Total pages in book: 66
Estimated words: 68006 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 340(@200wpm)___ 272(@250wpm)___ 227(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68006 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 340(@200wpm)___ 272(@250wpm)___ 227(@300wpm)
It’s…love. Pure and simple.
It’s love in the form of a kiss.
After what she’s been through, I don’t want to ask her to make love, but that seems to be where she’s heading.
Our lips are fused together, our tongues dueling, and she fingers the buttons of my shirt. She unbuttons me frantically and brushes the shirt from my shoulders.
Then her touch. Her hands are everywhere, caressing my shoulders, my neck, my pecs. Thumbing my nipples, sending a current of electricity through me.
But I need to be sure this is what she wants.
I break the kiss with a loud smack.
She wipes her lips with the back of her hand, raises her eyebrows at me.
“Kelly, it’s the middle of the night. You need your sleep.”
“I need you, Leif. I… I can hardly believe it. I can hardly believe that you love me.”
I smile. “Believe it. I do.”
She moves toward me but then pulls back and frowns. “I want to ask you how. Why? But you’ve already answered those questions. Macy always says I have to believe people at face value. It’s so hard for me to do.”
“Well, are you positive that you love me?”
“Yes. I am. If you say what I’m feeling is love—”
“No, Kelly. It’s not what I say.” I place my hand on her breast, right over her heart. “It’s what you feel.”
She smiles then, and even with her swollen nose and eyes and red, tear-streaked cheeks, she’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
“It is what I feel. I’ve wondered if it was love. It’s so wonderful that it threatens to squeeze my heart.”
“Baby. As I told you, that sounds like love to me.”
She cups my cheek, scrapes her fingers against my stubble. “Then I love you, Leif Ramsey. You are the first person in my life I’ve ever loved.”
“I hope I’ll be the last.”
“You will be.”
“I mean the last person in this way.” I kiss her forehead. “You’re allowed to love your friends. You’re allowed to love the children we’ll have.”
Her eyes widen. “Children?”
My blood goes a little cold. “Yeah, probably too soon to bring that up.”
“No. I mean… If you want children with me, that must mean…”
I know exactly what I mean, but I’m not sure she’s ready to hear it. She needs to continue healing, and now with Brindley’s murder, that path will be all the rockier. Then again? She needs to hear how much she means to me. To know that she’s worthy of all the love I want to give her.
“It means I want to marry you, Kelly. I want to be your husband, and I want you to be my wife. That’s all in the future, baby. You’re not ready for any of that yet. We’ll go as slow as you need to go. We have our whole lives together.”
She drops her mouth open.
I tip her chin to bring her lips together. “What?”
“It’s just… When you said our whole life, it made me feel… Even with every horrible thing that happened tonight… For the first time, Leif, I’m actually looking forward to my life.”
My heart breaks a little.
This beautiful, vibrant woman doesn’t know what love feels like, and now that she’s embracing it, she’s looking forward to life for the first time. How very wonderful…and how very sad.
“My God, baby…”
“Please don’t take that the wrong way. I was never suicidal, Leif.”
“Thank God.”
“I just…existed. I existed in a state of resignation. I didn’t fight for anything. Not even on the island. I was forced to run, to submit, to supposedly fight for my life, but I never thought my life would actually end.”
“Right. Reid told me about that. The men weren’t allowed to kill you.”
“It wasn’t even that, really. Every once in a while a woman would disappear with no explanation. We always assumed one of the guests had taken it too far. Even then, though, I didn’t want my life to end, and I always fought hard when I had to. But I had accepted life as it was. I wasn’t looking for anything more.”
“God, Kelly. You’re something.”
“Because I don’t want to die? I think that’s pretty common.”
He pulls me close. “That’s not what I mean, although I’m glad you never felt you wanted to die. I mean that after everything you’ve been through, after living a life devoid of emotion, you’re finally letting yourself feel. Some people go through their whole lives without ever allowing themselves to feel.”
“I don’t know if it’s that I did let myself feel. I just didn’t know. I didn’t have any frame of reference for any of this.”
“Now you do. Now you know what love is, Kelly Taylor, and I’m going to make sure you never forget.”
13
KELLY
He kisses me.
It’s a drugging kiss — a soul-crushing kiss. Both his hands are around my cheeks, and I feel his passion.
I feel his love.