Page 56 of Loving You

My arms tightened around her, and I pressed a kiss to her head. “I like all the weird parts of you, love.”

Her shoulders shook with a silent laugh. “Yeah. I like all the weird parts of you, too.”

I raised a brow. “Yeah?” My heart thudded, wondering what she saw as weird.

She nodded instantly. “Yes. I like how you focus on something and everything around you disappears. I like that furrow in your brow”—she pressed a finger to the place, grinning when I frowned—“and I like how devoted to your family you are.”

“Those are weird things?” I asked, speaking low to maintain the quiet intimacy of the moment.

“No, I guess they’re not. But I think they’re rare. Special.” She blinked at me, eyes so earnest my heart clutched. Right as I would’ve spoken to tell her how much I liked her, how feeble a wordlikewas, she got a gleam in her eye and said, “Though I did expect you to be a bit bossier just now.”

“Did you?”

She only stared back with a slight pull of her lips into a coy smile, confirming, almost daring me to push her, to test her. Despite having just had her, need coiled in my gut and my cock stirred.

“Didn’t want to overwhelm you. You didn’t enjoy yourself?” I had no doubts about that, and yet I wasn’t going to miss an opportunity to confirm.

Her smile widened. “I think you know I did. I wasn’t saying I didn’t. I just…” She bit her lip. “I’m just saying you can be however you want to be with me. I know you’re using that superhuman focus to make sure I’m comfortable considering… current events. But I wouldn’t be in this bed with you if I didn’t want to be, so I want you to stop worrying so much about me and feel free to show me what you like. I trust you.”

Despite the heat in her words, my throat tightened at the genuine tone and earnest look. Her trust in me was no small thing, and I felt the ramifications of that in every fiber of my being.

I would never take her trust lightly. I would never abuse it or assume I deserved it. And her willingness to tell me these things, that she trusted me and liked things about me, made me want to tell her everything I’d been thinking the last few days, all the things that had solidified between us in this bed.

Our gazes locked, hooked into one another like Velcro, and I almost said the words. “April, I—” I swallowed, the end of that sentence lodged in my throat.

Despite how she’d said not to worry about what she was comfortable with, that was in regard to sex.Thiswasn’t. So I held back the words, afraid to push her, not wanting to use this moment, this gift she’d given me, in any way but to honor her.

“What?” Her eyes flicked around my face, a small wrinkle at her brow betraying her curiosity.

The truth weighed heavy on my tongue, their reality bursting in front of my eyes with every soft caress of her hands or press of her lips to my skin.

I trust you, too.

You’re it for me.

I’ll never want anyone else.

I’m in love with you.

No, it was too soon for that. I wouldn’t push her. I would be the man she thought I was—a man she could trust and hopefully, when she was ready, a man she could love.

So for now, I shoved all of the words away and decided to show her through other methods.

“I’m going to need you to put your hands above your head.”

That adventuresome light hit her eyes, and she raised both arms slowly, relaxing into the pillows and arching her back so her chest was presented like a feast. “Now what?”

That hint of sass sent lust straight to my cock, and I shifted, placing a line of kisses down the center of her chest, then her belly, right until I was hovering over her sex.

“Now I’m going to lick you until you come on my tongue, but not until I tell you to.”

17

APRIL

I hung up the phone, then held it to my chest and closed my eyes. My lips curled into a slow smile all on their own, and the sigh that escaped me was the result of a goddamn job well done.

I’d done it. Days ago, I’d secured permission from Ellie and Jake to allow the journalist from the bridal magazine to attend their wedding so they could feature it as a cover story. Judging by the way today’s phone call with journalist Amanda Parker went, she already knew she was going to have a lot of amazing things to say about our beautiful B&B.

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