All of You (20 page)

“Shouldn’t you eat first? Or rest—”

He sat in the corner of the leather seat, pulling her down on his lap with a tired shake of his head. “When I was in that van…when that gun was pointed between my eyes…”

Sheer terror jolted her, stealing her breath and filling her heart with pain at just the knowledge that he’d been in that position.

“All I could think about was having one more second with you. One more minute, one more chance to tell you I was wrong. To tell you that I’m an ass and that if you’ll just let me be with you, I don’t care what comes next. That I can wait, because you’re worth waiting for.”

She touched his lips, useless tears filling her eyes. “No, Kyle—”

“But here we are and all I can think about is how badly I need to touch you. Taste you. Prove to myself you’re real and that I’m not still lying there in the dirt, bleeding to death.”

She could see it wasn’t a ploy or a play on her emotions. The shadows in his eyes weren’t her imagination. He needed this. Needed her.

He stayed silent while she unbuttoned her blouse with shaking fingers. One by one, until she shrugged the blouse off her shoulders. She rose off his lap to shimmy her skirt high enough that she could straddle him. Taking him back into her arms, she lay her head over his, pressing his ear to her heartbeat, and willed her warmth around him. “Can you feel this? My heart?”

He nodded, a caress despite the scruff on his jaw.

“You’re not dead.” She tried to say the words firmly, but her voice shook anyway.

He pulled back, staring up at her solemnly.

“You’re not leaving me.” It sounded more like a command than a reassurance, something that finally made him smile again.

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” His hand smoothed up her side, clasping her shoulder before running back down. On the second path, he reached up to tuck her hair behind her ear, cupping the side of her face to pull her down for another kiss. This one soft, sweet…loving.

For the first time, knowing that didn’t terrify her.

She deepened the kiss, an urgency of her own taking hold. This wasn’t about just comfort anymore. He licked at her lips, she nipped at his, sucking the bottom one in to soothe any sting. His arm wrapped around her as the kiss built heat. Between her thighs, she felt his cock harden for her and an ache in her core throbbed in response. She settled over him, pressing herself against him, gasping when he bucked upward.

He slid her bra strap off her shoulder, his usual grace replaced with near-desperate hunger. Skipping the other one entirely, he simply undid the front clasp and nuzzled the cups apart before drawing her nipple into his mouth. He sucked hard, sending a surge of white-hot desire from the hard tip all the way down to her slickening sex.

“Oh God,” she breathed, arching into his mouth, grinding onto his cock. “Please,” she whimpered, not really sure what she was pleading for. Him. That’s all she knew. Him.

“Inside you, Jess.” His voice was a growl against her breast, a demand. His hand tightened on her hip, slowing her movements, pulling her down until it hurt to be so close and still so empty.

“Please,” she said again, throwing her head back.

His hand struggled to open his belt and she realized what he’d meant, that he needed her help. She took over the task, her hands making quick work of his zipper while he tugged aside her panties. In seconds, she was guiding his thick shaft inside, sliding down onto him in slow, stretching increments.

He watched her descent, his heavy-lidded gaze locked with her own. For all that their desperation had led them to this, she couldn’t bring herself to move faster, to destroy the moment. Finally, full of him, she settled completely on his lap and wrapped her arms tight around his head. She pressed a soft, almost chaste kiss to his lips.

“You’re not dead.”

His eyes glistened, filling with emotions she could barely begin to understand, but she wasn’t running from them. Didn’t even want to.

“You’re right here with me. Right where you’re supposed to be.”

He nodded. “I love you, Jess.”

Could you hear a heart shatter? Or was that simply the sound of the last walls she had left, breaking apart because of this man? This incredible, impossible man.

She never got to think of an answer. He dragged her down to his mouth, branding her with a kiss while his hips thrust upward into her, sizzling any brain cells she might have left with pure sensation.

Soon, there was nothing at all except the rush of their bodies sliding together, nearly pounding in the frenzy toward completion. Finally, finally, she found it, her muscles clamping around him and taking him with her, his shout of release a sound she felt against her slick skin.

