I laugh, only a little. The last thing I want to do is laugh right now.
“She knows what I have with you isn’t all an act of lust.”
My heart skips a beat. “It isn’t?”
“No.” He faces me and brings a hand up to stroke my cheek. “Amber, I care about you a lot. I told you the connection I feel with you is one I’ve never felt before, and I said the same to Hamilton. She thought we were just fooling around, making a mockery of the team, but when I explained it to her, she seemed to understand it more. Hamilton knows it’s hard for me to connect to people.”
I nod and start to drop my chin but he picks it right back up. “I don’t want you blaming yourself for this. We knew what we were doing. We knew there was a risk.”
“I just—I feel so bad about this.” The emotions create a block in my throat and my eyes are burning. “I never should have kissed you the night of the carnival. None of this would have ever happened.”
He sighs and clasps my chin between his fingers. “If we never would have kissed on that boat, I would have missed out on getting to know you. Getting to share meals with you. Getting to hold you in my arms at night. Getting to see you—the real you.”
I choke on a sob. As much as I love those words, I can’t take them right now.
“Amber, look at me,” he murmurs, and I pick my head up and look into his brown eyes, blinking through the blurriness that has clouded my vision. He leans forward and his lips meet mine. He kisses me softly. Tenderly. Then he pulls back and lifts a hand to cradle my face in it. “I love you, Amber Lakes.”
My heart damn near skips another beat. I can only stare at him as the sincerity burns from every single feature of his.
“I love you for listening to me—for being there for me,” he goes on, holding my gaze. “I love you for trusting to even be around a guy like me because you deserve so much more. I am broken and troubled and fucked-up, but you saw through it. You see me so much better than anyone else.”
“Wait…you love me?” My voice cracks, my heart beating to life again.
He nods and begins to retract. “And it’s okay if you don’t love me back or anything, I just—”
“I do love you!” I blurt out, and I feel silly for the reaction, but I don’t care. I cradle his face right back and stare into his warm brown eyes. “I love you, Joaquin Torres. I love you so much I can’t stand it because all I can ever think about is you. All I can imagine is a future with you. It’s just that after everything that’s happened…the future doesn’t look so promising for us and that scares me so much.”
He smiles and his fingers slide across my cheek until they’re at the nape of my neck. Then he brings me toward him and kisses me.
I moan from the feel of his lips on mine, and how the pads of his fingers play with the hairs at the nape of my neck. I climb on his lap and he groans, wrapping me up in his arms and then standing from the sofa.
He marches to his bedroom and my back lands on the soft padding of his mattress. Our lips part, but only so we can take each other’s clothes off. He pulls his shirt over his head and in the heat of the moment, I take mine off too. He goes for my running shorts, sliding them down to my ankles and then taking my panties off next. I lean up and snatch down his track pants and boxers in one swift action, and before I know it, he’s on top of me, working his way between my legs and then thrusting into me.
A mixture of a gasp and a moan claws its way out of my throat and as I throw my head back, he drags kisses all over my neck, thrusting hard and slow. I feel every inch of him—feel him throbbing with want and need.
“My love for you won’t change,” he murmurs in my ear. He holds the back of my head and as I lower my chin, our eyes connect. “I want only you, Lakes. Resigning will not change how I feel about you.”
“Promise,” I whisper on his lips.
“Promise.” His mouth falls on mine and I don’t know what it is about this moment, but it’s powerful. This isn’t like the times before, when we teased and joked and built up to this moment. It’s not even like the first time, which was burning hot and electric and charged with lust.