Page 108 of Long Shot

“Me, too.” He holds my gaze steadily. “I’ve always used protection and I’m safe, too. I would never put you at risk.”

“Then please . . . do me . . . bare.”

He groans. “Christ, yeah.” His hand shakes as he grips his cock to slick the head of it through my wetness, and then he pushes inside me. “Reese . . . I love you.”

“Love you, too.”

“Feels so good. Nothing between us.” He kisses me again, then rests his nose alongside mine to gaze into my eyes.

Nothing between us.

“All my life I’ve been scared of this,” he confessed in a low, choked tone. “Of being so honest with someone. Of feeling like this. Having nothing between us. It almost cost me . . . you. Everything I always wanted but was afraid I could never have.”

I stroke his back, his thick length filling me with delicious pressure, filling my body, love filling my heart and soul; I’m saturated and overflowing with emotion. “Oh, Cade.”

We move together, sighs and whispers mingling, bodies sliding and plunging and bucking together, sensation pouring through me in a torrent of heat, building and twisting, emotion nearly choking me. I rock up into him, seeking that perfect feeling, his body inside mine giving me what I need to rocket me up to the stars. It bursts inside me in a shower of light and heat, and I cry out, arms and legs wrapped around him as I pulse and shudder.

“Yeah, give me that,” he murmurs at my ear. “Give me everything . . . ah, Reese . . .” His body judders and presses and fills me with liquid heat as he comes, too, and he gives me everything I want, too. We give each other everything. I hold on tight, my heart racing, breath jagged, my eyes stinging.

After a moment he moves, slow, wet glides in and out, and I love how that feels. I kiss his shoulder, sift my fingers through his hair, and let out a long, satisfied sigh.

“I want to tell you more,” he murmurs later, curled up together in my bed. “I told you about my dad . . . how fucked up my life was. How I lost my brother.”

“Yes.” I lay my lips to his chest where his heart beats.

“It made me afraid.” He caresses my hip. “To feel anything. I wanted him to stop drinking. I wanted a normal life. Anytime it seemed like there was a chance . . . any hope . . . he fell off the wagon. He didn’t just fall off the wagon . . . he dragged the wagon into the street and set fire to it, and then passed out beside it.”

I squeeze my eyes closed at the shaft of pain I feel, thinking about Cade as a boy enduring that. Over and over again.

“So I stopped hoping. And after my brother died, I stopped caring. I fucking hated him. People judged me for leaving him to join the Navy, knowing he wasn’t going to make it on his own.”

“Oh, Cade. You had to save yourself.”

“Yeah. And it took a long time for me to learn. But I knew I couldn’t save him. I still felt guilty about it, though. Anyway, people either felt sorry for me or judged me. I didn’t want either of those things. I thought it was a pretty long shot that someone would ever love me for who I am.”

I clamp my teeth down on my bottom lip. “You are loved, Cade.”

He smiles. “Yeah. Thank God for that. Sometimes friends who love you are a pain in the ass, but we can both thank Carrie for smacking me around.”

When he tells me about the conversation he had with her, I smile and hug him. “She told me the same thing. She made me think hard about why I would take that job. She’s a smart woman.”

“Yes, she is.”

“I will definitely thank her.”

He rolls me to my back and moves over me, staring down into my eyes with such intense devotion, my heart brims over. “Christmas is about love and giving. I never had a lot of Christmases that were like that. I have to tell you . . . it almost scares me, feeling this happy.”

“It’s okay to be scared. I’m a little scared, too. But we’ll be together, so it’ll be okay.”

“Yeah. That’s what I want . . . to be together, with you.”

23

REESE

“So what’s your resolution for this year?”

I push out my bottom lip. “I don’t really like making New Year’s resolutions.”

---