Chapter 27
Chapter Twenty-Seven
EMILY
I am claiming you. I love you.
Those words play on repeat. I don’t know what to do, what to say, so I just stare at him. What I don’t do is declare my love back to him, even though my brain is screaming just that over and over.
I am frozen.
It’s everything I never thought I wanted and everything I’ve ever dreamed of at the exact same time.
“Baylor,” I exhale, “you can’t mean that.”
The first thing I can think of to do is talk him out of his feelings, even though I feel the exact same way.
Pressing my lips together, I stare into his eyes, breathing in and out of my nose, trying to figure out how I’m going to end this with him when being his is all I’ve wanted for the past year.
“I mean that,” he states. “I know what I’m saying. I’m not a kid, Emily. I’m a man, and you’re the one.”
The one.
The. One.
Oh my god.
“I don’t want to cause any problems,” I say, the words rushing out.
He doesn’t even respond to them, though. It’s as if I’ve said absolutely nothing. Instead, he rolls me onto my back and hovers above me, his elbows on either side of my head, his gaze focused on mine.
The entire room around me vanishes into a dark void—there is only him and me. He stares into my eyes, and I can’t look away from his, not even if I tried. He shakes his head once, lowering his head, his lips touching mine.
He doesn’t deepen the kiss. Instead, his lips begin to move against mine as he speaks. “Em,” he murmurs, “you’re not going to cause any problems. It’s all good.”
I want to argue with him, but the minute he presses his mouth against mine, deepening the kiss, all thoughts of arguments vanish. If he wants to claim me, then call me a woman claimed.
My lips part, and that’s when his tongue sweeps through my mouth, tangling with mine. Shifting my legs, I wrap them around his hips and dig my heels into his ass, pulling him closer to me, whimpering when I feel his length against my tender center.
He breaks the kiss, nibbling on my bottom lip as he does, then he lifts his head slightly, his eyes looking directly into mine. He owns me. He’s claimed me, and I am his, but the irony is that I’m pretty sure I’ve always been his, even when I didn’t know it.
“Tell me,” he demands.
I don’t know what he really wants me to say, but it doesn’t matter because the words come out anyway. I hope it’s what he wants to hear, what he wants from me, because I don’t want this to ever end. Not when my dreams are coming true.
“I love you, Baylor. I’ve loved you for a long time. But I’m scared.”
And that is the truth, but it’s deeper than that because I am terrified. Completely and totally terrified. Not because of him, but if this doesn’t work out, if this is nothing but a few months together, it will ruin me.
Completely and totally ruin me.
Because I do love him.
Despite what most people will think about me and how I think, I don’t just love Baylor for his name. I fell in love with him at the bar, when he distracted me from his brother. It’s not that I didn’t know him before that, but I didn’t see him.
My sights were stupidly set on Beckett.
But I see Baylor now.
All of him. And I love him.
“Don’t be scared, Em,” he murmurs. “I’ve got you.”
And then he tilts his head to the side, and his mouth touches mine.
He indeed has me.
All of me.
And he always will.