Page 94 of Caught Up In You

“You can stay with me forever,” I tell her, the words rushing out before I can weigh them, filter them, approve them for public use.

But I mean it, every word.

Her eyes grow wide, and for a moment I worry she’s going to run. This is not what we agreed to when we signed that pineapple can. I worry I’m pushing her too far too fast. I don’t want to lose her.

But then she smiles, her teeth catching her full lower lip, and whatever she was struggling with lifts off her right before my eyes.

“You know, everyone thinks you’re a good boy, Owen McBride,” Wyatt says, stepping forward, craning her neck to look up at me. She presses her palms into my chest, urging me backward, and I let her push me. She releases her suitcase inside the room, the door slamming behind her. “But I happen to know that you’ve beenverybad.”

“Why is that?” I ask, my heart pounding beneath her touch.

“Because we had a deal,” she says. She marches me backward, this tiny little powerhouse, until the backs of my knees hit the bed. I land with a bounce, unable to take my eyes off her. She climbs up onto the bed, settling her knees on either side of my hips before lowering herself slowly—so slowly—into my lap.

“We had a deal,” she says, ducking to brush her lips gently across mine. “But then you went and made me fall in love with you.”

The words roll over me slowly, then all at once, like a crashing wave. I grab her hips to still her, catching her gaze with mine.

“Wyatt.”

She pauses, a smirk on her lips but a question in her eyes. “Too much?”

I can’t hold back the laugh that claws its way up my throat. “Wyatt, I think I started falling in love with you back in that roadside bar on that freezing night in January,” I tell her. “To hear you say it now is more than enough.”

I kiss her, my lips and tongue sliding across hers.

“It’s everything,” I whisper into her mouth.

“I love you,” she whispers as she presses me back onto the mattress, settling her warm little body over mine.

“I love you,” I whisper back as I thread my fingers through her hair, angling her lips so I can sweep my tongue over hers.

“I love you,” she says as she fumbles with the button of my jeans, as I shimmy out of them, as she sheds her shirt and her denim skirt.

“I love you,” I tell her as I roll her onto her back, wrapping my arms around her and gathering her to me, feeling every inch of her skin pressed against mine.

“I love you,” she tells me as she reaches for the condom I left on the bedside table, ready for what I thought would be a sneaky, late-night hotel hookup but has become so much more.

We don’t rush. We don’t tease. We don’t play games.

We consume one another.

As I push into Wyatt, I feel every molecule of her, every hitch of her breath, every nail digging into my back, every slide of her thighs along my hips, her feet pressing into my ass as she urges me closer. We mutter broken declarations of love between kisses and sighs, only separating to breathe and press our foreheads together andfeel. I memorize this woman I love, this woman who loves me. Ihaveher. She’smine.

I reach for a pillow and lift her hips, placing it beneath her ass so the angle of my cock and the thrust of my pelvis stroke every sensitive part of her, and I’m rewarded by this beautiful woman tipping her head back, lips parted, and letting out my name on a delicious moan.

“Owen,” she cries, and I feel her body approach orgasm, the flood of her heat over my cock and the clench of her muscles around my body.

“Wyatt,” I say, part plea, part prayer.

I don’t even have to ask.

Just as she falls apart in my arms, she tilts her chin up.

Her eyes are open.

She stays with me.

And I follow her over the cliff.

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