As the adrenaline of the past hour began to fade, she waited for sense to kick in. For the bites and stings that had left scars on her heart to pull her up. But this was Rafe’s hand she was holding.
She curled her fingers more tightly around his.
They slowed as they reached the big new shed.
“Old barn fell down about a month after you left,” Rafe said. “As if it was holding on just for you. Took me a good three years before I was ready to lug the rotting lumber away.”
Sable leant her head against his meaty shoulder. So he hadn’t torn it down. Hadn’t exorcised any memories of her. He’d held on. Perhaps he was still holding on. Perhaps she was too.
Only now she knew she’d never let go. Not if he couldn’t go through with it. Not if this experiment failed. He’d always be a part of her. Her Rafe.
Needing to show him how much she was feeling, she drew him in, and kissed him with everything she had.
He slid a hand under her knees. Picked her up and carried her over the threshold. In the back of her mind she saw sensor lights, zillion-dollar cars and stairs, but nothing mattered bar the heat and shivery skin and heavy breaths.
He pushed open the door and carried her into the new loft space.
“Our window,” she whispered, spying the large round window filling much of the far wall.
Rafe glanced over his shoulder. “Our window smashed into a thousand pieces when the building went down.”
“And yet that one looks very much the same.”
Sable’s gaze swept back to Rafe, who didn’t deny it. He could have put anything on the space the old barn had been, but had chosen to rebuild. Modernising, yet keeping the parts that had been special to him. To them.
He’d loved her once. More than she’d ever thought it was possible to be loved. And she’d left him. Sacrificed what they’d had to give her mother the sense of place Mercy had always craved.
Now it was her turn.
As that last grip on her past self fell away, Sable felt free. Free to want and ask and be and feel.
And if she hadn’t already known she was falling for Rafe Thorne, the bad boy next door, all over again—if she’d ever really fallen out—she knew then.
Rafe tossed her onto a big soft bed.
She reached for him as he climbed over her, teeth nipping at her hip, then tugging at the edge of her top, sending her senses scattering.
When she got the chance, she tore his jumper over his head. Went for the fly of his jeans. He stopped her with a smile, with a waggle of his eyebrows, then a kiss that made her boneless.
Only then did he undress her. Slowly. Deliberately. Reverently. Following every slide of fabric with a trail of kisses. His gaze hungry. His touch tender. Till she could no longer think.
Just enough to do the same to him. Fingers trailing over the strong muscles of his shoulders. A scar on his left pec, another, longer, on his side. Marks of a life lived hard. Tough. A survivor.
When she shivered, he drew the blankets over them both, and slid down her body, kissing her neck, her breasts, each rib as he made his way down.
Sable reached back, one hand gripping a heavy iron railing on the bedhead, the other clutching a hunk of blanket as his tongue dipped into her belly button. Licked the edge of her hipbone. Lower.
The scruff of his unshaven face. The give and take of his clever mouth. It was the Rafe she remembered. Times a billion.
She’d been seventeen when she’d left, their love life new, sweet, fumbling, only just figuring one another out.
This was grown up. Edged with knowledge, determined forgiveness, and a steady heady beat of hope.
Sable’s eyes slammed shut, every sense sighing, screaming, holding on for dear life as Rafe took her to the edge and right on over.
Damp and hot and reeling—in primal shock—she forced her eyes open when she felt Rafe come out from under the blankets.
“Hi,” he said, a smile lighting his face, lighting his eyes.
“Hello to you too,” she managed.
Then she lifted her head and kissed him, wrapping her legs around him, holding him close. Near. Dear.
This was the time to reach for protection. But neither did.
“We’re really doing this?” Sable managed.
“Doc gave me a clean bill of health. Call her, if you’re concerned.”
“Now?”
Rafe lifted his head a fraction to look deep into her eyes. “If that’s what you need. Of course.”
“I trust you,” she said. And meant it. “You’d never hurt me, Rafe. But that’s not what I meant. I mean you and me and a baby?”
Rafe moved his hand to sweep a lock of hair from her cheek. “In the past week I’ve spent more time than a man should picturing how to adapt this space with a kitchen upstairs, bathroom, a nursery.”
“You have?” she asked, all the while thinking that didn’t sound like “no strings”. It sounded like all the strings. But with Rafe pressing occasional kisses along her neck she couldn’t remember why that was a problem.
“Bringing up Janie, I know how unspeakably hard parenting can be. And how breathtaking. First words. First steps. First time she said thank you without being asked.” He ran his thumb over her cheekbone. “We’re doing this, Sutton.”
“You’re gonna be a father,” she said, her voice breaking at the vision she’d had of him in her mother’s backyard. The vision she’d thought she’d never live to see.
“I’m going to be a dad.”
Her heart swelled so fast she laughed, though it felt more like a sob. The kind that started right deep down inside.
Then Rafe’s expression darkened, his eyes smoking over as he leaned down and kissed her.
It was the sweetest kiss of her entire life.
And was soon subsumed by the heat that engulfed
