A smile lifted one corner of his mouth as he caught his breath. “It’s all about the woman who rules me.” He pushed his hands into her damp hair and gathered it up. His eyes softened and mined hers, his expression unbearably tender. “And you do rule me, Lily.”
His words made part of her leap with joy, but they struck terror into another, darker part deep down inside her—the part where her specters roamed.
Warning bells clanged dimly in the background, but she ignored them.
The bathtub inauguration was followed by a shower—to clean up after the bath, of course. A shower filled with scorching kisses and more soapy explorations of one another’s bodies. They were squeaky clean when the hot water finally ran out.
Lily’s proverbial Pandora’s box had been blown wide open, and though she was as sore as a trail rider after ten days in the saddle—totally worth it—she couldn’t get enough of Gage’s body. Her stud muffin took his job seriously and was up to the task, so to speak, of satisfying her suddenly insatiable appetite.
When they finally fell into bed, utterly wrung out, she drifted off instantly, cradled in his arms.
She awoke sometime during the night, sweating beside his blasting furnace self. He was wrapped around her like a tortilla wrapped around the contents of a burrito, his body generating enough heat to warm a yurt. She inched away to cool down, propping herself against a pillow. He let out a low moan but remained on his side, facing her.
Dim light touched the angles of his face, softened by sleep. Long eyelashes fanned across high cheekbones, and his full mouth was parted oh so enticingly. She fought the urge to nibble those lips she was growing so fond of.
A sheet covered the lower half of his body, leaving his shoulders, chest and arms exposed. Her eyes surveyed it all, drinking him in, memorizing every detail. Even though his muscles were slack, their definition was no less impressive, and she wanted to run her tongue over them again. She licked her lips and instantly admonished herself for it.
Lily Everett, nymphomaniac.
But it wasn’t just the sex, which was so far out of this world it existed in its own galaxy. No, the sex wouldn’t have been so amazing had it not been for the man himself. A man she enjoyed doing little things for, who spurred her to want to feed him, love him, take care of him.
Her heart suddenly flooded with tenderness over the small, ever-present things—the way he pushed her hair off her face, the way his eyes gleamed when she sang, the way he let the cat he’d rescued own him. The way he spoke of his grandmother.
In less than twelve hours, she would go back to her world. And then what? Was tonight just an extension of July? She didn’t want it to be, yet how could it be otherwise? Her daughter had already lost a father. If Lily let herself fall in love and it didn’t work out, it wouldn’t be only her heart that would be broken—Daisy’s would become part of the wreckage. What right did she have to drag her daughter through a minefield of her love affairs?
And then there was Jack. Though she tried to lock out the crushing guilt over being with another man, it was always there, lurking in the back corners of her mind, taunting her with the word “betrayal.”
During his last weeks, Jack had teased her about not finding another man too soon. To make her laugh, he’d said, to see her smile through the rivers of tears they’d shed together. But had he been teasing?
What if he were looking down on her now? Would he be hurt? Was this how she served his memory? By lying in another man’s bed?
But she was alive, damn it, and he wasn’t.
Gage sighed in his sleep, startling Lily from her memories. She swiped at a tear that slid down her cheek and went back to studying him.
Though there was much she didn’t know about Gage Nelson, she did know he was a good man. With a big heart. He put others first, in quiet, humble ways, like giving of himself to his family, his team, his community from his seemingly bottomless well.
But he was also a professional athlete in his prime. Barring injury, his career stretched far into the future and would dictate his life for years to come. What would it be like to be bound to someone who could be bounced from city to city? To another country? How would those moves affect Daisy? Gage had described being traded from San Jose, how he’d had to leave the very day he’d been traded and play for his new team that night. How difficult it had been. What if she and Daisy were at the mercy of that sort of upheaval?
A chill settled in, and Lily pulled the covers to her chest and slid beneath them. Beside her, Gage mumbled, and his hand stirred over the sheets until it brushed her arm. He closed around it and hauled her against him, moaning soft and long. As he spooned her, his hands glided over her bare skin, coming to rest on her shoulder and stomach. She tugged his hands to her chest and covered them with hers.
“Lily,” he mumbled as he settled against her.
Too many questions ran through her head. For now, she would enjoy the simple contentment of feeling safe in his arms—safer than she’d felt in a long, long time.
Chapter 23
Red Light, Green Light
Gage stood behind the wheel of a speedboat. As it smoothly skimmed the water, its engine purred with a powerful rumble. Wind whipped his hair. The freedom was awesome!
“Meow.”
He lifted one eyelid. The speedboat dissolved into an orange tabby cat who reverberated with a
