Page 26 of Knot in Bloom
“Your college boyfriend was an idiot who clearly didn’t understand that stories teach us how to live better lives.”
“That seems to be the consensus about my ex.” She’s quiet for a moment, then asks, “Read to me?”
“Any requests?”
“About possibility. About finding what you didn’t know you were looking for.”
I reach for another favorite, this one about second chances and unexpected connections, and read to her while she curls against my side. Her scent grows warmer and more content as the words wash over us, and by the time I finish she’s looking at me with quiet satisfaction.
“Levi?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m really glad this wasn’t actually inventory.”
I laugh, pressing a kiss to the top of her head and breathing in the honeysuckle sweetness that’s become my favorite scent in the world. “Me too.”
We sit in comfortable silence for a while, her head on my shoulder, my fingers tracing lazy patterns on her arm. The bookstore feels transformed around us. No longer just my workplace but the site of where everything changed between us.
Eventually she stirs, checking the clock on the wall with a small sigh. “I should probably head home. Tommy Clanton is picking up anniversary arrangements first thing tomorrow.”
I don’t want to let her go, but I understand. We’ve crossed a line tonight that can’t be uncrossed, but that doesn’t mean we need to figure out everything at once.
“I’ll walk you over.”
She nods with a smile that makes my chest warm.
Outside, the October air is crisp and full of possibility. Our hands find each other naturally as we cross the street, fingers intertwining as if we’ve done this a hundred times before.
At her door, she turns to face me, and for a moment we just look at each other in the soft glow of her porch light. Everythingfeels different now. Charged with new potential, weighted with the memory of how perfectly we fit together.
“Thank you,” she says. “For tonight. For... everything.”
“Thank you for trusting me with it.”
She rises on her toes to kiss me one more time. Gentle now, sweet, a promise rather than desperate need. When she pulls back, her smile is radiant.
“Goodnight, Levi.”
“Goodnight, Sadie.”
I wait until I hear her lock engage before heading home, my head full of her taste and the sound of her sighs and how she looked at me as if I was what she’d been waiting for.
Chapter 9
Sadie
Iwake up slick and aching.
Not just from dreaming about Levi’s hands in my hair and his mouth moving against mine like he was starving for me. This is fresh arousal pooling between my thighs, my body’s response to breathing in cedar and rain that clings to everything I wore last night.
I press my face into the sweater draped over my chair, and a whimper escapes before I can stop it. My nipples are already tight under my sleep shirt, and when I shift in bed, the friction makes me gasp.
His hands framing my face. His mouth claiming mine against those poetry shelves until books tumbled to the floor and I forgot everything but the taste of him. The way he groaned my name when I pulled him closer, like he’d been dying to touch me.
Months he’s wanted me. Months of bringing me coffee while his alpha instincts were screaming to claim me, and I had no idea.
My core clenches at the memory of what he whispered against my throat. “How many nights I’ve laid awake thinking about touching you, tasting you.”
