Chapter 21
NADIA
Nadia stirred from sleep, the late afternoon light casting long, copper shadows across the room.
Before her eyes fully opened, she felt his presence, that gentle tug in her lower abdomen.
Thomas sat on the edge of the bed, his weight creating a slight dip in the mattress.
He stared out the window, his hair damp from a recent shower, the ends curling against his temple and neck.
Golden sunlight carved a hard line against his profile.
Dressed in a fitted black tee and dark gray joggers, he looked devilish, the cotton stretched taut across his defined shoulders and upper back.
Arms braced on his thighs, forearms corded with tension, he looked as if he were physically holding himself in place. He was also a man in conflict.
She jackknifed in bed, coming fully awake. “What’s wrong? Do we need to go?” She spoke with urgency, her voice rough with sleep.
“Tom?” she asked when he didn’t immediately answer.
“No, we don’t have to go, not yet.”
“Where’s Cammy?” She glanced out the window in search of the older woman’s Chevy Tahoe.
“She went into town a few hours ago. She won’t be back until late. Quilting Club meet-up.”
“She quilts?” Nadia almost snorted. She couldn’t picture the hearty retired U.S. Marshal quilting. Carrying a gun? Absolutely. But darning with a needle and thread? Nope. Couldn’t see it.
Nadia yawned and stretched her neck. It felt like she’d climbed into bed only minutes ago but it had been hours.
Thomas still hadn’t looked at her. His forearms rested on his knees, his hands between them. He tapped his fingertips together in a steady rhythm, thinking on something.
“What are you doing here?” she asked gently.
He turned toward her then, his eyes reflecting the dusk light as they searched her face with longing and resignation, desire and doubt.
“I’ve been watching you sleep,” he admitted, softly.
“Telling myself I have no right to be here with you. That with everything happening, this is absolutely the wrong time.” His hand flexed against the bed sheet.
“But I don’t think I can go another second of breathing the same air as you and not be with you.
Not know you in every way. I’m tired of telling myself no, that you wouldn’t want me. Tired of waiting.”
Nadia’s eyes widened. He just took creepy to smoking hot, the weight of his admission settling between her ribs.
She exhaled a long, uneven breath, years of unexpressed longing unfurling within her, and leaned forward.
Brilliant, fragmented pieces of her coalesced in her center as her hand reached up and skirted over the nape of his neck, her fingers threading through his silver-streaked hair.
Her lips hovered an inch from his. “Then let’s stop waiting,” she whispered, giving in.
His fingertips moved to caress her cheek with a delicate touch, and his mouth closed over hers.
The kiss was tentative at first, a question posed and answered.
A much gentler exploration than their fierce, almost feral collision earlier when it felt like she was trying to claw her way into his soul.
But this kiss, she felt in every molecule of her being.
It radiated a soothing heat, awakening nerve endings that had lain dormant through years of denial.
Thomas inched closer until his chest pressed against her breasts, his arms coming around her, his scent engulfing her—desert sage, cedarwood, and that ineffable essence uniquely his.
He saturated her senses, chasing away every warning about him that Aimee had preached to her, every objection about him she’d raised on her own, until she felt nothing but an incredible rightness.
He felt like coming home. Not to the place she’d grown up in where she learned the people she loved could walk out the door and not come back.
But the kind of home you built inside another person’s arms when your own body didn’t feel like enough of a shelter.
Memories cascaded through her consciousness—Thomas at seventeen, laughing across a sticky diner table.
Him at thirty-one, somber in a tailored suit at a funeral that was nothing but a fabrication.
Then mere days ago, throwing himself between her and a bullet’s path.
Always altering her life’s trajectory. Always there.
Always here.
A moan escaped her with that thought, her fingers tearing at the shirt on his shoulders.
She wanted it off him so that she could feel his skin against hers.
He made a rough noise against her mouth that sounded of both relief and ruin as she tugged the shirt over his head and flung it across the bed.
She took that groan—his unleashed passion—into herself, swallowing the sound like a secret she’d been waiting decades to hear him confess.
As she kissed his shoulders, his bare chest, the current beneath all their conversations over the years fizzled and all pretenses of restraint fell away.
