Page 86 of One Touch

Fresh, unshed tears burned, emotions hot in my throat.

“The real kicker,” Beckett continued, “is one night I got drunk with Duke, and we passed out on the front porch of the farmhouse. Red found us and hauled our hungover asses up the next morning. When he heard we were celebrating my acceptance into MIT’s engineering program, he didn’t even hesitate. Just pulled me into a hug and told me he was proud of me.”

“I’m sure your father was proud, in his own way.”

A muscle moved in Beckett’s jaw. “My father told me to move out.”

“Why do it then? Why keep going back there if they can’t accept you?”

My hand raked up his exposed back. A bone-deep sigh whooshed out of him as I accepted his full body weight.

“Hell if I know. Maybe it’s the same reason you came back to Michigan. Deep down we’re all just the scared little kid we’ve always been. She’s not perfect, but for a long while, Mom was the best thing I had.”

“And now?”

He looked down at me, shifting his arms to hold me closer. “Now it’s different.”

“What’s different?”

“I’ve found other things to hold on to.”

My heart soared and beat a wild rhythm against his. “Can you do something for me?”

He nodded.

“Make me forget.”

Beckett ran his tongue up the side of my neck before a devastating grin spread across his face. “Is that all?”

THIRTY

BECKETT

Fallingfor Kate was simultaneously the most natural and most terrifying thing in the world. When she stared up at me, pleading to make her forget the ugly scene with my parents, the fact another Miller had taken her away from a special family holiday, and the uncertainty of whatever was blooming between us, I was more than happy to oblige.

To forget my life and be lost inher.

When my hands moved lower to spread her thighs open for me, she glanced up, and her eyes nearly gutted me as she breathed my name.

Beckett.

It would never sound sweeter than coming from her lips as I filled her.

A dominating, protective need washed over me—to claim her, fill her, and let the outside world fall away. Somehow with her my life had stopped feeling like never-ending attempts to look for whatever comes next.

With her I could stop and settle.Feel.

She shifted beneath me as I gazed down at her. Her body rolled beneath my appreciative gaze, unknotting all the control I had clung to.

“Christ, woman. I’m trying to have a moment here, but I can’t concentrate with you moving like that.”

Kate reached up, and her hand tangled in the hair at the back of my neck. “Stop thinking and get lost with me.”

Her breathy pants were my undoing.

She tightened her grip on the sheet beneath her as I shifted lower, letting my hot breath move over her.

“I’ve been waiting for this all damn day.” I kneeled above her, soaking in the sight of my woman splayed open for me.

---