On the porch, I turn to face him. I look up and up and up until I meet his fathomless midnight eyes. “Last night I woke and you were gone,” I explain. “It felt wrong. So wrong. And today…”

Unmoving, he stands watching me, his big hand still gripping mine, his frown still firmly in place. “I couldn’t sleep last night. At all. That’s why I’m working tonight,” he finally confesses.

My soul sighs in relief. Maybe he can overlook my crazy. Maybe he can love me despite my issues. Maybe he’s the one. And maybe this is the first step.

And the second step is to get closer. To him. So I do. I move in and don’t stop until my chest is brushing his. I rest my palms against his cool, flat stomach. I feel the jerk of his muscles. Then I feel the answering twitch of my own. “I need you, Cole,” I whisper. “I need you to touch me again, to kiss me again.” I hear his sharp intake of breath. “I need you. Please.” I rise onto my toes to kiss his chin.

As gently as the wind tosses the falling snow into a swirl of white mist around us, Cole sweeps me off my feet. Slowly, he carries me up the steps and inside. He pauses only to kick off his boots, his eyes never once leaving mine. They hold me as securely as his strong arms do.

When we are once more in front of the fire, mere inches from the exact place where we stood last night, he sets me on my feet. “I will love every inch of you until you tell me to stop,” he declares. It’s as much a sensual promise as it is a pledge that he won’t do a single thing that I’m not comfortable with. What I don’t tell him, what I’ll show him instead, is that I won’t stop him this time. I need this more than he does.

With his intense stare focused on me, Cole tips his head toward the hall. “Emmy?” he asks.

“Asleep,” I answer. “She sleeps like a rock.”

Cole reaches for my hands and brings my knuckles to his mouth. He drags his lips back and forth over them, a tiny grin teasing a dimple out of his cheek. “We’ll be quiet anyway.” Slowly, he stretches my arms above my head, curling his fingers in the hem of my shirt, the backs of his cool fingers brushing my belly. “So. So. Quiet.” He punctuates each word with a soft kiss to my lips before his hands begin to inch the material up my body.

He tugs my sweater over my head and then tosses it on the couch without looking. It’s like he’s as hesitant to take his eyes off me as I am to take my eyes off him. This moment…it’s so fragile, it seems. I’m almost afraid to look away. To break the spell. To forget even one second of it. Of how he looks, how he feels.

Cole traces the lacy edge of my bra with his fingertip. He follows it all the way to the strap and up to my shoulder. Chills break out across my chest when he eases the strip down my arm until it hangs loosely at my elbow. I feel the cup of my bra slip down to my nipple and catch on the rigid peak. I stand perfectly still, breathing as quietly and steadily as I can even though my insides are a quivering mess.

With excruciating deliberateness, he repeats the movement with the other side until my breasts are nearly bared to him. Tantalizingly half-covered.

Still, Cole watches me as he leans closer, our eyes locked until he passes out of my vision. A fraction of a second later, I feel his lips at my ear. “So beautiful,” he whispers, tracing the shell with the tip of his tongue as he teases my aching nipples with the backs of his fingers.

He brushes his lips and flicks his tongue along my jaw until he reaches my mouth. He hovers at the edge of my lips, close enough to kiss me, yet not. He licks the corner and I open reflexively, hungry for the taste of him on my own tongue. But he doesn’t come in. He must know what he’s doing to me, though, because I feel the huff of warm air and the light rumble of his laugh, followed by a soft, “Be patient.”

I close my eyes as Cole kisses his way down my throat, across my collarbone and then down to the swell of my breast. I feel his warm breath. I anticipate his touch, his firm touch, so much that it makes my hands tremble.

I arch my back the tiniest bit, a silent plea for him to take what I’m offering. But still, he won’t. He simply skims his open mouth back and forth over my throbbing nipples, taunting them with his moist breath. Taunting but never taking.

I feel his hands move around my ribs, skating lightly over my skin as he goes. With a flick that’s as quick and soft as a butterfly kiss, his fingers unhook my bra.

When he straightens away from me, I feel it. I feel it in the loss of his body heat, in the loss of this crazy magnetism that’s between us. And when he inhales, I feel it in the air, like his slow drawing of breath created a vacuum, a bubble where only he and I exist.

I open my eyes when the quiet becomes too still. Cole’s gaze is trained on my chest, even as his hands come to the straps at my elbows, slowly dragging them down my arms, inch by excruciating inch. I have to bite my tongue to keep from moaning when my nipples pop free of the lace and Cole’s breath hisses through his teeth. “Damn, you’re gorgeous,” he breathes, his pupils swelling as he drinks me in. Truthfully, I’ve never felt more beautiful than I do right now, with his eyes blatantly loving what they see.

Cole lets my bra drop to the floor. In slow, slow motion, he reaches for my breasts, cupping them, weighing them, feathering the peaks with the pads of his thumbs. My nipples pucker prettily for him and he exhales on a breathy groan. He closes his eyes for a second. Time seems to stop. But when he opens them again, they’re on mine, intense as ever. Hotter than the fire behind me.