Returning to his mouth, neither of them able to hold back any longer, their kiss detonated, becoming that violent collision of souls Nadia had heard so much about but never experienced on her own.
Thomas seized her face between his hands, consuming her with a hunger that demanded an equal match.
Her fingers dug into his back then his arms with bruising intensity as he pushed her back onto the covers, leaning over her.
She welcomed his weight with a heated sigh.
He rolled his hips almost on reflex, pushing against her center, and they both groaned.
“I’ve carried you with me,” he murmured against her jaw, kissing his way down her neck. “In every decision.” He stretched the neck of her cotton shirt as far as it would go, his mouth lavishing kisses across the upper curve of her breasts. “Every sacrifice.”
“I know,” she said, moving under him, trying to feel more of him.
He reared back, straddling her hips, and yanked up her shirt. She wasn’t wearing a bra and his eyes flared with molten desire. He pushed the shirt up further until it caught under her chin. “This needs to go.”
“It’s going.” They got it over her head together and she tossed it onto the floor as Thomas dove for her breasts. His tongue traced the contours of one, circling her nipple, drawing the tight bud into his mouth, his teeth gently nipping as his hand caressed and molded the other.
Nadia writhed underneath him, arcing her back as one of his hands curved under her spine, angling her better for his mouth.
She was drowning, going under, and all she could do was let herself sink.
Nothing made sense, yet everything did. Her fingers raked through his hair, scraping his scalp, his back.
She clawed at his shirt, tugging it up over his shoulders.
He lifted his head just long enough for her to pull off the garment and toss it aside before he brought his mouth down on her other breast.
Aroused beyond measure, she moaned his name. And for someone who’d never begged a man before, she begged Thomas.
She grasped his cheeks and lifted his face. She kissed him, wet and open mouthed. “I need you.”
He broke their kiss, putting inches between them. His eyes found hers. “If tomorrow—”
Her insides liquified to quicksand. She silenced him with another kiss. “There’s only now.” Their future, their reality—it had no place here. Later they’d think of tomorrow.
Some elemental level of understanding passed between them and Thomas gently touched her lips in a lingering, scorching kiss.
Then he was scooting back, dropping kisses in the dip of her midriff, over the rise of her hips, dragging her sleep pants down until he was there.
His mouth on her center. His shoulders between her legs.
He glanced up at her, the rich depth of his hazel eyes surprisingly complex as they met her gaze.
Then he gave her a wicked grin right before his mouth and fingers gave her exactly what she needed.
He started slow, learning the language of her body with a patience she lacked. She’d be devouring him. If he asked her right now to run away with him, she would. If he asked her to change her name and disappear with him, she would. Because her entire world narrowed down to him.
His tongue traced her in long, deliberate strokes that had her grappling at the sheets, her legs shaking, and her hips lifting off the mattress to meet him.
Her thighs closed around his head for only a breath because he growled deep in his throat and pressed them apart.
His thumbs stroked the sensitive skin on her inner thighs in a maddening contrast to what his mouth was doing.
He didn’t rush. Just built her up and up until she felt that unbearable pressure. Then his fingers curled inside her.
She moaned his name like it was the only word she’d ever learned.
He groaned against her again, the vibration undoing her further. Unfurling her. And that’s when she realized something. He wasn’t just giving. He was taking from her. Claiming every tremor and gasp as she reached her peak. As if they belonged to him.
Before she crashed back on earth, he kicked off his joggers and briefs, and stalked up the bed, settling his weight between her legs as he braced himself above her. “Look at me,” he softly commanded.
And she did. The deepening twilight outlined his features.
But it was the naked vulnerability reflecting in his eyes that had her own veneer evaporating like ice falling from branches after the first true thaw, no longer able to resist the change of season.
Gone was the carefully constructed armor he showed the world.
He’d let her strip that away, leaving himself bare. Just for her.
“This is real,” he said.
“Tom…” Her thumb gently grazed his cheekbone and she felt him shudder. His eyes briefly closed. Her breath hitched. This wasn’t a fling for him. It didn’t feel like one to her either.