Did she get what she’d done to me?
She’d become the air in my lungs.
The blood in my veins.
The beat of my heart.
Every part of me would be shattered when she was ripped away.
But none of that mattered right then.
The only thing that mattered was I was overcome with it. With what I’d been fighting since I first met her. Since she’d seeped in and taken over.
The only thing that mattered was her.
I swept my mouth over hers.
Softly at first.
Relishing in this slow kiss.
This kiss that meant everything.
Kisses are only for the ones you love most.
It was a shout from the heavens.
A claim of my soul.
Delicate brushes of lips. The gentlest tangle of tongues. Giving and taking.
Emotion swelled from the depths, boiling up.
“Kisses are only for the ones you love most,” I murmured in the middle of our kiss.
Lost to it—her passion and her surrender.
Her mouth was a whisper against mine. “I want to kiss you for the rest of my life.”
It was her own confession.
I gripped her by the sides of the face so I could stare down at her, my eyes moving over her gorgeous face, my words so raw as they scraped from the bottom of my soul. “I love you, Grace. I fucking love you, and I love your kids, and it’s going to destroy me. I know it. I know it. It will, and I don’t care. The only thing that matters right now is loving you. If I get to feel this for even one day, it will be enough.”
“Oh, Ian.” It was a wisp from her mouth, her hands spreading over my chest, riding up to grasp my face. “There will never be a day when I don’t feel this. When you won’t matter. You’ve become everything.”
We were spinning.
Crashing.
Kissing.
Kissing, kissing, kissing.
Nothing had ever felt so good. So right.
Hands everywhere.
Frantic and needy and unhinged.
I gulped her presence down, kissing her hard and possessively as I backed her toward the bed.
That crazy energy thrummed between us. But tonight—tonight I swore that it glowed. Brighter than ever before.
Those hands found my shoulders, and she pressed her tight body against mine, whimpering as she tried to get closer. “Ian . . . my sweet broken man. How am I supposed to live without you now? How . . . when you’ve changed everything? What I want and who I am?”
“I love you.” It was the only answer I had.
“I love you,” she rasped, the words winding through me like the most passionate caress. Delirium on my ears. Perfection on my soul.
All I wanted was more.
And she was giving it to me. Like she knew how desperately I needed it.
“I love you so much it hurts, Ian. So much that I can feel you etched on my skin. Written on my heart. Marked on me forever. You are my gift. The hero I never expected.”
I knew that was the moment Grace finally shattered me.
Pieces spilled out and poured into her hands.
Part of me wanted to deny it, to tell her again that we couldn’t do this.
But I was swamped by the truth that oozed from her body. Overcome by the devotion that poured from mine.
The crazy realization that I would do anything, give up anything, if it meant she found the joy she deserved.
Freedom with her children.
Her sweet, sweet kids.
Barely even knew them. Didn’t matter. It was all-consuming. The instinct to wrap them up and protect them the way I wanted to protect her.
To love them.
To love them.
Derangement clouded my mind, distorted my judgment.
I kissed her harder, and she gasped out a throaty sound, and I didn’t stop, didn’t slow as I devoured her delicious mouth.
I wanted all of her. Every inch. To possess and claim and mark.
I growled and hoisted her into my arms.
Mine.
She wrapped those lust-inducing legs around my waist.
Blood pounded south, and my dick grew so hard, it was close to painful.
Pained, perfect bliss.
That was this girl.
Flawless desolation.
“I won’t let him hurt you,” I promised as I carried her to the massive bed set against the far wall, the bedding plush and thick and soft.
As soft as this girl.
While every inch of me was hard and rippling with possession.
“I won’t let him take them from you. I promise you. He has nothing. Nothing. I’ll die before he gets the chance. Do you understand?”
Teal eyes found mine. So real. This girl life. “I trust you, Ian. I trust you.”
“I need you. Now.” It was all a mumble between my impatient kisses. My lips tugging and nipping and moving in a frenzied dance with hers.
I shoved down the misery when my thoughts traveled to the truth that I couldn’t keep her. That I was still her attorney. If the courts even caught a whiff of what we were doing, anything I could do for her would be null.
Void.
“I’m yours,” she whimpered. “I think I have been since the moment you chased me down on that dancefloor.”