"But what if the court..."
"The court is going to see exactly what everyone else sees. A man who's completely gone for his wife and would move heaven and earth to protect her and her son." I cup her face in my hands, make sure she can see the truth in my eyes. "A family that belongs together."
"Tommy isn't your responsibility."
"Tommy is my stepson. He became my responsibility the moment I said 'I do.'" My voice goes hard, final. "And Lisa, anyone who tries to take him from us is going to learn exactly what happens when someone threatens what's mine."
The possessiveness in my tone makes her pupils dilate, makes her breathing go shallow. She's responding to the claim, to the promise of protection, even as her logical mind tries to fight it.
"Sawyer..." She starts to say something, but I cut her off.
"Do you want me to stop?" The question comes out low, rough. "Do you want me to step back, give you space, pretend this is still just a business arrangement?"
She's quiet for a long moment, looking at me like she's trying to solve a puzzle. Like she's weighing the risk of jumping against the risk of staying safe.
"No," she whispers finally. "I don't want you to stop."
The admission breaks something loose in my chest. Without giving her time to change her mind, I back her against the kitchen counter, caging her in with my arms.
"Good," I growl against her ear. "Because I wasn't planning to."
I kiss her then, hard and hungry and completely unrestrained. This isn't the careful kiss from the ceremony, the one meant for public consumption. This is twenty-nine years of want and need and desperate longing finally finding an outlet.
Lisa responds immediately, her hands fisting in my shirt, pulling me closer. She kisses me back with a passion that matches my own, with nibbles and tongue and soft sounds that make my head spin.
When I break away to trail kisses down her throat, she arches against me, her head falling back to give me better access.
"God, Sawyer." Her voice is breathless, shaky. "I've wanted this for so long."
"How long?" I scrape my teeth across her pulse point, and she shudders. "Tell me."
"Since high school. Since that night at the bonfire when you drove me home and I thought you might..." She gasps when I find that sensitive spot just below her ear. "But you didn't."
"I wanted to." I pull back to look at her, see the flush spreading across her cheeks, the way her lips are swollen from my kisses. "God, Lisa, I wanted to so badly I could barely function. But you were about to go off to that fancy university in the city, and I was just enrolling in our little college here, and I thought..."
"You thought what?"
"I thought you deserved better than a mountain man with too much baggage in this town to ever leave.” I brush her hair back from her face, gentler now. "I figured you'd leave Grizzly Ridge and find someone who could give you the world because youdeserved that and more. More than I could offer you at eighteen years old."
"I didn't want the world, Sawyer." Her hands come up to frame my face, thumbs brushing across my cheekbones. "I wanted this. Wanted you. I still do."
The simple honesty in her voice nearly brings me to my knees. Twenty-nine years of thinking I wasn't good enough, of watching her from a distance and wanting what I couldn't have, and she's been wanting me too.
"Lisa." I rest my forehead against hers, trying to get my breathing under control. "Are you sure? Because once we do this, once we cross this line, I'm never letting you go. Court case or no court case. You'll be mine."
"Promise?" The word comes out barely audible, but the hope in it is unmistakable.
"I promise." I seal the words with another kiss, slower this time but no less intense. "You're mine, Lisa McKenna. You and Tommy both. Mine to protect, mine to care for, mine to love."
"Yours," she agrees against my mouth. "But Sawyer, I need you to know something."
"What?"
Her cheeks flush deeper, and she looks down. "I'm not... I haven't done this very much. With anyone."
The admission sends a surge of primitive satisfaction through me. The idea that I'm going to be the one to show her how good this can be, the one to teach her body what it's capable of feeling, makes me feel ten feet tall and completely primal.
"Good," I say, tilting her chin up so she has to meet my eyes. "That means I get to be the first to do it right."
