“I love you. I have to?”
He moved so damn fast it was almost inhuman. He wrapped his arms around my waist and had me pinned to the wall, my legs going around him.
“I feel the need for some rules of engagement, Goddess.”
His lips coasted along mine, sliding over to my ear and then down, grazing the swollen mark with tenderness before trailing farther to my breasts that were still bare and lit up with desire. I gasped when he took one tender tip into his mouth.
“You…can’t set rules…around saying…I love you,” I gasped.
He stopped what he was doing, and my body groaned an objection.
“That didn’t count,” he said.
Then he returned his attention to my breast, and I completely forgot everything I’d been going to say as we lost ourselves again in our skin.
???
Returning to the world of the living was difficult after having his hands bring me up to the skies where I did feel like a goddess. One he worshipped with fingers and a tongue and whispered words.
“Guess what?” he said, lips quirking.
“What?” I asked, trying to get my breath.
“I love you. I love you. I love you,” he said with a huge grin.
The words peeled through me like a bell he was ringing, and while I laughed, the thought of him ringing a bell at all made my smile disappear. I put my hand to his cheek, wanting to make sure he got to say everything he’d wanted to say about his naval career. So he knew I didn’t want him to give it up for me.
“I’m serious, Otter, I don’t want you giving up your career for me.”
He took my hand, kissing the palm. “Before Dr. Inez put me on leave, he asked me what I had to live for, and when I tried to tell him I was in service to our country, he threw our SEAL motto in my face.”
“What an ass,” I blustered, offended on his behalf.
He nodded. “He was. He is. And it did piss me off. But I get it now. This. You. Me. What we are when we’re together. It’s worth anything and everything. I don’t want to spend six months without you. I don’t want to go out on a mission, wondering if I’m ever going to taste you again, see you shudder in joy at my touch, challenge me to some new game with strange rules of engagement.”
My lips quirked, but I was worried that this was my brother’s doing. I sat up, forcing his hands away from me so I wouldn’t be distracted by his touch.
“This is because of Mac’s little speech in the car?”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “Ever since I came back from Africa…” He swallowed hard and looked at the ceiling and then back into my eyes. “Ever since Darren died, I’ve been floundering, trying to force myself back on to a SEAL team that no longer felt like home. I thought the SEALs were the only place I could find it. A home. But I think that was because I didn’t know there was any other place waiting for me.”
“Wellsley Place?” I asked, surprised.
“You. You’re my home first and foremost. But I can see a life for us with Carson and Maribelle on the estate.”
“You want me to move in with you? In Georgia?”
“Is there something wrong with that?” he asked, the smile on his face growing.
“I just. We just?”
He cut me off with a kiss. “I love you. Everything else would just be a fucking waste of time. For you and for me. I want you there, and if I have to fucking stand like a pretend bodyguard every time you go on tour with Brady, then I’ll do that, too. I don’t want to spend any moment of our life without you.”
He was winning. Not just our little I-love-you challenge, but every single part of my heart and soul and life. Winning over any arguments that I had against what he was saying he was giving up. For me, but also for himself.Returning to a home that had left him wounded but was now ready to wash away those scars.
I feathered my hand over the chess piece on his chest. The tattoo and the scar were blending together. His childhood blending into his past and becoming his future once again.
“I love you,too,” I said, causing both our lips to quirk, but then I settled serious eyes on his face. “Are you sure you’re really ready to give it all up? Being a SEAL. The Navy.”
