Page 58 of Honor ’N’ Duty

He wanted her with every beat of his heart. But did she feel the same?

It was finally time to quit being a chickenshit and find out.

Before it was too late and he lost her all over again.

Chapter Seventeen

“Laia.” When Kade touched her cheek, she wanted nothing more than to give in, to lean into his embrace and let go of the past. But there were things she had to get off her chest first.

“It’s my fault,” she whispered, staring at the waves she couldn’t see but heard rolling on shore.

“What is?” Kade asked softly, shifting on the blanket to face her and move closer.

“What happened to Josh. I’m at least partly to blame, and I have to take responsibility for that.” A little late, though.

“What exactly is it you think you’re responsible for?”

“It was selfish of me to marry him. I don’t think I ever gave our marriage a chance, and that’s what drove him out the door seeking thrills he could only get from working for a drug cartel.”

“Laia, don’t.” In the dim light, she could just make out Kade’s handsome face, the lines of his strong jaw. “Don’t blame yourself for the choices my brother made. Those were his and his alone to make.”

“If I hadn’t been weak. If I hadn’t listened to my mother… Oh, God.” She covered her face with her hands. She could still remember her mother’s firm words, urging her to follow her faith and do the right thing by giving her unborn child a last name and a secure future. But it hadn’t been her faith, it had been her mother’s. For too long, she’d depended on her mother’s emotional support, and the day of her wedding, it had failed her. Miserably.

“On my wedding day,” she continued, letting her hands fall to her lap as she recalled the abject misery strumming through every cell in her body in the moments before Josh slid the ring on her finger, “I looked at you, and I knew in my heart that it was wrong to marry one man when I felt so strongly about another. I almost ran away. Not doing so was the biggest, most cowardly mistake of my life. I don’t want to make any more mistakes.”

After Josh died, and everything that had happened in the aftermath, she’d sworn that whatever came next, she’d face it headlong and do it alone, without any outside influence.

“Tell me something.” He cupped her face and began gliding his thumb back and forth across her skin, sending delicious tendrils of sensation down her neck to her breasts. “What mistakes are you worried about making?”

The moment of truth had come. Time to make good on the promise she’d made to herself.

She swallowed. “Not telling you how I felt in that elevator and not telling you how I feel now.” Like how her heart was ready to beat right out of her chest, and how frightened she was of the admissions on the tip of her tongue.

He leaned in close, brushing his lips against her ear. “Tell me now,” he whispered, then his lips burned a hot trail down her jaw.

Tears backed up behind her eyes. All the feelings and emotions she’d kept a rein on all these years burst forth from the tightly sealed box she’d stowed them in. “I felt as if I’d known you my entire life. The connection we had then is still there.”

Kade pulled back, gazing down at her with a blank expression she couldn’t decipher. Then a corner of his mouth lifted. “I’ve waited a long time to hear you say that.”

“Then what are you waiting for?”

“Absolutely nothing.” Kade captured her mouth in a kiss so deep, so hot, and so full of desire and promise that her bones seemed to liquefy right there on the blanket.

As his tongue swept her mouth, he tasted of mint and chocolate from the ice cream they’d had after dinner. With every breath, she inhaled his seductive combination of spice and leather tinged with…gun oil? Whatever it was, it sparked every one of her nerve endings to life.

His broad palm—hot and cool at the same time—stroked up her thigh beneath the hem of her dress, creating a trail of goose bumps that left her trembling in his arms.

His lips moved down her neck to her collarbone, nipping gently and eliciting tiny little moans from the back of her throat.

“I’ve wanted this for so long,” his deep voice rumbled between her breasts. “You have no idea what you do to me.”

Maybe not, but what he was doing to her was unbelievably and impossibly awesome.

Her skin was hot, yet her body shivered, as if she were sitting on a giant ice cube. Her panties were soaked as she imagined what might come next. Kade, settling himself long and deep within her.

Waves of heat rolled off his body. “Tell me you want this,” he said. “Tell me you want me.”

Impossible, but the way he’d said the words led her to believe he doubted just how much she wanted him.