“No. The dark is where secrets are kept. I don’t want any secrets between us. I’m taking you in the light.”
She tensed, not sure she could open up after hiding what she really thought, what she really wanted, for so long.
The way Mitch looked eased some of her fears. He stared as though she was the only one who’d save him from the years of loneliness he’d endured.
“You’re the only one…” He bent his head and kissed her breast with slow, lingering pulls that started on the outer curve and worked closer to her straining nipple.
No matter how much she tried to hide from this man, he possessed a singular ability to recognize who she really was—a woman aching for love. His love. Jaye felt as though she were stretched across a soft cloud. Her angel trapped her wrists in one of his big hands, pinning her to the soft pillow while his decadent mouth burned a slow path across her breast and took her nipple into his mouth, his hot tongue swirling across the tip with slow, deliberate licks.
“Oh.” The center of her nipple felt like a hard button covered in thousands of exposed nerve endings, raw and sensitive. Every pass of his tongue sent tiny quivers into her chest, down the center of her abdomen, loosening her knees so they parted, making way for Mitch’s fingers to caress the tender inner flesh of her sex.
Those skilled fingers of his drifted down her swollen folds with a deliberate stroke and reversed direction in a whisper of movement, barely touching her. The compelling downstrokes and barely-there upstrokes turned her into a mindless animal, arching her hips for more. His caress was incredible. This man, who’d only been with one other woman over the past five years, knew how to touch her better than David, who’d racked up too many conquests to count.
The light spilling onto the bed no longer mattered. She slid her leg over his hip to give him total access to her most intimate parts.
“Yes, open up for me.” His words came out in a rough whisper. “What a gift.”
Recognizing the gruff gratitude in his voice, she gripped the big hand imprisoning her, tightening her fingers around him so she was the one who trapped him, not the other way around. She would never let this man go. Even though she hadn’t taken long to fall in love, she’d love him forever.
A hot, shimmering vibration pooled deep inside her. Jaye whimpered deep in her throat. Pleasure built with every stroke of Mitch’s fingers along her flesh and in the space of one breath, the muscles along her vagina pulled up in a long pulse, bursting into a deep, narcotic orgasm that made her gasp his name.
The tight grip around her wrists disappeared.
Mitch rolled away.
She lay, loose and mindless, still quivering, and frowned. Sounds leaked into her haze—a drawer opening, the rip of cardboard, a sharp crinkle of foil.
The mattress dipped and Mitch’s body warmth returned. He urged her toward him, pulling her leg over his hip so they lay facing one another.
Trusting him, she went willingly, curling her body around him. The expression on his face was one she’d never seen before, almost a vicious agony that intensified the moment his erection touched the slick heat of her center.
She saw the question in his gaze, tightened her leg around his hip, and drove him inside.
Goose bumps rose over his back, hundreds of little hills beneath her stroking fingertips.
“I love you.” He pushed himself deeper, groaning against her ear. “God, Jaye. I love you.”
Hot tears stung the corners of her eyes. She’d told herself she didn’t need to hear those words. After all, he’d never said them to anyone—not to his stepbrothers, not to his father, not to any other woman—but he said them now and everything changed. The shadows of her past vanished. She finally loved someone who loved her back. Who loved her so profoundly, he was willing to walk away from his roots to be with her.
She’d never ask him to leave everyone who needed him.
His hand clamped on her ass and he got up on one elbow, his gaze blazing into hers. “Marry me, Jaye.”
She managed a nod but she couldn’t smile, not with him inside her, stretching her, making room for all the love he’d pour inside. For a brittle instant, she didn’t feel worthy of such a man, but she quelled the poisonous thought with a lunge and rolled on top of him.
With that move, she sank deep onto his erection, determined to keep him. “I’ll marry you, Mitchell Blake.” Running her hands over the muscles knitted across his midsection, she rocked her hips against him, making love with slow, steady movements. “I’ll love you so much, you’ll get tired of smiling.”
“Never,” he pledged, palming her breasts.
“I’ll love you so often, you’ll get tired of having so much sex.”
“Not likely,” he grinned, pulling himself into a sitting position to kiss her mouth.
“I’ll love you so deeply, you’ll never feel alone.”
With a huff of a groan, he rolled her beneath him, bearing down on her with powerful thrusts of his hips.
Lamplight poured over the muscles cording along his shoulders and a deep flush crept into his face. Veins stood out against his neck and he closed his eyes, balling his hands on the mattress. Pushing deep inside her, he went rigid when his orgasm struck. A tremor shivered down his body and he rested his forehead against hers, breathing heavily.
She felt a tender grin touch her mouth and remembered what he’d said the first time she’d brought him to orgasm. “Did your head explode?”
“Mm.” Unfurling one hand, he touched her jaw with an awkward brush of his finger. “You feel…better than…anything.”
“You, too.” She wrapped her legs around his hips, keeping him wedged inside her. “Does making love make up for all the times I’ve hit you in the
