Page 98 of Truck Stop Tempest

Her brows pinched “What?”

“The game we’ve been playing.”

“Oh.” A lazy grin appeared and she moved closer, stopping when she stood between my spread legs.

“Can I kiss you?” I asked again.

“Tell me something I don’t know about you. Something big.”

“I never went to college,” I confessed, and continued before losing courage. “When you go, I’m afraid you’ll meet someone new. Someone who’ll give you more than I can, someone who isn’t fighting demons from their past.”

All the joy drained from her face and she gripped my chin, fast and hard like a mother scolding a child. “I don’t care about your past. I know what kind of man you are now, and that’s all that matters to me.” She pinched harder, moving to straddle my thighs, holding my gaze with fierce resolve. “I want you, Tito Moretti. And I take back what I said before, about needing all of you. I was wrong.” She pinched her lips together, swallowing, searching my eyes. “If you can only give me parts, that’s more than I could ever ask for. Because even the smallest piece of you is more precious than the whole of anyone I’ve ever known.”

Until that moment, words meant little to me. Until she spoke up with that strong, unwavering voice, her head held high, her eyes locked on mine, not once hiding or retreating, words had never held any power.

Right then? Fuuuuuck.

Tuuli’s words sliced my resolve to shreds. Everything, every damn, hard-headed, bullshit idea I’d had about love, and forever, and sharing a life with someone was swept up in the storm of her blue eyes, tossed in the turbulent gusts of her spirit, and spit back at my feet, lifeless, powerless.

All at once, I was angry and desperate. Gutted. I rolled us over, pinning her beneath me.

Arms trembling, I hovered, inches from her face. “You can’t take those words back once you say them. Do you understand? I’ve given you space. I’ve done my best to stay away because that’s what you asked. But if you say those words, if you say you’re ready to take me as I am, whatever parts I’m capable of giving, you have to mean them. Because if you walk away…” The bullshit that had collected and hardened over the years, the wall of devastation and rage I’d built, that wall exploded, and fuck was it painful, and fuck, I didn’t want her see me break but damn if I didn’t fall into her chest and lose my shit.

“I won’t survive that devastation, baby. I won’t. So, mean it when you say those words to me.”

Tuuli didn’t speak. She raised her mouth to mine. With lips, and body, and whispered promises, she sealed our fucking fate.

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