Page 22

The sight of Amara in my t-shirt was all I needed to turn as hard as a rock.

She wasn’t a tall woman, but from under my t-shirt, her legs looked like they stretched for miles.

The amber glow from the fire cast golden shadows over her normally pale skin, and if I wasn’t afraid of her running from me, I would have hooked an arm around her waist, dropped her to the bed and slowly kissed up every mile of her toned legs, from ankle to . . .

“Thought maybe you got lost in my shirt.” My voice croaked on my tease. Croaked. Fuck me, I sounded like a hormonal teenager about to take a woman for his first time. I wasn’t even close to virginal—but I also wasn’t close to claiming her.

“No,” she breathed a shaky breath, lowering her little body into the bed beside me. For the first time tonight, I was thankful for the thick duvet. It was hiding my thick, barely restrained desire for her. “Um—earlier you said I was—um,”

“Mine?” I questioned, relieving her. She was cute when she stuttered, but the last thing I wanted her feeling tonight was uncomfortable.

As much as I liked to tease her, making her cute little ass squirm as she thought up a sharp quip, that wasn’t how I wanted tonight to play out.

Tonight it was about honesty, our future, and us.

“Yes,”

“And?”

“Well, I was wondering what that meant. Exactly.”

“It means you’re mine and I’m yours,” The explanation was simple. “Like I said earlier, we’re lighting our spark.”

“Yes, but—what does that mean? ”

What wasn’t I getting here? “Peanut, gonna have to clarify for me.”

“Beckett,” my name was a frustrated curse on her pretty lips. “I figure you know this, but I’ll tell you anyway—I don’t date.”

“You do now.” Okay, maybe that was a little too firm and caveman-like. Oh well, not like I could take the words back. Hell, I didn’t want to take the words back.

“So we are dating?”

Eyes narrowed, I took her in. Her face was the picture of innocent confusion, so I took pity, “Yeah, baby, we are.”

“Okay,” a slow breath in and another out. Her chest rose and fell under my shirt—and holy fuck, her nipples were hard. “So, what does that mean?”

“What?” My eyes lifted to her face. This time, hers were narrowed.

“What does dating mean for us?”

I frowned. “It means we’re in a relationship.”

She fisted the blanket into her little hands, clearly frustrated. “What I mean is—never mind.”

“No, talk to me.”

“You’re too hard to talk to!”

“I’m trying to listen. I’m trying to communicate the way you need me to communicate, Amara. Don’t give up on me yet. Don’t just shut down because we’re not communicating quite right. We’ll get there eventually.”

Silence pulsed and her fisted hands loosened their grip on the blanket.

“Okay. I guess I’m trying to ask what dating entails.

I don’t know what I’m ready for—or even if I’m ready to date.

I just don’t know about all this. It’s all happening really fast. I hadn’t even considered dating you and then all the sudden you’re tickling me and then you’re kissing me and I’m liking it and . . .”

“Amara,” I cut her off, pulling her fidgeting hand into mine. “Hey, don’t freak, okay?” She bobbed her head so I figured it was safe enough to proceed. “You sure know how to talk a mile a minute. Ever think about becoming a lawyer? Or an auctioneer?”

“Beckett,” I was pretty sure that was the first time I’d ever heard Amara Bloom whine. This, too, was fucking adorable.

“All right, sorry,” sending her a rueful grin, I forged ahead. “How about we don’t make boundaries for our relationship? If I do something you don’t like, you tell me and vice versa. We’ll take it day by day, slow and steady, yeah?”

“Slow and steady?” She sounded disbelieving. “I can do that.”

Was she trying to convince me, or herself?

“You sure?” I asked, needing clarification.

She lifted her free hand, “One thing,”

“What’s this one thing?”

“You say no boundaries—does this mean we’re not exclusive?”

I wasn’t expecting those words to fall from the lips I’d been kissing only a couple hours before. I didn’t want anyone else kissing those pretty pink lips. As far as I was concerned, they were mine. All of her was mine.

“We’re definitely exclusive, Amara. I’ve never been the sharing kind.” Did she prefer it the other way? For some reason, I doubted that.

Tipping her head forward, a sigh of relief sounded. “Good.”

“Good.” I echoed, feeling my inner gorilla roar. “How about we get some shut eye, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

I watched as she snuggled down into the bed, pulling the duvet up to her chin before I lowered myself next to her. Listening to her short soft inhalations, I could practically taste the sweet aroma of her nervousness.

“Is this the first time you’ve slept with a man?”

She rolled onto her side, facing me. Then she tipped her head up to press her lips to mine. The boldness of her move stunned me and it wasn’t until she’d twisted to her other side, facing the nearly dead fire that I realized she hadn’t replied.

Amara didn’t sleep deadweight. She was a shifter. From side to side, front to back, she moved. I wasn’t getting much sleep as it was with her lack of reply to my question spinning around in my mind, but with her thrashing movements, sleep was a no-go.

Wondering if this was normal for her, or if she was just so wound up with everything that had happened tonight, I remained unmoving on my back. I really hoped it wasn’t normal, because I couldn’t imagine passing out from exhaustion only to get the shit kicked out of me by a comatose woman.

My hand was lifted to touch her shoulder when I heard it—her whimper. It was soft, barely there. A cry that had the hairs rising on my flesh as I froze, my ears perked.

“No, please . . .” The words were so mumbled and so weak, I was just able to decipher them. But even though they were mumbled and frail, they were also tortured.

“Amara?” I whispered gently, my hand falling on her shoulder.

“God,” she moaned. “It’s bad.”

“Amara?” My own fear was beginning to climb. What was going on in her mind? What was she dreaming about that had her so afraid?

I moved in closer to her, my hand shifting to the small of her back as she snuggled into my chest. I froze, waiting for the flailing to continue. Minutes passed and nothing happened. The tension in my body fled as I let my arms relax around her, finally falling into the peace of sleep.