Wordlessly, they held each other, their bodies cooling, but the emotions around them stayed raw. Exposed.

As if he sensed her disquiet about that, his hand trailed up and down her back until she lay her head on his good shoulder. “It’s going to be okay, Jess, I promise.”

She shook her head. “You can’t promise that. Look what nearly happened today.”

“Look what did happen today. We’re here. Together. I can’t think of anything better than this.”

“That’s over-simplifying things a little, don’t you think?”

“I like things simple. Just because it’s easy doesn’t mean it’s wrong.”

Her mouth twisted wryly. “I haven’t exactly been easy to deal with.”

“No, but I like that about you.”

She lifted an eyebrow, even though he couldn’t see it. “The challenge?”

He shook his head, taking the opportunity to nuzzle her. “The fire. Even when you’re completely irrational, you’re passionate about it. I haven’t seen that too often. Most of the women I’ve known only get passionate about jewels or furs.”

“I’m not agreeing about the irrational part.” But she knew she should. There was a lot that she should do. Should admit. Should try. Being fair was only the first on the list. “I’ve never had either of those things, so I don’t know how I might get about them.”

“You’d probably like them, but I don’t think you’ll go ballistic over them. I’d bet you’ll take them or leave them.”

“You can tell that, can you? Just from looking?”

“I have an eye for it,” he replied, casual as you please. But suddenly, she didn’t want casual. She wanted closure. Answers.

“I don’t know what to make of you, Kyle,” she made herself say, pushing past the fears that she was headed into waters too deep. She’d been in too deep the first time he smiled at her. “You’re handsome and popular, you’re well dressed and you seem to do well for yourself financially.”

He waited a few long seconds, the casual charm dissipating. He swallowed, his arm tightening around her slightly, then nodded a few times. At least they were both on the same page. Terrified.

“Sounds like there’s a but in there somewhere,” he finally said, somewhat hoarsely.

There was. “But you want things normal people do.”

“That’s because I am normal.”

“I’m not.” It hurt to say that, to finally admit it. Being different was never an identity she craved, but it was the one she’d been stuck with. Hell, it was the one she hid inside from everyone she knew…except him. “You and Lucas had a good family, right? Never wondering what might happen if you weren’t good enough or important enough to keep around. I never had that.

“I knew no one was going to throw me out in the cold, but there were always a lot of kids to take care of. I thought if I made myself indispensable, they would never want to lose me. If I worked hard enough, I’d always have a place to belong.”

“Is that why you’re so dedicated to Goesler & Groom?” His question was soft, but important. For both of them.

“If I had a therapist, that’s probably what they’d say. I’m a pleaser.”

His irrepressible humor intruded into their seriousness. “I’m pleased with you.”

She smiled back, turning it into a kiss she pressed just beneath his jaw. “I know you are. I just don’t know why. I’ve done nothing to endear myself to you except sleep with you.”

The hand in the sling—the one she’d completely discounted in their lovemaking—grazed the tip of her breast next to it. “That was pretty endearing.”

She sat up and smirked at him, ignoring his groan and her own small throb of pleasure because his cock was still nestled within her, not quite soft enough to slip free. She didn’t want him to. There was something…intimate about being joined this way while talking. You couldn’t be anything but honest. She needed that freedom now.

“I’m not indispensable, Kyle. You can get sex anywhere. I don’t know where I stand if I can’t understand why you want to be with me so badly. If I could, maybe I’d feel safer about…us.”

It was only when he pushed a breath out that she realized he’d been holding it in. “At least you’re admitting there is an us.”

“I’m scared. I was—am—completely unprepared to care about you.”

“But that’s exactly what you did.”

She nodded. “I didn’t want to admit it, not to me and definitely not to you. But…”

“But what?”

He was so serious, she couldn’t help but wonder at him. And want to make things easier for him to understand too. “But then I got locked in a car with your brother for a few hours.”

He grinned, that typical Kyle grin. He’d probably find a way to smile in the worst situations. Which would be great, really. How much easier would her life have been if someone had been there to smile with her? If someone had made her want to smile back? “I told you so. You’d never have lasted in a placenta.”

