Page 70

“Tate?”
He turned. “Yeah?”
“How do you really feel about me?”
In three steps she was in his arms. Without saying a word, he began feathering kisses all over her face, on her ear, on her brow, on the tip of her nose and her chin, at the nape of her neck. Everywhere but her lips.
“That’s how I feel about you, like I will never get enough. Finding you again is like winning the lottery, but better.”
“What happens to me when you leave here?”
Breath caught in the back of his throat. If he said the wrong thing, would he lose her again?
“What do you want to happen?”
“I don’t want to live the rest of my life without you,” she said.
“Then we’re good, because I feel the same way, only this is now, not back then. I have an investment in a career I like that demands a good deal of travel.”
“I have a job that demands very little travel and a good deal of my time.”
He cupped her face with both hands. “That sounds like a perfect match.”
She sighed. “Do you want to pick a fight and have make-up sex, or should we just skip to the chase and make love? I don’t know about you, but I’m eight years and counting since this has happened.”
“Are you serious?”
“About what, the making love part, or the eight-year dry spell?”
Tate laughed. This was the way it used to be between them. No hesitancy. No playing around. Just honest-to-God love wild enough to rock a man’s soul. He picked her up in his arms and headed down the hall. Once inside her bedroom, he set her down, locked the door and turned around.
“I have had this dream so many times, but it always ends when you start taking off your clothes.”
Nola unsnapped her jeans.
“It’s not going to end this time,” she said, then hesitated, suddenly a little shy. “This used to be easy between us.”
“It will be again. Let me help.”
But it wasn’t really help. It was more like laying claim. He stripped her so fast she didn’t have time to be embarrassed. All of a sudden she was naked and Tate was coming out of his own clothes.
He slid onto the bed beside her, then cupped her breast and rolled her nipple between his thumb and finger, just enough to make her ache.
“I left a pretty girl and came back to a magnificent woman. You take my breath away.”
She combed her fingers through his hair the way she used to, loving the springy feel of it beneath her palms.
“Make love to me, Tate. I’ve learned the hard way that nothing lasts forever. I don’t want to die never knowing this again.”
His eyes narrowed sharply. “Don’t say that! You won’t die. I won’t let him hurt you.”
She shook her head. He couldn’t promise that, and anyway, she didn’t want to think about tomorrow.
“Just love me now. I won’t ask for more.”
So he did—smothering her with kisses, turning her on with his hands and his mouth until she was out of her mind.
Ignoring the pull of her healing stitches, she reached for him, encircling his erection with her fingers, feeling the surge of blood beneath the surface as it pulsed between her hands.