That really bit—harder than she had, actually.
He rubbed the small nip bruise on his shoulder. "What's so funny about me proposing?"
She rolled onto her side facing him, the sheet slithering farther and, saints be praised, she didn't seem in the least concerned with modesty right now. "You are so adorable."
What the—? "Adorable?"
"Absolutely—" she kissed the tiny bruise on his shoulder "—adorable." She blew along his neck. "You think because you have 'deflowered' me, you should offer a wedding ring." She licked up his ear. "While I thank you for the adorable offer, again I say to you...you are so full of bull."
He may have been full of bull, and he may have been losing his grip on rational thought since the blood supply to his brain was being seriously compromised by a certain hot woman in his bed....
But he hadn't forgotten his question and how, for five chest-tight seconds, he'd wanted her to say yes...
Chapter 12
Blinking awake, Sara kicked her feet free of the tangled sheets around her legs. Chilly air blasted over her bare skin.
Bare?
Memories of being with Lucas tumbled through her mind. How they'd made love on the floor, then against the wall after she'd woken as he moved her.
She reached across the mattress—the empty mattress—and stifled disappointment. There were a thousand reasons why he could have needed to leave instead of being there to kiss her awake with sleepy slow, good-morning sex.>The hoarse emotion in his voice washed over her. She covered his hand with hers, her throat too tight to push words past. What would have happened if there hadn't been an attack on the embassy that day?
She would have still been pregnant and Lucas would have insisted they marry. She wouldn't have been able to hold out against his insistence then.
Would they have lasted? They'd been on their way to breaking up that day as she pressed for more from him, some proof of intense love as her panic grew over possibly being pregnant. Now their arguments seemed small in comparison to the grief they hadn't known was waiting for them that day in a rebel's gun outside the gate.
Sara arched closer, flattening her br**sts against the hard wall of his chest. She didn't want to think about the past. She didn't want to think about the future, either.
They had this moment where the world stopped. What were the odds of the planets lining up for a time like this again? She wasn't willing to risk it.
Sara peeled his shirt up and over his head. Tanned skin called to her fingers. She could envision him running along the beach with his shirt off as he used to do when they'd been dating. And while she was staring at his chest and sketching her fingers over the hard stretch of muscles her shirt went fluttering to the ground and she couldn't even remember him taking it off.
Some things definitely stayed the same.
She smiled. So did he, and suddenly the rest of their clothes were disappearing, tossed aside until she was n**ed and so was he and wasn't that conveniently wonderful? He pulled her flush against him, skin to skin, her br**sts tightening to a near-painful tingling against him.
Carefully, he lowered her to recline on the quilt, keeping his weight on his elbows, off her, trailing kisses down her neck, her shoulders with such sweet and tender attention. She ached for a firmer touch. He eased away without breaking contact.
What?
Threading her fingers in his hair, she urged him against her. She might as well have been pressing against a brick wall. She'd felt the unrestrained passion of Lucas. Why was he holding back now?
Hmm... Hadn't he always said to tell him what she wanted? "Touch me."
"Oh, I will."
"No. I mean touch me. Really touch me." She pressed his hand firmer against her.
"I don't want to hurt you. You're so damn fragile, and you've been sick." He palmed the scar high on her stomach where she'd been shot, damaging her pancreas. There were other bullet scars, as well, and if she let him explore them all the mood would spoil.
She moved his hand back to her breast over her hammering heartbeat. "What we're doing here is about feeling alive, and I am very much alive, as are you. Please don't cheat either of us of the full pleasure we can have together."
His jaw flexed, his hands shaking.
Damn it, he was stubborn.
She was more stubborn.