“I can’t wait to watch you come this time. Oh, my God. You’re going to take me with you when you do. I wish we didn’t have anything between us, I wish I could fill you up.”

Her brow furrowed hard, lines appearing between her delicate eyebrows. The muscles in her thighs went rock hard. He knew it was coming, could feel it in the way her slick heat contracted around him. Her groans formed into words: his name, curses, deities. He abandoned his rhythm, gave her one long, hard stroke and sent her flying.

It was no effort to let go and join her. His release had been poised in his shaft from the moment he’d breached her. In sweet relief and a rush that made the room spin, he drove her through her climax and flooded the condom tip, sorry that he couldn’t let it loose inside her, couldn’t leave her with a part of himself this time. That urge had never been so desperate before.

Shaking all over, he collapsed over her, careful not to crush her with his weight. She felt so fragile beneath him. Burying his face in her damp, sweet-smelling hair, he breathed her in and simply basked in the afterglow. Her grip on him was still as fierce as it had been during the throes of her orgasm, and she muffled her little sobbing sounds by pressing her mouth tight to his neck.

“All right, baby doll?” he whispered, lifting a bit so he could find her lips with his own. He didn’t want her to suppress those sounds. He wanted to drink them up. She sighed as he kissed her, her warm, minty breath playing across his mouth, and she settled to stillness in his arms as if his kiss alone had soothed her.

He didn’t know what to do with this much love being thrown at him. He wasn’t used to it. Sex to him had always been about two people getting off on each other. This was a whole new world.

Yeah, he was a sap, and he didn’t give a f**k anymore.

Only reluctantly did he withdraw from her, turning away to dispose of the condom. Her blood streaked it, and he froze. He, who was supposed to be an expert at talking people through painful procedures endured for the greater good, was momentarily rattled.

What if he’d hurt her more than she let on? It wasn’t any surprise to see the bloody remnants of her innocence on him, but he still felt like a slimy bastard. He’d gotten rough in the end. She might bring out the animal in him, but he could’ve at least tried to keep the f**king beast caged until she was more accustomed to this. She deserved to hear everything he had to tell her.

He left the bed and came back with a damp washcloth, his thoughts in turmoil. Candace lay with her eyes closed as he snapped off the lamp and crawled back under the covers with her, loving her intake of breath when he gently slid the washcloth between her legs. “Better?”

She turned her face into his shoulder, the shyness in the gesture inciting a whirlwind of fierce protection in him. “Mm-hmm.”

“I love you,” he murmured. There was no stopping it. He might as well have commanded the wind not to blow, such had been the need to not hold back anything from her at that moment. “I think I always have.”

As far back as he could remember, he’d never uttered those words to a woman. He couldn’t even recall the last time he’d said them to his mother. And here they’d fallen out of his mouth and he didn’t even have the throes of ecstasy as an excuse.

Well, maybe he did. He was still in them.

“I love you too,” she said, simple as that.

There was no doubt in his mind about her sincerity, even if she hadn’t been able to say it earlier. Her heart, her vulnerability, her fear…all of it had been right there in her eyes. She could break him down with a single look.

He stroked her hair back from her forehead with his free hand, propped up on his elbow. “I am so sorry I hurt you. All the way back to when we first met, I am sorry for anything I ever said or did that might have caused you even a moment’s displeasure.”

“Brian, you haven’t done anyth—”

“No, I have. Even being with Michelle when I should have been with you all along.”

“Don’t apologize for that. She liked you a lot. You liked her too.”

“She didn’t brighten the whole room for me when she walked in the door. She didn’t make my whole day better just by smiling at me, or make me ask myself what she would think of me when I said or did something shitty to somebody. She wasn’t the one who made me want to get off my ass and do more, be a better person. Only you’ve ever done that, sunshine.”

Even in the darkness, he knew she smiled. “I missed hearing you call me that. I had no idea you felt that way about me.”

“I am out-of-my-head crazy about you.”

They fell silent as she nipped little kisses across his chest. He contemplated dozing until her voice drifted through the pleasurable haze in his mind.

“Brian… I have to tell you something.”

Oh. Shit. The way her voice had darkened from its sweet coo didn’t bode well. If she was about to trot out some line about how she had feelings for him, but this had just been about sex or getting back at the parental units or whatever-the-fuck else, he might as well take a sledgehammer to his own skull right now and get it over with. “What?”

“Deanne’s wedding was today.”

Of all the things he’d expected her to say, that wasn’t it. “Weren’t you supposed to be in that or something?”

“I was supposed to, yes. I left last night after the rehearsal dinner, and didn’t tell anyone where I was going. And then I saw you this morning, and…here I am.”

Christ, she should have said something. He never would have—

Exactly. If she’d told him she couldn’t go with him, they would still be right where they were before. He wouldn’t have wanted that for all the world. “No one has any idea where you are?”

She shook her head, looking miserable.

“No wonder Michelle called me twice today.”

Candace stiffened in his arms. “She did?”

“Yeah, at the concert. I let it go to voicemail both times, and I never bothered checking the messages.”

“Don’t check them, please. I don’t want to know what’s going on. I don’t want to ruin this.” She sighed. “I hope you aren’t mad at me.”

“Why would I be mad?”

“Because I was afraid you might have been thinking that everything was fine and people knew I’d come here with you and were okay with it. But as usual, it’s not fine at all. I’m going to try to keep you out of it as best I can, but when I get back I’m going to be facing—”

“Don’t you dare keep me out of it. I want to be right there at your side when you go home. I want them all to know where you’ve been.”

“And I was afraid you might think I was a wimp for running away from my problems instead of facing them. Brian, I couldn’t. Deanne paired me with that guy I told you about, the one who cornered me at the party. Mom even invited him to our lake house this weekend. I ended up in a huge argument with everyone. So, wimpy or not, I ran. I couldn’t take any more.”

“I get it, sweetheart.” His vision was washed with a red haze at the thought of that douche bag trying to get his hands up her skirt all weekend long. Hell, no. That shit was over with, as of this moment. She was his, and no one hurt what was his. “I don’t want you to worry about it. I’ll be there, and I’m not going anywhere. We’ll stay gone however long you want, in fact.”