His chest brushed against mine, both of us sweaty and breathing hard, and he kept rolling his hips, building me up and up until I came around him. I had to toss my head back, bite my lip, and arch my back to keep from making a noise as he held himself still inside of me until I caught my breath. One hard thrust followed by another harder one, and then one more hard pull and push of his cock had us moving across the carpet again. Dallas shoved that thick girth in deep and he groaned, long and low, coming again, pulsing more and more, his length twitching and jerking.

Slowly, his weight went slack on top of me. He was heavy and it was harder to breathe, but I didn’t move my arms from around his back and shoulders, and I kept my legs around him tight, as all those fine muscles pulsed on top of me and in me. He was breathing just as hard as I was, it was like neither one of us could catch our breath.

After what could have been ten minutes or thirty, he got up to his hands and knees, and I could hear him swallow hard, his breathing shallow and choppy. With my eyes slightly more used to the dark room, I could see him reach toward my face. His hand cupped my cheek as I lay there on the carpet sprawled out, still not able to catch my breath.

I moved my head to kiss the pad of skin below his thumb, and just like that, Dallas was lowering himself back down to lay on the floor beside me. His arm slipped under my neck and he curled me into his side. He was damp from sweat, and when I rolled onto my side and draped my leg over his thigh, I felt what had to be both of us on his inner thighs. Sticky and wet. I loved it.

With my head on his shoulder, I slung my arm across the middle of his chest and hugged him.

When he started chuckling, I tipped my face up but could only catch the faint outline of his jaw. “What are you laughing at?”

The hand furthest away from me settled high on the thigh I had on him. He stroked further up, touching my hip with his palm and the side of my butt with his fingertips. He did that twice before he said in that awesome, hoarse, totally worn-out voice, “You know that hug of yours started all of this.”

What? “What do you mean?”

He moved his hand in a circle on my thigh, slowly kneading. “I saw you outside your house a few weeks after you moved in. The Larsens must have been dropping the kids off because you were all outside. You’d been standing on the deck waiting for them, and Josh came out of their car. When he came up to you, he wasn’t even paying attention, but you hugged him with this huge smile on your face. You were laughing. I don’t know what you told him, but then he started hugging you back and you shook him until he finally laughed too.

“And every single fucking time I saw you after that, you were always hugging somebody. Kissing somebody. Telling them you loved them. I’d go to bed thinking about you and wondering why you were always doing that,” he said to me in that low voice, hugging me closer.

“Because I love them and life is short.”

“I know that now, Diana. I learned that every time I was around you. You can see how much you love your family, and it’s the thing I love the most about you. I wanted someone to love me like that. I wanted you to love me like that.” The hand he had on my side found my own hand, and he linked our fingers together. “I’m not rich and I’m not good-looking, but I could make you happy. We could make our own patched-up family.”

My heart broke in half. “Of course you could make me happy. You already do. And you are so good-looking, what are you talking about?”

“No, I’m not. You told me I wasn’t your type, remember?” he reminded me in a tone that didn’t sound sad or disappointed.

“You were being an idiot. What was I supposed to tell you? My, what big arms you have? Then what? Please let me snuggle in your lap, my friend?” I laughed, squeezing my fingers in his. “You were married and you took it seriously. I would never do that. And it wasn’t like you were really nice to me for a while anyway.”

“What did you want me to tell you? That I wanted you to snuggle on my lap?” He chuckled back. “Baby, I took being married to someone I didn’t even love seriously. I never once cheated on my ex, even after we split up. What kind of man would I show you I was if I’d changed my mind about how I should act after I’d met you?”

He had a point and he knew it.

“I thought you were crazy at first, and then I got to know you and I liked you—you were my friend and you were nice just because that’s how you are, not because you wanted anything from me. And then that day I was taking lice out of your hair, you looked up at me while we were laughing and I knew I was done,” he said.

His hand went to my cheek again. “If I can respect being in a relationship with someone who I won’t remember years from now—someone I don’t ever think about—I wanted you to see how seriously I would take spending the next fifty years with the girl who’s keeping my heart for herself.”

This man. This man was going to stitch me together with industrial strength thread. How? How could I live a day without him? A week, a month, a lifetime?

As if sensing I was losing my shit, but not in the way he thought, Dallas lifted himself up onto a forearm to look down at me. “Diana, I love you, and every bone in my body tells me that I’m gonna love you every day of my life, even when we want to kill each other.”

I sniffled, and what did he do? He laughed.

“When you’re old, I’ll hold your hand when we cross the street. I’ll help you put on your socks,” he promised.