Page 109 of Stand Your Ground

His eyes burned, steady and sure.

“I love you.”

The words detonated between us.

My world tilted, ears ringing, the dust from the blast clouding every thought that battled for dominance inside my mind.

I shook my head, panic rising like a flame in the aftermath. “No. No, you don’t—”

“Yes.” He caught my chin, his thumb gentle even as his eyes were fierce. The way he stared at me, so intently, cleared everything, the dust settling, my senses rushing back at once. “I do. I love you.”

I didn’t mean to break. I didn’t mean for emotion to warp my face, for me to lean into his touch as tears welled in my eyes and fell in a silent stream down my cheek.

“You don’t think I know you don’t want to hear that? You think it doesn’t kill me to know you don’t feel the same?” His voice cracked, and still he never wavered. “But I can’t keep doing this halfway, Liv. I am impossibly lost inside the notion that you could actually be mine, if only I can stand my ground and claim you.”

And then I was kissing him.

It was hard and messy and unbridled, teeth meeting teeth, my nails clawing at his back to get him closer. I mounted him, lifting one leg until he took my weight before I wrapped the other around him and held fast.

Carter pinned me to the wall, meeting my desperation with a kiss so powerful I felt it like a prophecy in my soul, like it was destined to be, and we were at the mercy of a higher power.

I pushed at his chest even as my mouth devoured his, shaking my head against the truth of it, against the part of me that wanted to collapse into him completely.

Carter frowned, still kissing me, but his hands steadied. “Are you telling me no?”

I whimpered at the question, at the way my body revolted against my soul with the answer.

“You know the safe words,” he murmured against my lips. His hands framed my face, patient and certain.

He waited.

The fucking gentleman that he was, he made sure. He wasn’t going to let me get by without using my words.

I hated him for it almost as much as I…

“You’re wrong,” I finally croaked, still shaking my head even as I clawed at him and wordlessly begged for more. “I do want to hear it. And I do feel the same.”

The words broke out of me like water from a shattered vase, and Carter’s face lit up with disbelief at their existence. But it was only a moment, a pause in the turning of our planet beforehis hands were on me again, more insistent this time, his kisses heated with pure need.

It was all in flashes after that.

His hand at his buckle, unfastening, unzipping.

My dress hiked up, thong yanked to the side.

A rock and a gasp, a moan that vibrated through the very foundation of who I was and brought all my walls down in a thundering crash.

Carter sank inside me like an anchor, flexing hard and wrapping his hands around my shoulders to pull me down farther, as if there was an unreachable depth he was determined to find.

I didn’t know when it happened. I didn’t know if it was in the searing moments of teaching him, in the honest moments of him opening himself to me and me feeling safe to do the same, or in the inconsequential moments, the ones where we were floating on a board side by side or laughing at a bar or sneaking glances across a room crowded with our friends — but I had fallen for him.

It scared me more than anything, and yet I didn’t have the will to fight the truth.

I could have pushed him away. I could have invoked the contract and reminded him what he signed up for, what he agreed to. I could have reinforced my walls and crawled back into my lonely hole of safety.

But I didn’t want to.

Claiming me against that wall, Carter was no longer my student, no longer timid or unsure. He seared me with every thrust, marked me with every kiss, scarred me with every shuttered moan of my name.