annoying. You’re pushy. You’re absolutely unreasonable.”

His eyes narrow slightly.

“But,” I push up on my tiptoes, “I don’t hate you. I never really did.”

“Then what is it, Cadey?”

Those words. They’re so big. So absolute.

At least for me.

I lick my lips and whisper, “I love you, Dutch.”

His smile is decidedly more wicked as he steps into me. “Again.”

“No.”

He advances. A predator on the savannah. And I’m the clueless gazelle who doesn’t even realize she’s prey.

I inch back.

Not that I get far.

Dutch pushes me into the wall and pens me in with an arm on either side. “Again, Cadey.”

“You heard me the first time,” I whisper, my fingers sliding over his broad shoulders.

He leans in close, his face up against mine. My eyes fall shut automatically. Emotions arc through me like burning asteroids plummeting toward earth.

“Scared already?”

“We’re not going to be that cheesy couple who says ‘I love you’ every second. That’s gross,” I murmur.

Dutch’s breath whispers across my lips and I shiver.

“Wearegoing to be that gross couple,” he grinds out. “It’s…”

My eyes open. “Inevitable?”

Amber eyes burn into mine. The edge of his mouth twists up in a cruel sort of smirk.

“So much to learn,” he mumbles.

And then his mouth descends.

His lips are hot, scalding. So is his tongue as it strokes mine to a rhythm that obliterates every thought. His hands rove my body with an incessant demand.More, he’s saying without ever tearing his mouth off my face.

I kiss him back with everything in me, a whirlwind of passion drumming up from the depths of my soul.

---