Exposed Page 10
He held her gaze, had held nothing but since he’d walked in the room. The intensity came off him in waves. “And now?”
“The truth is, I haven’t been able to think of anything but you. Of what we began, of what I was too afraid to finish. I kept telling myself I did the right thing, that it was more important not to shake up what I’d spent so long building. That, in time, I’d be able to put those memories in their proper perspective.” Her lips quirked just a little. “And maybe by then I could develop the damn roll of film I took with your picture on it.”
His lips quirked, too. “You might have been smart not to. I can’t tell you how many hours I’ve spent looking at yours.” He didn’t move closer, but the room felt somehow smaller when he said, “They made me ache, Del. Remember I told you I’d let you know when I was hungry? I’ve never stopped hungering for you. It’s like this hollow nagging void that just doesn’t subside. I finally told myself—actually, it was my older brother Tag who kicked me in the butt—”
“You told your . . . family? About . . . us?” Color crept into her cheeks.
Amusement colored his expression. “Not all about us. But it became pretty noticeable that I was, well, preoccupied. Of course, my baby brother Jace came home with his high school sweetheart draped all over him, which didn’t help my frame of mind any. I guess you could say I was mooning. Tag finally told me to do something about it or I’d regret it forever. And he was right.”
Del stood there, overwhelmed by his simple honesty, and by the strength she knew it had taken to literally lay his heart at her feet. “I’m not as brave as you. But you make me want to be. You make me question everything I thought I had to have to be happy, to be fulfilled. I thought security meant being rooted firmly into one spot, with definite ties that could never be severed, by anyone but me.” She began to walk toward him. “I guess I lost sight of that last part. That the security, the stability, is in having the choice at all. What I do with those choices is also up to me. Somewhere, somehow, I started to confuse sameness with stability. I have a job that I’m good at, but isn’t what I really dreamed of doing, and yet I settled for it because it meant a steady paycheck, security. I have a home that’s not really mine, but that I can keep as long as the rent check is on time. And because I have a roof over my head, and clothes on my back, all provided by me, I’m safe.
“The rest, love, family, happiness . . . I can’t make those things happen.” She stepped closer. “So I left that to fate, and controlled the things I could.” She stopped just in front of him. “And then I met you. And I couldn’t control anything. Not how you made me feel, not the things you made me question. Not the hunger you started inside of me for more. More.” Her throat closed over. “You make me want more. When I’ve always been satisfied to take what I know I can get, what I know I can keep. You make me want more. And frankly, that scares the living hell out of me.”
He reached for her as the first tear welled up and spilled down her cheek.
“I don’t want to cry, dammit. I want—I want to explain, I want you to understand—”
He tugged her into his arms. “I understand,” he said, his own voice hardly a rasp. “Just tell me you’ll find your more with me. That you’ll try. That you’ll reach out and take what you want, and trust that we’ll do our best to get it. The rest will get figured out the only way life can . . . one day at a time.”
She looked up at him, eyes blurred. But it occurred to her that she’d never seen anything so clearly as what was standing right in front of her face. She nodded. “Okay, then. I want you, Austin Morgan.” She sniffled even as she laughed and wrapped her arms around his neck. “I sure as hell hope you know what you’re getting us into.”
A grin split wide across his face as he wrapped her up in his arms. “I haven’t a clue. I only know I can’t wait to find out.”
He then took her in a breath-stealing kiss, which she sunk into willingly, eagerly. His hands moved down her back, cupped her against him, and suddenly Del wasn’t worried about her future or his, beyond the right here, the right now. Maybe that was the way to handle this. Live in the moment. Enjoy what she had, and not worry about what she might lose.
“Just how late do you have to stay at work tonight?” he asked, taking her earlobe between his teeth.
“Definitely all done working,” she said on a gasp.
“Does this door lock?”
She was already reaching behind him, clearing off her other workbench. “Mmm-hmm.”
He back-walked them to the door instead, flipped the lock. “You know, we really have to figure out how to do this more conventionally.”
She spun him around and pinned him to the wall. “We do?”
His eyes went dark. “You know, I’m thinking you way underestimate yourself in the bravery department.”
“That’s bravado. Totally different thing.” She yanked his shirt from his pants.
“Ah. Well, then, whatever this is, I’m liking it.”
“This is me, throwing twenty-eight years of caution to the wind.” She tugged his zipper down. “This is me, taking what I want and damn the torpedoes.” She pushed his pants down over his hips. “May God save my immortal soul, but—” She looked up into his eyes, eyes she wanted to look into a hundred times a day. “This is me, Delilah Hudson, falling in love.” And she allowed her heart to open wide, and the grin that split her own face matched it. “So, watch out, things could get messy.”
“I should only be so lucky,” he said, turning the tables, and her, so it was her back against the wall. “You know, for the first time I have no idea how to frame the shot.” He tugged open each button on her shirt. Then slowly, tortuously, pushed her pants down over her hips.
She was already lifting her legs up around his hips even as he was sliding her up the wall, and down onto him. With a deep groan, he eased all the way inside her. “And goddamn but I can’t wait to see what develops.”
“You know,” she said on a gasp, “I think I like making you swear.”
He grinned, and thrust deeper. “Well then, we’re going to get along just fine.”
And much to their mutual delight, they did.
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