The SEAL's Secret Heirs

Instantly, he rolled her under him in one fierce move, taking her mouth in a searing kiss that rendered her boneless. She melted into the comforter as he shoved a leg between hers, rubbing at her core until she was in flames.

He paused only for a moment to sheathe himself with a condom, and then nudged her legs open to ease into her slowly.

Gasping as he filled her, she clung to his shoulders, reveling in the feel of him. This was so different than she remembered. The experience was so much stronger and bigger. The leftover emotion that she’d carried with her for the past ten years exploded into something she barely recognized. Before, Kyle had been in a compartment in her mind, in her heart. Something she could take out and remember, then put back when she got sad.

There was no putting this back in a box.

The essence of Kyle swept through her, filling every nook and cranny of her body and soul. No, he hadn’t bubbled over with lots of pretty words about being in love with her. But that would come, in time. She had to believe that.

And then he buried himself completely with a groan. They were so intimately joined, Grace could feel his heartbeat throughout her whole body. They moved in tandem, mutually seeking to increase the pleasure, spiraling higher toward the heavens, and she lost all track of time and place as they lost themselves in each other.

The rhythms were familiar, like dancing to the same song so often you memorized the moves. But the familiarity only heightened the experience because she didn’t have to wonder what would happen next.

Just as he’d done when they’d been together before, he stared into her eyes as he loved her, refusing to let her look away. Opening his soul to her as they joined again and again. The romance of it swept through her and she held him close.

This was why she’d fallen in love with him. Why she’d never had even the slightest desire to do this with any other man. He made her feel that she completed him without saying a word. Sure, she wanted the words. But times like this made them unnecessary.

Before she was fully ready for it to end, his urgency increased, sending her into an oblivion of sensation until she climaxed, and then he followed her into the light, holding her tight against him as they soared.

She lay there engulfed in his arms, wishing she never had to move from this spot.

Kyle must have been reading her mind, because he murmured in her ear, “Stay. All weekend.”

“I don’t have any of my stuff,” she said lamely as reality nosed its way into the perfect moment.

“Go get a bag and come back.”

It was a reasonable suggestion. But then what? Were they jumping back into their relationship as if nothing had happened and ten years hadn’t passed? As if they’d dealt with the hurt and separation?

That was too much reality. She sat up and his arms fell away to rest on the comforter.

“I see the wheels turning,” he commented mildly as he pulled a sheet over his lower half in a strange bout of modesty. “This is a beginning, Grace. Let’s see where it takes us. Don’t throw up any more walls.”

She shut her eyes. Romance was great, but there was so much more that she wanted in a relationship. There’d been no declarations of undying love. No marriage proposal. Why did he get a pass that no other man got? She was caught between her inescapable feelings for Kyle and her standards.

And the intense hope that things might be different this time.

How would she ever find out if she left?

“Okay.” She nodded and ignored the hammering of her pulse. “Let’s see where it goes.”

Nine

Kyle waited on Grace to come back by pretending to watch TV.

His body had cooled—on the outside—but the inside was still pretty keyed up. He wasn’t really interested in much of anything other than getting Grace back in his bed, but this time for the whole night.

When the crunch of gravel sounded outside, breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding whooshed out. She’d come back.

He met Grace at the door, opening it wide as she climbed the front porch steps, her hair still mussed from their thorough lovemaking of less than an hour ago. Her face shone in the porch light, so beautiful and fresh, and his chest hitched as he soaked in the sight of her.

“Hey, Grace,” he said, pretty dang happy his voice still worked.

He’d wondered if she might back out, call and say she’d changed her mind. She was still so skittish. She might have let him into her body but he didn’t fool himself for a second that she’d let him into her head, or her heart. It wasn’t the way it had been, when he’d been her hero, her everything. There was distance now that hadn’t been there before and he didn’t like it.