But even though he was finally telling her the truth, she could see the fear in his eyes as he said, “But I could never ask you to leave your work, your family behind for me. Not when I know how much both of those things will hurt you. I don’t want you to change for me, either.”
Another lightning bolt shot through the sky as she moved to stand in front of him and take his hands in hers. “I already have changed, Ford.”
She hadn’t fully realized this truth an hour ago, had believed there was only one way for both of them to stay true to themselves—by leading separate lives. But now she finally understood something that she’d been too young, too frightened, too overwhelmed, to understand before. Even though her mother had tried to help her see it at dinner on Friday night.
“I know who I am now, Ford, in a way I didn’t know before. When I was twenty-three, I was so scared of how quickly I lost myself in you and your life. That fear of not knowing how to hold on to my own identity made me believe that I was better off without you. But now I’ve finally learned that loving you, supporting you, isn’t going to make me any less. It doesn’t mean I’m going to be nothing more than an extension of you, or a footnote in your documentary unless you pack up all your touring gear in a storage locker in Seattle so that you can be home every night to celebrate one of my deals.”
“So,” he said slowly as his thumbs rubbed gentle circles into the backs of her hands, “if you don’t want me to give up touring and I don’t want you to give up your career in Seattle, but neither of us wants to be apart—”
“Then I suppose we’re just going to have to figure it out one thing at a time, even if it means I have to give up a few big deals along the way—”
“And I skip playing some stadiums—”
“And we miss a few family dinners if we have to.”
“No, I don’t want to miss too many family dinners,” he told her, his eyes warm and loving.
“I agree,” she said with a smile as she brought their hands up to hold them over her heart. “We definitely shouldn’t miss too many of those. And if things start to feel out of balance, we’ll work together to fix it. I’m not young or foolish enough anymore to think it will be easy, but—”
“You’re worth it.”
“So are you, rock star.”
The next thing she knew, he had her on her back on the blankets, and he was levered over her, her br**sts pressed hard to his chest, her thighs trapped between his.
“Now that we’ve got all that settled, how about an answer to that question I asked you earlier?”
Of course he had to know what her answer would be, and the yes was right on the tip of her tongue. But just as the anticipation of waiting to make love again during the past week had ended up being more fun than she could ever have imagined, she had to wonder just how fun it would be to add a little anticipation to his marriage proposal.
“You promised no ultimatums this time around,” she reminded him in a sassy voice, one she knew always got him going in a big way, especially judging by the feel of his erection against her thigh as he began to kiss his way down her body.
His stubble scraped in the most deliciously sinful way over the swell of her br**sts as he said, “True, but I never promised not to seduce a yes out of you.”
“You wouldn’t make love to me until you knew for sure that I loved you, but now that you know I do, you’re planning on using sex to get your way with everything from here on out?”
He lifted his head from her br**sts to grin at her. “Sure am.”
“But—”
How could she finish her sentence when he was licking one nipple while he played with her other breast? Just as she was figuring out how to catch her breath again, he switched his hands and mouth to the other side.
“Mmm?”
The vibration from his throat to her skin made her shiver. And when he began to lick and nip his way down the undersides of both br**sts, it would have been so much easier just to give in to his seduction and forget what she needed to say. But somehow she found the will to get out her next words.
“—that’s not—”
She gasped as he slipped his fingers between her thighs and into her. Clearly, it had been smart to keep sex out of their relationship until they’d built a strong foundation first, because she could barely hold a thought in her head when he was touching her like this.
But even more than she loved his touch, she loved him.
“Oh hell,” she finally said, “go ahead and do your worst.”
“Already there, baby,” he murmured against her stomach, before kissing his way lower, and then lower still. “Only you’re about to get my very best.”
And he wasn’t kidding, because just then his mouth covered her and his tongue and hands were slipping and sliding over and into her in the most wonderful way. She was so close, so damned close, and she was going crazy right there on the edge...until he suddenly homed in like a laser with his lips and tongue and fingers and gave her exactly what she needed.
“Yes! Yes! Yes!”
Her orgasm was still rocking and rolling through her when he slid the ring onto her left hand. His grin was a mile wide as he moved back over her so that she could wrap her arms and legs around him.
While admiring her new engagement ring over his shoulder, of course.
“Think you’re pretty sneaky, don’t you, doing whatever it takes to make me say yes?”
“If you think that was sneaky,” he rasped in a husky voice against her mouth as his hands roamed possessively over her, “you should see what I’m going to do next.”
“Let me guess—it’s on that list of yours, isn’t it?”
“It is,” he confirmed as he thrust deep inside her in one hard stroke to stake his claim on her body as well as her heart.
“Have I mentioned,” she managed to inform him with her own saucy grin, even though it was really, really difficult to string coherent words together when he was moving inside her like this, “that I’ve got a list of my own? One that starts with blocking out all of tomorrow to call each and every one of my family members with the news of our engagement, just like I promised you I would.”
And as he told her just how much he liked that plan by crushing her mouth and body even closer to his, her last clear thought before her climax stole her every functioning brain cell, was that life would always be an adventure with the man who was not only her best friend and her lover...but also the other half of her heart and soul.