A proposal from this incredible, devastating, brilliantly complicated man.
On the boombox, Etta James sang about a Sunday kind oflove, a moment Fontana would forever after consider meant to be.
Campbell grasped her hands, but his head dropped, his shyness telling her everything before his words undid her. “My life was soulless before I met you. I was stumbling through. Career stuff, sure, going well. Everything else—” He drew her closer, his scent drifting over her, scattering her pulse. “I’m not there all the way yet, but you’ve brought me back to life. To Promise. My family, the mill, the Rise. I want to take it. I want itall.”
He swallowed, lifted his gaze, eyes shining. “I love you more than you can imagine, and I want you there beside me. Ineedyou there.”
Fontana cupped his jaw and pressed her cheek to his. “You helped me trust again. Opened my heart. My childhood—I don’t know—I wasn’t able to…I didn’t know myself.” She laughed softly, gesturing to the candlelit space around them. “Not like this. I love you, too, Campbell Loman. I can’t remember when I didn’t. Actually, I don’t care to remember when I didn’t. You and Kit, Hannah and Jaime, Dix, you’re my world. I was only so scared because I could see my world slipping away.”
“I thought you did. The love thing. I hoped, but I wasn’t sure.” He rubbed the back of his neck, his sigh long and heavy. “I’m sorry it took me a while to figure this out, figure us out. Accept it. Whatever was wrong with me. How I acted in your hospital room, I’m an ass, okay? I know I’m not perfect.It’snot perfect, not like Etta’s lyrics, but I want to get off the lonely road. You make me feel invincible, like the universe is open to me, to us. Like I can come back, reclaim my family, my life. Like it’ll work out. If you can only find it in yourself to…” His voice cracked as he laid her back on the quilt, his body flowing over hers. “Share it with me. Your past. Everything, Fon.Everything. No holding back.”
“I can do that.”
“Do something else. Marry me.”
“Yes,” she murmured as his lips captured hers.
He pulled back just enough for a sliver of air to cut between them. “Yes?”
She removed his glasses and placed them carefully by her side. Then she shifted her hips until his rock-hard length settled perfectly against her. His eyes went smoky and a ragged moan drifted from one of them, she wasn’t sure who. “One proviso to happiest proposal ever. That thing you do with your fingers, the little curl inside me? It would go perfectly with apple juice, diamonds, and Etta.”
“And you can show me again how you fold up like a map. Man, did I like that.” His lids drifted as his hand coasted over her—breast, belly, the curve of her hip. Zipper down, fingers working inside denim. His eyes widened, breath catching. “Commando? Oh, thisisa night to remember. I may not make it to the performance.”
She gave a sly shrug. “Whoever packed forgot panties. And a bra.”
“At this moment, I love Jaime more than I can say.”
“Let’s not waste his effort,” she gasped, arching off the quilt as he did the finger curl once, twice, then slipped another inside her. Her hand fisted in his sweater and held tight, much like her body did. “Yes. Right…there.”
Arms full of her, his lips were a wicked whisper down her body. One nimble button at a time, her shirt fell open in a slow spill. Sidetracked by her nipples—his fascination—he tugged one, then the other, between his teeth. Gentle bites. Soothing. Urging. The stubble on his jaw scraped the rounded edge of her breast.
Pinned by his weight, he moved with care, guiding her until she melted beneath him, the only unrest the need bubbling like a spring beneath her skin. Her fingerstangled in his hair as his mouth tracked the line of her hip. Without pausing, he peeled her jeans from her body. “If you go there, Cam, I won’t last long.”
He glanced up the plane of her body, eyes stormy with desire, a damp sheen on his cheeks. Nipping the inside of her thigh, he then licked to soothe.
Sexy, sexy, sexywas all that raced through her mind.
“Hmm. Coming quickly,” he whispered, his voice as tattered as the quilt beneath them. “And that’s bad,why?”
Agreed, she decided as her thoughts scattered, her body dissolved. Her gaze fixed on the glass ceiling, the wash of stars in the dusky sky blinking back at her. This was her view until she faded, unable to keep her eyes open.
His assault was convincing, when she didn’t need convincing.
Fingers twisting inside her while he toyed with her clit. Finesse. Restraint. A dance. One so skilled he brought her to the brink and back again, until she writhed beneath him, begging with raised hips, her words reduced to moans and breathless exhalations she couldn’t hold back. He couldn’t either. He tunneled an arm beneath her, lifting, pulling her harder against his mouth, adjusting the angle, just enough to give her a two-second warning.
She tried to tell him—close…now—as her thighs clenched around his head.
Deep, deeper, the sensation rose and swept through her. A tightly held hunger, then an incredible release. Campbell didn’t let up until her climax had dissolved every measure of reason.
Floating, she blinked to find his gaze locked on her. He looked feral, possessed, whatever control he had left hanging by a gossamer thread. He reached back, pulled his sweater over his head, and tossed it aside, revealing a body that made her mouth water.
“God, those little sounds you make.” His lungs were working like he’d run a race—and lost. “I promise next time will be longer,” he whispered hoarsely. “Right now, I’ll lose it if I don’t get inside you.” He shoved his boxers and jeans down in one rough motion, condom and cock in his hand before she could draw another breath.
She hooked a leg around his taut butt and brought him down. Knocking his hand from his shaft, she reached for him—stroking, cupping, squeezing, circling. She knew what he liked and used every last trick. Once he slid inside her, they’d both be lost.
His exhalation scorched her ear. “You’re killing me, Hellcat. Is it on purpose?”
“I just want to catch that drop of moisture before?—”
