Page 112 of Her Maine Risk

When I bend to pick it all up, I hear Alex groan behind me, and I spin around to see him with his arm over his face.

“Something wrong?” I ask innocently.

“Babe, you’re fucking beautiful, and I can’t watch you bend over naked when I know I can’t have you right now.”

“Oh, sorry,” I say sweetly. I’m holding my clothes in front of me, covering all the good bits, but he still rakes his eyes over me like I’m naked.

Walking backwards to the bathroom, I keep my eyes on him until I close the door, laughing when I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror.

My hair is wild in a freshly sexed look that I’m actually kind of loving, my eyes are wide and bright with a sparkle that wasn’t there before, and my skin is flushed, giving my already tan skin a little more color.

I lookalive.

Better yet, Ifeelalive.

Quickly dressing in my scrubs, I stuff the panties I had on yesterday in my pocket and reemerge to find Alex in the kitchen making coffee. Shirtless.

Damn, his back is just as sexy as his front. His broad shoulders are begging me to touch them, and my mouth waters at the prospect of kissing my way up the length of his spine.

Coming up behind him, my fingers reach out with a mind of their own and trace the lines of his tattoo on his left shoulder. A cross with angel wings. It’s beautiful.

Alex doesn’t turn around. He lets me examine each line of the wing’s feathers and cross.

“Is this for your mom, too?” He has two tattoos for his mom? That speaks volumes for the kind of man he is.

“Yeah,” he says, a faraway sound to his voice like he’s lost in a memory. “I got that one the day after her funeral.”

He’s still grieving for her. I heard it in his voice when he told me about his rose tattoo too, and it makes me fall just a little more for him.

He loved his mom, and I think that’s the sweetest freaking thing in the entire world.

Wrapping my arms around him, I lean up on my toes and plant a soft kiss in the center of the cross.

If he needs me, he has me. Alex can turn to me now when he feels her memory weighing on him. At least I hope he knows he can.

Spinning around, Alex circles my waist with his strong arms and kisses me long and languid, soft and deep. He doesn’t try and make it more. No tongue, just his full, soft lips on mine. And it’s just as good as our fiery, passionate, can’t get enough of each other kisses that lead to clothes being ripped off.

Breathless, we pull away, but keep our mouths just an inch apart, our foreheads resting together – needing the support.

I need him. I need him for more than just right now, and for more than just the foreseeable future.

And that hits me hard in my chest.

My heart squeezes, and then takes off beating double time.

I need Alex.

I may have been telling myself that we wouldn’t work, and that this is just for now, but really, my head has just been trying to convince my heart of something it already knew.

Alex Bane is mine.

Last summer I noticed him, but the second those green eyes landed on mine at Ally’s wedding, I felt it in me. A shift.

I knew I’d need those eyes on me for the rest of my life.

Nothing less would do.

It’s him.

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