I whimpered and he backed off just enough to tease me into slipping my arms around his neck. He traced the crack of my lips with his tongue, eliciting a moan from those lips and a shiver down my spine. He took advantage of my moan and pushed through on my hitched breath. God, did this man know how to tease and explore me. I hated how much I was enjoying that exploration.
Mathias moaned, his body quivering with an emotion that felt a lot like passion to me. Especially when he pushed me back onto the bed like a man who knew what he wanted. I may not have any experience with passion, but when you know someone as well as I know Mathias, you didn’t need experience. This kiss, and his emotions, they weren’t for show, to prove he was crazy, or for any other reason except passion. He wanted to be kissing me. No. He needed to kiss me. It was as though the kiss breathed life back into him with every moment that passed.
His knee came down next to my thigh as he continued the frenzied kiss, allowing me to explore his tongue with mine the way he had just moments before. I melted under his talented lips, and I wanted to shut out the world and kiss this man forever. Our moans of pleasure and desire bounced around the bedroom to fill up the space around us with emotions we both felt but couldn’t define. When he ripped his lips away to suck in air, he kept his hands tangled in my locks and his lips just a hairbreadth from mine.
“Curiosity again?” My whisper was winded but sarcastic.
He shook his head back and forth slowly while his eyes bored into mine. I wondered if this was what it felt like to be prey. Scared, sure you were going to die, but oddly fascinated by the power before you. “No, that had nothing to do with curiosity,” he assured me, “and everything to do with me needing to have my lips on yours just to breathe. I’ve dreamed about the feel of your velvety tongue cuddled beside mine for years. I was not disappointed.”
With his hands braced on either side of me, he leaned in closer. He would have been menacing if he hadn’t been emitting sex from every pore. “Don’t think for a moment that I’m not pissed as hell that you walked through the woods alone in the dark. I am, but we’ll talk about that later. Right now, we’re going to talk about how you have to stop jumping to conclusions whenever I say a word you don’t like.”
“I don’t do that!” I exclaimed, wanting to wiggle free from his intense gaze but knowing there was no place to go. He raised one brow, making me sigh. With his hungry gaze trained on me, I found it hard to breathe, think, or speak. “Okay, sometimes I do that, but I’m usually not wrong. When you kiss a girl and tell her you did it because you were crazy or curious, what is she supposed to think?”
His smile was one a wolf would wear right before it snapped up its next meal. “You were supposed to let me finish.”
I braced my hands on his chest, partly to hold him back and partly to feel his warmth under my hands. To ground myself in who I knew he was on the inside, regardless of what he showed everyone else. “Mathias, you’re not playing fair,” I whispered.
He laid his hand over mine and held it there, his breathing slightly ragged under my hand. “Maybe I’m not, but damn it, I’m tired of pretending my world didn’t change a year ago when Charity gave me that letter. I’m tired of pretending the idea of losing you to those guys didn’t keep me awake every night for months. I’m tired of pretending that the words you wrote to me during your darkest moments didn’t affect me in here,” he whispered, poking his chest. “They are burned into my memory because it was the first time in my life that I ever feared not having you by my side forever. I only breathe because you are in my life, and I’m tired of pretending that we can’t have feelings for each other that go beyond friendship.”
“I’ve never made that a secret,” I whispered, finally meeting his gaze. What I saw there sent a jolt through my heart. He needed me to accept who he was, both the good and the bad. I couldn’t do that with words. I could only do that with touch. I smoothed my palm along his cheek, his skin warm and soft. He shivered under my touch and kissed my palm before he spoke again.
“I know you haven’t. I’m the one who pretended I didn’t need to see you every day just to breathe. I’m tired of pretending, Honey. The kiss back there,” he whispered, his gaze never leaving mine, “was about being crazy and curious, but not the way you think. I had to know if I could finally stop pretending to be Mathias and start being Mattie again.”
My eyes searched his for lies or half-truths, but I found none. My hand was shaking when I placed it back on his cheek, and his five-o’clock shadow brushed against my palm. “Right now, I feel like I’m staring into the eyes of that ten-year-old boy I met on the playground on a sunny afternoon.”
He smiled, and I traced his lips tenderly. “I remember that boy. He was honest. He was kind. He wanted to help people. He wasn’t afraid to show empathy and love.”
“What changed?” I asked, rubbing my thumb across his bottom lip. I felt the quiver of anticipation and satisfaction that went through him more than I saw it.
“Nothing,” he whispered, “and everything. That’s what I’m doing here, Honey. I’m searching for that boy and his ideals again. I’m tired of being a man who lacks honesty, empathy, and kindness. The business world is cutthroat, and it’s taken me too long to realize that I don’t have to be.”
“It has been a long time since I’ve seen you, Mattie.” I let my hand fall away from his cheek. “Honestly, I’m not as comfortable with this Mattie as I thought I would be.”
He cocked his head, his hand holding my chin so I couldn’t look away. “Why? It’s still me, honeybee.”
My gaze darted over him, and I noticed a softness to him that hadn’t been there a year ago. He was still intense, and he always would be, but now he carried himself in a way that I hadn’t seen since our childhood. He had wonderment and excitement inside him again, along with honesty and eagerness. But I also saw a desire and heat that was all man.
“I’m comfortable with the aloof, always calculating, cutthroat Mathias.” I met his eyes and swallowed around the lump in my throat. Admitting this to him wasn’t easy, not when his lips were plump and wet from our kiss. “The man in front of me, the one who without a doubt can break my heart again, is much scarier than the guy who wasn’t afraid to bust his way into the game and make a name for himself.”
He shook his head slowly, his eyes icy but the darkest blue I’d ever seen. “I don’t understand.”
I cleared my throat, his hand still holding my cheek. It was unnerving, and I wanted to jump up and run, but I had to stay and face this new rule of the game. “Being with the old Mathias was easy,” I explained, gripping his shirt. “I held no delusions that the old Mathias wouldn’t look twice at a woman like me, even if we had been best friends for years. The old Mathias didn’t want a five-six, size-six, untamable curly-haired, neurodivergent woman who could barely take care of herself.”
He threw his head back and laughed like I hadn’t heard him laugh in years. I wanted to be angry, but the sound was too much like the laugh I used to hear when we were children. It was like being tossed back into a summer of our childhood when we’d play in the lake, hunt frogs, and ride our bikes everywhere. We were inseparable during those summers, and they were the memories I wanted to hold deep in my heart forever.
When he lowered his head again, his eyes were piercing. “That Mathias was an ass, Honey. He dated women the exact opposite of a five-six, size-six, untamable curly-haired, beautiful woman who had overcome more obstacles than he could ever find the strength to deal with so that he didn’t risk a friendship he depended on to breathe.”
“I don’t understand.” I rubbed my forehead in confusion. “I feel like I’m saying that a lot.” I scooted back on the bed to put a little distance between us, but he didn’t allow it. He leaned in farther, his knee braced against my hip in a way that said all I had to do was grasp his waist and this would go much further than kissing.
“Let me explain it this way then, sweetheart. In a perfect world, if I were given a choice between dating you or dating any of those other women I was with, I would pick you over and over and over again.”
I bit my lower lip, and he leaned in closer. Our foreheads were nearly touching when I spoke. “But you didn’t choose me.”
His forehead touched mine, and his eyes were no longer blue. They were black, reminding me of Lake Superior on a stormy night.
“I did what I thought I had to do,” he ground out.
“But now you don’t have to do what you thought you had to do?” I noticed a glimmer of amusement in his eyes, which was what I wanted. His intensity was starting to scare me.
