“I want to stay with you tonight,” Dylan said. “I want to hold you all night long.”

Her ex had never stayed. He’d always said he needed to get back to the city to prepare for an early morning at the office, and she hadn’t pushed, hadn’t made him tell her the real reason he was leaving. She hadn’t wanted to hear the truth that he had someone else or that she didn’t really matter to him.

“I want you to stay, too.” But that wasn’t the full truth, and after what they’d shared tonight, she couldn’t live with anything else. Not when even the smallest lie felt as though it would strip away the beauty of what they’d just done together. “But it scares me how fast we’re taking slow. After tonight, it feels more like warp speed.” Even that wasn’t everything, though. “And I don’t want to fix myself, fix what happened, with sex. Because what if that’s what I’m doing?”

“If sex helps,” Dylan said, “if making love with me makes things better for you, then I can’t see why there’s one damn thing wrong with it. There’s nothing wrong with talking through pain, so why would it be wrong to kiss through it? To let pleasure strip away everything that should never have been there in the first place?”

“I never thought of it like that before.”

“I haven’t ever really had to fight demons of my own, Grace. But yours—I want to take them on headfirst, want to vanquish all your dragons with you, want to fight every battle beside you.”

“Why?” She still couldn’t see. Couldn’t understand why he would give so much of himself—and his love—to her.

“There have always been two loves for me—my family and the ocean. And now, my heart is with you and Mason, too. I know telling you I love you isn’t going slow, but I can’t change how I feel. I love you, Grace. And I love Mason, too. More than I’ve ever loved anyone else.”

The simple way he said it again and again, as if loving her and Mason was the most obvious, natural thing he’d ever done, shook her as deeply now as it had the first time he’d said it.

“Is it that easy?” She’d always needed to ask questions, always needed answers. But never more than she did right now. “Can you really just fall in love with someone and then, suddenly, they’re your new number one?”

“Isn’t that exactly what happened with Mason? Whatever other loves there were for you, they all got in line behind him.”

“Yes.” He was right. Exactly right. Again.

Grace was reeling from all of it. From her first official date with Dylan. From finding out that her ex had a string of paid-off women behind him. From watching Mason take his first step. From the most explosive—and tender—lovemaking of her life.

And now, from hearing Dylan tell her just how much he loved her in a way she hadn’t known a man could express his love. Even her father, who had loved her mother dearly, had never been so eloquent.

One part of her wanted to push him away so that she could be alone to try to process it all. The other part never wanted to let him go.

“It’s a small couch,” she finally said.

“Good.”

And when he slipped her heels from her feet and drew her against himself, her back to his front, cradling her head on his arm, she felt safer—and more cherished—than she ever had before.

* * *

Sometime in the middle of the night they reached for each other, kissing in the dark. Grace felt as though she were dreaming as she wrapped her arms and legs around Dylan and he came back into her, having already taken care of protection in the dark. And yet, there wasn’t anything slow, or safe, about the way they took each other this second time.

How could there be when their hunger for each other hadn’t been even the slightest bit sated by their earlier lovemaking?

He slid his fingers through hers, and she held tightly to him as he took her fast and hard over first one peak and then the next without any breathing room to recover. After so long a sexual drought, Grace felt utterly, wonderfully submerged in heady pleasure. She wanted to stay right where she was forever, holding on to Dylan’s strong muscles in the dark, his mouth on hers as they both fell over the edge together.

And after, it was so wonderful to curl her body into his, to pull his arm over her chest so that she was holding his hand right over her still quickly beating heart, and to fall asleep safe and warm and, for the moment at least, sated from soul-deep pleasure.

* * *

Grace woke to the sound of Mason laughing. She knew how lucky she was that he usually woke up on the cheerful side of the bed, happy and excited to greet the new day. But today, she was momentarily lost as to why she was out on the couch instead of in the bedroom with him.

As the cobwebs cleared, flashbacks to the night before came one after the other. Kisses. Caresses.

And whispered promises of love from Dylan.

Her chest tightened where joy should have bloomed instead, and damn it, she was tired of it. Tired of being so wary all the time, of looking for trouble around every corner. So incredibly tired of not knowing anymore how to let go outside of Dylan’s arms.

When, she wanted to know, would it be okay to just relax for a little while? And to believe, again, that true love could not only be real, but last forever?

Her parents had had such a sweet love and so did Dylan’s. She saw that same love in the lives of his brothers Rafe and Ian, and his sister, Mia. All around her were examples of what was possible.

And yet, even though she wanted so badly to believe, she could still feel the scar tissue deep inside from a wound that hadn’t yet fully healed.

Dylan, fortunately, knew that she was still healing and seemed to understand exactly why she was so wary, so cautious. He didn’t try to pretend it wasn’t the case, didn’t try to fool himself into thinking that she could declare her love for him as quickly as he had for her.

But would he continue to be this patient? Or would he, if she couldn’t rise above her past fast enough, finally give up on her?

Shivering at the thought of losing someone who had so quickly become the sunlight around which her world revolved, she wrapped the blanket around her naked body and let laughter draw her into the bedroom.

Perhaps after the night they’d shared wrapped up in each other, kissing and touching each other, she should have been better equipped to deal with the sight of Dylan wearing only dress pants, barefoot and shirtless, his face unshaven and scruffy—and looking more gorgeous than ever. She had to put her hand on the doorknob to steady herself for a moment as she watched the most sinfully good-looking man in all creation laugh with her son.