She rolled her eyes. “He actually made a couple of things clear for me. Things I didn’t want clear, since we’re being honest.”

“Which were?”

This was it. The moment of absolute no return.

But a look in his eyes made that so much less daunting than she would have thought. Gamble or gone, girl.

“I’m in love with you.” Voicing it made it tangible. Even if she couldn’t give good reasons why she did. She didn’t know his favorite things. She didn’t know his bad habits or his goofy quirks. She wasn’t sure she could love those things about him. But she loved his smile. She loved the way he talked to her, the way he cared. The way he made her care. Even when she was being irrational. She loved the way she felt when she was near him, that sense that her life was finally beginning, even if she didn’t know exactly where it was headed.

He curved his hand to her face. “I know how hard that was to say.”

She leaned into his palm. Great, now she was tearing up.

“I’ve never been in love before, either, so it’s scary for us both.”

She hadn’t thought of it that way. The only thing that seemed to truly scare him was when she turned him away. “But how we feel doesn’t change some of the specific problems we have.”

He grimaced. “Something tells me I’d rather hear the list of Lucas-induced epiphanies.”

“I’m no Holly Homemaker.” She had to be upfront and direct or he’d never let her get to the point, which explained a lot about why Lucas never let anyone’s interjections interfere with what he was saying. He’d been well-trained. “I don’t know the first thing about being a mother with knick-knacks and clean carpet.”

He laughed. “There are such people as professional carpet cleaners. Besides, I’m not the neatnik in the family, that’s Lucas. You can stain whatever you want, I don’t mind.”

“This is legitimately important to me, dammit.” She meant to sound falsely outraged, but the squeak of tears slipped into her voice and she knew she was going about this all wrong. “I’m horrible about looking up from my work. I cook just well enough to save my own life, but that’s because I live on salad half the time and takeout the other.”

“Jess—”

“No, you have to listen to me. I’m not ready for what you seem to want out of your life. I know you want to find someone and get married and have kids as quickly as humanly possible. You want happily ever after. That didn’t go away just because someone pointed a gun at you. I’m having anxiety attacks at the happily, I stop breathing at the word ever and I’m pretty sure I’ll be unconscious by the time I get to after.”

“Jessica—”

“What if loving you isn’t enough? Can you really take me the way I am, because I don’t think I can turn myself into your idea of the perfect woman, which is totally bizarre, by the way, but that’s beside the point. I’d hate myself if I tried. I know I would, because I did it growing up and I failed. I’ve always failed. I couldn’t do it again. I’ve worked too hard to be someone I respect, so if you can’t accept who that person is, I need you to tell me now. Please.” God, it was the scariest demand she’d ever had to make, of herself or anyone else.

Kyle stared at her for a solid, silent minute. Then he took her chin with the tips of his fingers and kissed her until she wanted to weep from the sweetness of it. “I’m going to say this again and I want you to hear me this time. I was wrong.”

“What?”

“I was wrong. I’ll record it if I have to, so you can play it over and over until you believe it. I was wrong.”

Her confusion must have finally translated itself to him because he shifted them both to the side, finally separating them. He grabbed a throw from behind her and wrapped it around her shoulders, holding it closed under her chin.

“Something happened to me a few months ago. Something changed and suddenly it was like my life didn’t add up to anything that mattered. I don’t know if you know what that’s like, but I’ll tell you, it scared me. I’d thought my life mattered a lot until then. I went a little crazy. I started looking for meaning and couldn’t find any. I guess I thought having a family might make my ten-year plan mean something again if it was about providing for someone. Like you said, I wanted to be more than my goal when I got there. I just didn’t know how.” His gaze fixed intently on hers. “And then I met you.”

He kissed her nose, her cheeks, her mouth, a gentle, giving kiss that melted at her worries. But it didn’t take them away.

“People change their minds, even after they think they’ve found what they were looking for.” Like her almost-adoptive parents. “You could meet someone else you think changes your world.”