‘I’m sorry I got things so wrong with us,’ he began, and her brow crinkled, her eyes wavering over his face. ‘What I mean is, I was a fool not to have seen it sooner... I love you, Zara. I loved you before I even realised what it was.’
Her smile bloomed, her welling gaze stripping him bare as the truth of his words sank in. ‘You really do.’
His fingers flexed around her chin. Was she making a statement or posing a question? He couldn’t tell. ‘Is it still so hard to believe that I can love you?’
She shook her head, the move infinitesimally small. ‘I’m just trying to convince myself this is really happening.’
‘Let me help you with that.’
He smoothed his palm along her jaw, his thumb brushing over her cheekbone and filling him with awe at the softness beneath—how he’d missed this.
‘I never want to be without you in my life,’ he said thickly, his eyes locked with hers, urging her to believe. ‘These past few weeks have been torture, not knowing how to get you back, how to make you see how I feel. This was my last hope. I figured if you realised how much I’d listened, how much I wanted you to be happy, you would see it for what it was—my love for you.’
She turned into his hand, her lashes lowering, a tear escaping over one lid as she pressed a kiss inside his hand. ‘I couldn’t believe it when I saw the tickets.’
Her eyes lifted to his on the last word, wet and blazing, and his heart exploded in his chest.
‘I wanted to come after you that very second,’ she continued. ‘When I realised you truly cared, that you’d listened and remembered something so small from our conversations so early on.’
‘It’s not small, not to you, not to your family.’
She smiled up at him. ‘No, it’s not, you’re right. But to you it would have been. And yet, you’d remembered and understood how much it means to us.’
‘Then why didn’t you hunt me down?’
‘I did,’ she admitted, her cheeks flushing slightly with her admission. ‘But when I discovered you’d gone to see your family, I knew I couldn’t intrude.’
‘Intrude?’ He tightened his arm around her. ‘If not for you I might never have gone in the first place. I might never have reconciled with them.’
‘Me?’
He smiled. ‘Don’t look so surprised.’
He brushed his thumb across her lower lip, the memory of which had haunted him the past three weeks, and his body stirred, the object of his fascination holding his eye. ‘You made me realise that if I could change then they could too. I was barely a man when I left them—a lot has happened since then. I only wished I could have taken you with me. I missed you so much. Seeing my nephew and the joy he’s brought to his parents, to see their happiness and wanting it for myself, for us...’ He shook his head. He was getting ahead of himself, but he couldn’t help it. The gates were open and there was no holding back. ‘I’m sorry, I just—’
‘Oh, Daniel.’ She bobbed up on tiptoes, her lips finding his in joy, a sudden kiss of happiness that was over before he’d had his fill. ‘I’m so hap—’
His hunger snapped, three weeks without her coming to the fore, and he groaned, crushing her against his chest, his lips silencing hers with such passion, such need. He was scared he’d hurt her but he couldn’t stop, and the way she clung to him, the way she moaned, he didn’t need to worry.
She curved into him, pressing up against his swelling hardness, granting him all that he needed physically. But there was something else he burned for more. He had to hear her say it.
He rip
ped his mouth away, his breathing ragged as he cupped her chin in both hands now. She opened her lust-filled eyes, wide and questioning. How did he ask? He’d never asked for those three words from anyone. He’d never needed to hear them before. But he needed them now more than life itself.
And then her expression eased, her head tilting to one side as she brought her own hands up to caress his jawline. ‘EJ was right.’
‘EJ?’
Who the hell is EJ?
‘Elizabeth, my PA, she said you had a puppy-dog-lost look about you.’ She smiled. ‘Of course, at the time, I saw you more as a lion.’
‘A lion?’ He chuckled, the sound strained in his pent-up throat.
Tell me you love me, that you can at least learn to love me...
‘An insatiable one at that.’