“Sophia.”
“I need you, Tate,” I say quietly. “Not Ryan. Not a memory of him. Not because I’m lonely or scared or grieving.” Holding his eyes. “You. You are what I want. You are what I need.”
The room is very still.
He briefly runs his tongue across his bottom lip, and something lights up in me that I hadn’t felt in so long I’d almost forgotten what it felt like.
His arm tightens around me, just slightly, just enough, and his gaze holds mine for a long moment with nothing hidden in it for once.
“Are you sure?” Low and careful.
“I’m sure.”Completely and entirely sure.“I’ve never been more sure of anything.”
He reaches up and touches my face, his thumb moving across my cheek, slowly and deliberately, the way you touch something you’ve been trying not to want for a very long time. I lean into it, close my eyes, and feel the last of the distance between us dissolve.
When I open my eyes, he is still looking at me.
“Come here,” he says quietly.
And I do.
He is gentle at first.
The way he is gentle about everything, without making a performance of it or announcing it, just careful. His hands, mouth, and the unhurried patience of a man who knows exactly what he is doing and has decided that this moment deserves every second he is going to give it.
His mouth finds my jaw, neck, and the place below my ear that makes my breath catch, and I feel him smile against my skin at the sound of it. It’s that quiet, private smile I had been mentally ticking off for months without letting myself understand why.
“Tate…” There’s an urgency in my voice I don’t recognize.
“I know,” he breathes out.
He cups the back of my neck and pulls me down for the kiss I have been craving since I opened my eyes and found him beside me this morning.
His kiss is slow at first, exploring, unhurried, like a man who has time and intends to use every second of it. Tate’s lips are soft and demanding all at once. His tongue finds mine, and I groan against his mouth.
He pulls back just slightly, just enough to look at me, his eyes burning in the morning light, and whatever he sees in my face makes me lean back down into him.
Harder this time.
His hands move into my hair, and I forget everything—the canyon, Mexico, the nightmare, all of it. There is nothing left in the world except his mouth, hands, and the low sound he makes against my lips that tells me everything he hadn’t been saying for months.
He’d wanted this.
As long as I had.
Maybe longer.
“I’ve wanted this since before I should have,” he says quietly, his forehead resting against mine, both of us breathing hard. “But you weren’t mine to have. I kept telling myself that.”
“I understand,” I say. “This is hard for me, too, Tate.”
He pulls back and looks at me, really looks, the way he rarely lets himself, and what is in his face in that moment is so unguarded and certain that something in my chest gives way.
“Whatever this is,” he says quietly. “I’m here.” Not a line, not reassurance, just the plainest possible truth from a man who means every word he says.
Something inside me that has been braced for a very long time stops bracing.
I lean down and kiss him again. Slow and deliberate, giving him everything. I feel his breath catch against my mouth, and he pulls me closer like I am something he has been waiting for.