I Love How You Love Me (The Sullivans #13)(45)

His confession stole what was left of her breath, especially because she knew he wasn’t just saying it to try to make her feel more at ease by putting them in the same boat.

“Why?” She covered his hand with hers and drew it down so that his palm rested flat over her heart. “Why would you be nervous?”

“Do you really want to know?”

She would have said a quick and easy yes were it not for the fact that he was looking at her in a way that no other man ever had. She’d thought she was nervous about sleeping with him, but now she was a thousand times more nervous about his answer.

And yet, just as she couldn’t have pushed out of his arms and asked him to leave, there was no way for her to pretend she didn’t want to know his why.

“Tell me,” she whispered.

His mouth curved up, just enough for his eyes to crinkle at the sides. “I’m in love with you, Grace.”

Hadn’t she known it was what he was going to say? Hadn’t she read the truth of it in the way he looked at her? In the way he touched and kissed her? In the way he treated her son as though he was the most precious child in the entire world?

But that didn’t make the impact of his words of love any less forceful.

The only way she could keep her legs from giving out beneath her was to grip his hand still pressed over her heart, while his other hand on her hip held the rest of her steady. She knew he could see how much he’d just rocked her world, even more than he’d already rocked it by simply existing. And yet, just as he’d always gently pushed her to let him into her life since the day they’d met, he didn’t let her retreat from what he’d said now, either.

“I’m so in love with you that in one week, you and Mason have already become everything to me.” He leaned in so that his cheek pressed against hers and his lips were at her ear. “That’s why I’m nervous—because I want tonight to be perfect. Completely perfect.”

His breath was warm on her sensitive skin, but she shivered at the beautiful things he was saying to her.

Beautiful, but so incredibly overwhelming.

Could she trust that what she felt really was love this time? Or was it just a deeper physical hunger than she’d ever thought to feel? And when would she stop being so frightened of making another mistake?

Grace had never been more grateful for anything in her life than she was for her son, but at the same time, she’d never withstand the kind of heartbreak she’d been through with his father again.

“I didn’t tell you I’m in love with you so that you’d feel you had to say it back. I know I’ve pushed you to date me since the moment we met, and I can’t regret doing that when I really do believe that you and I and Mason belong together. But I would never push you to give me your heart before you’re ready, just as I would never push you to make love with me if you’re not ready.”

She wanted to tell him that he had her heart, wished she could just leap without being afraid of crashing and breaking into so many pieces this time that she’d never be whole again. But for tonight, there was only one thing she was one hundred percent sure about.

“I want to make love with you, Dylan. More than I can remember ever wanting anything else.”

The final word had barely fallen from her lips when his mouth came down on hers, hot and borderline desperate.

“You can’t want it more than I do.” His lips rained a sizzling and heated path from her mouth to her jaw. “When does Mason wake up in the morning?”

She couldn’t get her head around his question for a few seconds, not in the wake of the sensual pleasure of having his mouth and hands roving hungrily over her. Finally, she managed, “Six.”

“How am I going to fit everything I want to do with you into nine hours?”

A rush of need hit her then, so potent that she went a little crazy. Crazier, even, than she’d already been for Dylan. Now that she’d decided to make love with him, to finally give in to the soul-deep craving that she’d been working so hard to fight these past weeks, need clawed at her. And she couldn’t wait another second.

Grace reached for his shirt, her fingers fumbling and desperate as she tried to get it off him. “I need you to take me. Now. Right now.”

She barely had his shirt halfway up when he put a hand over hers. “We may only have nine hours, but a little foreplay and a handful of orgasms aren’t going to kill you.”

A handful of orgasms before he finally took her? She’d never survive it.

“You know I haven’t had sex in forever, that I haven’t ever had it with a man who makes me feel the way you always do. Don’t make me wait. We can just do it once to take the edge off and then—”

His mouth on hers cut her off, and though his hand fisted in her hair, the slow, sweet way his tongue stroked over hers until she had no choice but to match his rhythm told her more clearly than any words would have that he was most definitely going to make her wait.

And that she was going to love every single second of it.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Dylan wanted to rip off the pretty dress that had been giving him little glimpses of cleavage and leg all night as she moved. He wanted to devour her in one big greedy gulp. He wanted to claim her and make her his own and never let her go. But even as desire raced through his veins so hot and fast that it nearly stole away his sense of right and wrong, he knew he couldn’t let himself do any of that tonight.