“I may not knoweverything.” I bite the inside of my cheek so hard I taste blood. “But I do know what love is.”
“You know a definition in a dictionary. You know a fucking proverb —love is patient love is kind. That’s bullshit. Because love, real love, the kind that lasts forever… it’s not patient or kind. Not pretty or perfect. It’s rough and hard as all hell. It’s ugly.” He steps closer, eyes never shifting from mine. “Love is holding someone’s filthy, tarnished heart in your hands and claiming it as yours anyway.”
My breath catches.
He takes another step. “And you don’t like dirty, do you, West? You like everything pretty as a picture. Look at this fucking house!” He gestures around. “Not a rug out of place. Straight out of a Crate & Barrel catalogue. Perfect clothes, perfect dog, perfect job. Not a speck of dirt in your whole goddamned life.”
“That’s not true.” I swallow. “My life is far from perfect.”
“But that’s the goal, isn’t it? Perfect Phoebe West. Smile for the cameras. Hold it all together.” His eyes are searing into mine. “You play pretend and think it’ll make you happy. It won’t.”
“Yeah? Well, what about you, Nate?” I’m so pissed off, I can feel my heart hammering at my ribs. “The untouchable mercenary — cold, calculated, always in control. You’re so set on not letting anyone in, on never letting anyone get to you, one of these days you’re going to turn to fucking stone.”
“Is that what this is about?” His eyes narrow. He’s breathing hard. “Is that what you need to hear? That you get to me?”
He crosses the room in two strides and then he's there, pressed against me full frontal. I gasp when I feel the unmistakable length of him, hard and heavy against my stomach.
His eyes lock on mine. “You get to me.”
“Nate—”
“What? This is what you wanted, right? To know you affect me?” His voice rumbles from his throat like gravel. “To know I’m not a fucking robot?”
He grinds against me and it makes me shiver and groan at the same time.
“Well, here it is. Definitive fucking proof. You get to me. You feel that?” He presses harder against me. “It's yours. It's been yours for ten goddamn years, since you were fourteen in that little field hockey skirt. It’s still yours.”
I flounder for words as I stare at him, heart racing. In the end, all I can come up with is one.
“Mine?”
“Yours.” He spits out the word like a curse. “You sunk your teeth in long ago and won't ever unclench, even if it kills us both.”
We’re both breathing too hard, our faces inches apart, our bodies pressed together. I’m not sure who moves first — I think it’s me.
We crash into each other with so much force it knocks the wind out of me, but I don’t mind at all because then he’s kissing me and everything in my world boils down to the point of contact where his mouth consumes mine.
***
“Not here.”
He mutters the words against the skin of my neck, between kisses.
A frustrated sound slips from my mouth.
“Been waiting too long for this to do it on the floor of your entryway,” he adds, scooping me up into his arms before I can protest. My limbs wrap around him, holding him close as he carries me up the stairs to my bedroom. When he sets me on the mattress, for a long moment he just stares down at me, breathing too fast. There’s a look in his eyes I don’t recognize. Something soft and warm, that makes my heart turn over.
“Come here,” I whisper.
His hands curl into fists. “Parker’s going to kill me if I fuck this up.”
“You’re thinking about my brother right now?” I ask, pushing up on my elbows.
His jaw clenches. “About his fist hitting my face, yeah.”
I sit up fully, eyes on his.
“Well, let’s see what we can do about that…” My words trail off as my fingers find the bottom hem of my shirt. In one swift move, I’ve tugged it up over my head and tossed it to the floor.