Another step backward. “You hardly even know me.”
Two more steps forward. “I know enough. I’m no inexperienced kid, Emily. I know the difference between love and lust or infatuation. I wasn’t in love with my wife. I knew that when I married her. I tried to be, but it didn’t happen. It happened with you.”
She was backed up against a wall. She stood there with her hands in front of her, warding him off. “I don’t want this,” she whispered. “I never wanted it to go this far.”
“If you really meant that, you never would have made love with me.” He lifted a hand to her face, just brushing her flushed cheek with his fingertips. “Do you really think I couldn’t tell what a serious decision that was for you?”
Her flush deepened. “It isn’t something I take casually,” she admitted.
“Neither do I.”
“But,” she added firmly, “I warned you even then that nothing had changed.”
“And I didn’t believe you even then,” he replied gently. “Everything changed for me that night. And I think it did for you, too...if you’ll just admit it.”
She shook her head, her face moving against his hand. “No. I’m still leaving. I...I have to, Wade.”
“Why? Because you’ve said you’re going to? Because you’ve sold your house?”
“Because if I don’t, I’ll never know,” she corrected him quietly.
She’d effectively silenced him with that one, he thought with a touch of resignation. He’d been involved in a relationship—in a marriage—with a woman who’d wanted to be somewhere else. Anywhere else. It had been miserable for both of them.
He didn’t want to risk getting into a situation like that with Emily.
Though it wasn’t immediately apparent at the moment, he’d like to think he’d learned something from the disaster of his marriage. But what kind of masochist was he, to keep getting involved with women who didn’t want to stay with him?
He sighed and slipped his hands on either side of her face. Resting his forehead against hers, he murmured, “I won’t try to hold you here. I couldn’t if I wanted to, obviously. But if you change your mind, I’ll be here. And if you leave, then find that you aren’t as happy as you thought you would be, I’ll still be here.”
“I’m not asking you to wait for me. That’s...hardly fair to you.” Her voice was thick with emotion.
“I love you, Emily. That feeling won’t just go away when you do.”
He heard her breath catch again, in what might have been a swallowed sob. “Please, don’t keep saying that.”
“Not saying it won’t make it any less true.”
“Wade, I...”
He kissed her into silence, smothering her apologies and excuses beneath his lips. And her response gave him reason to hope that he wasn’t wrong about her feelings for him, though he had no idea why it scared her so much to admit them.
He crowded her back against the wall, his body pressed into hers so that she would have no doubt that he wanted her. He felt her shudder of response, and knew that the passion that had flared between them only two nights ago had not cooled.
He was unable to resist sliding his right hand between them, cupping her left breast through the impossibly soft blue sweater. He rubbed his thumb over the nipple that hardened beneath his touch, just as it had hardened in his mouth the night they’d made love. And the way
she shivered let him know that she remembered every moment of the magic they’d shared.
“Damn, but I want you again,” he muttered into her mouth.
“I want you, too,” she whispered, seemingly helpless to deny it. Her fingers were tangled in his shirt, clinging, holding him against her. “Oh, Wade.”
He crushed her lips beneath his and thrust his tongue deeply into her mouth, needing one last taste of her before he left. She opened to him, welcoming him with a touching eagerness that was almost his undoing.
She was limp in his arms by the time he drew away. Very carefully, he set her away from him, making sure she had one hand on the wall behind her for support before he released her.
“I’d better go,” he said gruffly. “Before I do something I’ll regret.”
Like beg you to love me.