She laughed out loud at his honesty. It was only natural that the changes he was making would have to come in stages. "I can live with this one."
He put down the wooden recipe book cover, then pulled the shiny lock pick out of his pocket. "Let’s see how long it takes you to pick it."
She couldn’t stop smiling as he gestured for her to come back outside with him. She knelt next to him as he showed her the tricks of the P.I. trade. She was amazed he remembered she’d asked to learn how to pick a lock on their first night together.
When he’d said no back then, it was clear that he hadn’t wanted to "corrupt" her. So did this mean even more corruption was on the menu?
She really, really hoped it did...
"Your turn now," he said as he handed her the pick.
It was difficult to concentrate with Rafe’s thigh pressed against hers and his mouth just inches away, but she forced her brain to focus on the task. Her lower lip between her teeth, she concentrated on each of the steps he’d just run her through.
Less than thirty seconds later, she was amazed when the lock slid open. "Look! I picked the lock on my first try."
Rafe looked between her and the open lock, clearly stunned. "That’s the fastest I’ve ever seen a beginner get a lock open. If I had known how bad my good girl could be..."
She thrilled at the desire beneath his words, but before she could tackle him and show him exactly how good being bad with her could be, he was tugging her to her feet and into the kitchen.
"There’s more?" It was like following a scavenger hunt where love was the ultimate prize.
He shot her a grin over his shoulder, but she could see that he was a little nervous about whatever he was going to show her next. Rafe brought her to a stop at the edge of the kitchen counter. Two days earlier, they’d made love right in that spot, in the chocolate, and her skin was flushing with remembered heat when she realized there was a blindfold sitting on the counter.
"I’m ready to do that taste test for you now," Rafe told her.
If she didn’t already love him, if she hadn’t already forgiven him for his mistake, she would have been a goner as he picked up the blindfold and handed it to her. Especially when she could see how hard it was for him to let her take away one of his senses like this.
With trembling hands, she lifted the blindfold up over his head. She kissed him as she slid it in front of his eyes. Fortunately, a batch of her new Summer’s Pleasures recipe was within reach, so she didn’t have to move away from him to take one out and put it to his lips. The scrape of his teeth and tongue against her fingertips as he took a bite had her pressing closer to him.
"Delicious."
She couldn’t resist licking the chocolate off his lips as she put the rest of the truffle down and took the blindfold off. "So are you."
There was such sweetness to everything he’d done to prove his love to her. Brooke had thought she’d need endless apologies and groveling after the way he’d screwed up. Now she knew that the only thing she needed was Rafe Sullivan exactly as he was—fun and dangerous, light and dark, sweet and sexy, supportive and overprotective, too.
"I never saw my parents argue," she told him. "I never saw them hurt each other in any way. And I never saw passion, either. They always wanted everything to be so perfect, so clean and safe, that I think they were willing to give up true love to make sure they had it. But even if it means I am lacking in common sense, if being without you is what being sensible and making the ‘right’ decisions means, then I’m happy to keep making the wrong ones. Because I’m not willing to ever give up on true love."
"Do you remember when you asked me what I thought true love was?"
"You looked so shell-shocked, even by the question about it," she teased.
"That’s because I suddenly realized I was looking right at it. Right at you." Now she was the shell-shocked one as he told her, "I thought I had so many smart reasons why we needed to stay away from each other, but all of them boiled down to the same thing: I was afraid to trust anyone. But then there you were on the beach after our first almost-kiss, staring me right in the eye, asking me why I was running. You scared me more than anything ever had in my life. I already knew I wanted to fall asleep with you every night and wake up every morning with you in my arms, but I didn’t understand how it could be possible to make a mistake and still find a way to work things out together."
"If you ask me, I think we made it through our tough times even better than we were before."
Bright hope lit his eyes, and oh, how she loved to see it replace the darkness as he made absolutely sure. "Have we?"
"We have." She took his hand and began to draw him back toward the bedroom. "And now I think it’s time for us to celebrate."
Being wild, she realized now, wasn’t just about sex. It was about wanting Rafe to be her partner in adventures of all kinds—especially the biggest one of all: a love that would last forever.
Of course, she thought with a smile as he scooped her up into his arms and kissed her breathless, she was more than happy to take the wild sex, too.
* * *
Rafe could have kissed her all night long, and never wanted to let her go, but there was one more very important thing he needed to give to her, something she had asked for again and again. Relishing the sweet, soft slide of her body against his as he slowly put her down on her feet in the bedroom, he moved his hands to frame her beautiful face.
"What do you say we get a little kinky?"
Her eyes opened wide with surprise, and then such happiness that he knew he’d been a fool to hold out on her for so long.
"You know how badly I want that," she told him, "but only if you want it, too."
Did he ever want it, but first he needed her to understand why he’d held back before. Looking into her eyes gave him the strength to admit, "I was afraid to trust myself with you. I was afraid I wouldn’t know when to stop, not just during sex, but after. I was afraid I’d give too much of my heart to you and end up like one of my clients, with it broken in my hands after you were done with me."
Her eyes were soft with emotion, and so much love it floored him. "And now?"
"Now I understand that when passion burns this hot, it’s okay to be scared of the power you have over me, the way you turn me inside out with a look, a touch, a kiss." Every word she’d said to him that night at the Italian restaurant when she’d spoken of true love was forever etched on his heart. "And now I know that I can talk to you about absolutely anything, and that you’ll still love me. No matter what."