Wicked Sexy (Men of Discovery Island 1)

That was a good look for her.

He wanted to pull her back into his arms and do it all over again, but talking mattered, too. Now that he’d started this conversation, he wanted to finish it. He needed to explain to her somehow that forever, if it involved her, sounded like a good time frame.

“But, okay, I have been thinking about staying on the island,” she continued. “Maybe I’ll help out at Sweet Moon or maybe I’ll do some consulting. A lot of what I do doesn’t have to be done in an office. I can telecommute.”

“I might stay, too,” he offered noncommittally. Just to test the waters. “Stick around.”

“Deep Dive?” She smiled. “I have a hard time imagining you not re-upping.”

“I can do other things,” he protested.

“Right.” She shook her head. “But I look at you and I see soldier. You drop in, get the job done and then you go away. Think about that summer on the island ten years ago. You came, you kissed me, you went.”

“Maybe,” he allowed. That was the truth, if he was being brutally honest. “But I never stopped thinking about that kiss. I regretted walking away.”

Her look was pure disbelief. “Right,” she said. “One juvenile kiss on prom night and you spent the next ten years pining for me.”

Pining wasn’t the right word, but he didn’t know how to explain how she’d stuck in his memory. He’d been young, but he’d known something, someone, special when he held her in his arms.

“I remembered.” He growled the words. “Okay? I left and that kiss of ours would pop back into my head.” Usually it did at the most inconvenient times.

“Uh-huh.” She glared, her eyes piercing right through him. Yeah. He’d blown this morning to hell and back. “That’s why you never called, never emailed. Never, ever looked me up and said, ‘Hey, Dani—I’d like to see you again.’ Welcome to the twenty-first century. Communicating is easier than ever.”

No. It wasn’t. If it had been, he’d have known what to say to her. “You were too young,” he pointed out. “Come on, you were just finishing high school and I’d already enlisted. Should I have kissed you—and it wasn’t going to stop there—and then left you waiting while I did my tour of duty overseas? I didn’t even know what I felt, just that you made me feel something. Something different.”

Something good.

She stared at him silently, and he knew he had to man up or risk losing her again. She’d get up and go—the one woman who had meant something to him, even when he hadn’t understood what that something was.

“I love you. I left you, yes. We were both too young for that kind of commitment and you know it. But I always regretted it.”

Slowly, she shook her head. “You love me?”

“Yes!” he snapped.

“That’s unlikely,” she said calmly. “We’ve been on the island together for just a few weeks.”

“We knew each other before.”

“When we were kids. You said so yourself.”

“I know how I feel.” She was stubborn. And logical. And he liked both of those traits in her, but they weren’t helping him now. He didn’t know how or why he felt the way he did, just that waking up next to this woman, being with her no matter what happened, was precisely what he wanted to be doing. “Do you know how you feel about me?”

* * *

DID SHE? HONESTLY, she had no idea. He was demanding, insisting that she put into words emotions and feelings she’d only just realized she had.

“You didn’t give me a choice. You kissed me. You left. You. Came. Back.” She jabbed a finger into his chest. “There’s no me in that equation and there’s definitely no us.”

His dark eyes searched hers, but she knew him. There was nothing easy about him, but part of her wanted to try. Loving Daeg Ross would be one phenomenal ride, but the odds of a relationship working out were low. Rick had seemed like a sure thing, solid marriage material, and look how that relationship had headed south. She didn’t want to think about the implosion that could come from seeing that happen with Daeg Ross.

“Take the chance.” His big, reassuring hands curled around her shoulders, urging her closer. “Give me a chance.”

His rough sigh gusted over her forehead. It would be so easy to give in. To tell him yes and lose herself in his arms again. Easy, and yet hard because she knew where all this would end—with her heartbreak and his leaving. A tiger didn’t change its stripes just because it wanted to, and Daeg would always be a soldier and an adrenaline junkie.