She had left a small lamp burning beside her bed. It provided all the illumination they needed as they turned to each other with searching eyes. Emily tried to gauge Wade’s emotions from his expression.
Could this decision possibly be as momentous for him as it was for her? Or was this something that Wade took more for granted? Something he did far more casually than Emily ever had?
He cupped her face gently in his hands, and she felt the faint tremors running through him. Looking into the warmth of his beautiful brown eyes, Emily realized that Wade wasn’t taking this casually at all. In fact, he looked so serious, it made her nervous all over again.
She hoped he understood that tonight changed nothing as far as their future was concerned. So maybe she was a little in love with Wade—okay, maybe she’d tumbled head over heels, heart over head. But that didn’t mean she intended to scrap all the plans she’d made. Not for a man she’d known less than two months.
Not for anyone.
And then Wade kissed her again, and she forgot about those plans for the future. Forgot the past. Forgot everything except this man, this moment.
His mouth was avid, his hands eager as the kiss turned from tender to frantic. Their clothing came off in layers, tossed heedlessly around the room as eagerness changed to impatience. They tumbled gracelessly onto the bed, laughing through kisses.
And then Wade slid his hand down Emily’s body and the laughter changed to a gasp of delight.
That quickly, Wade’s impatience was transformed. Suddenly, he seemed to have all the time in the world.
He began with her mouth. Devouring her lips. Sliding his tongue between her teeth to taste her. Kissing her until she wasn’t sure if her euphoria was due to his skill or her lack of oxygen—and she didn’t care.
He turned his meticulous attention to her right ear, tracing the outer shell with the tip of his tongue, nibbling at her lobe. She shuddered. Until that moment, she’d been unaware of just how sensitive her ears could be.
And her throat. Just a brush of his fingertips from her jaw to the hollow made her tremble. When he followed that with a series of gently biting kisses from her throat to her breasts, she couldn’t bite back a moan of pleasure.
By the time Wade had memorized every inch of her breasts and moved down to nuzzle her tummy, Emily had lost whatever semblance of rationality she might have retained.
It was only after paying close attention to every remaining inch of her body that Wade gave in to his own need. His movements growing urgent, he swiftly donned protection, and then returned to thrust deeply inside her. Emily welcomed him with a hunger that definitely equaled his.
As she cried Wade’s name, Emily was aware of a touch of fear beneath the thrill. She’d wanted to believe that she could make love with Wade without falling so completely in love with him that nothing would ever be the same for her again.
She understood now what a fool she’d been.
“I WISH I COULD STAY all night...just holding you like this,” Wade murmured after a lengthy period of recuperation.
Emily nestled her face more deeply into his bare shoulder and remained silent. She had mixed feelings about asking Wade to stay all night, sleeping in her bed. It would be wonderful, she had no doubt of that. But she didn’t want to risk growing even more attached to him than she was already. Not if she wanted to leave Honoria with her heart intact—more or less.
Wade answered himself with a faint sigh. “But I can’t. Clay expects me to be there for breakfast, unless there’s an emergency.”
“You’re a wonderful father, Wade,” Emily said with a touch of wistfulness she couldn’t quite conceal. “I’m sure Clay never doubts that he always comes first in your life. It’s so obvious that you adore him.”
Exactly the opposite of the relationship she’d had with her own father, she couldn’t help thinking.
“I can hardly remember not being Clay’s dad,” Wade admitted.
“It must have been difficult for you at times, being both mother and father to Clay. He was so young when your wife died.” It was the closest Emily had ever come to asking about Wade’s late wife.
“He had just turned three.”
“He doesn’t remember her at all?” Again, Emily was putting herself in Clay’s place, knowing exactly how it felt to have no memory of a mother’s love.
“No. Not only because he was so young when she died, but because she wasn’t a major part of his life while she was alive.”
Startled by his words, Emily lifted her head to look at him. Wade’s expression was solemn, his eyes shuttered. “What do you mean?”
“My wife and I married because she was pregnant with Clay,” Wade answered flatly. “We’d been dating on what I naively considered a rather casual basis. I’d just finished the police academy. Kristi told me she was taking care of birth control. I was young enough and foolish enough to leave it up to her. It turned out she had lied. She had decided that marriage to me would give her the kind of security she’d never found in her dysfunctional home. What she discovered, instead, was that she didn’t like being tied down to a husband or a child. We tried in our own ways to keep the marriage going, but it was effectively over even before she died while driving too fast on rain-slick roads.”
Though he’d told her the story with little emotion, Emily sensed that Wade had suffered deeply during the past few years. “I’m sorry, Wade,” she murmured, touching his face. “Because she died so young...and because your memories of your marriage aren’t happier ones.”
“Thank you. I’m sorry about both of those things, too.”