“You don’t know that?” she asked, shocked.
“No.”
“It’s patently obvious to anyone who spends ten minutes with her. She’s madly in love with you, Clay.”
He swallowed, and shook his head, as if he were shaking the strange notion away. “How can you tell?” he asked, the words coming out all choppy.
“Because of how she looks at you,” she said, as if it were obvious, because to her it was.
“And that’s enough for you to conclude she’s in love with me?” For the first time ever she’d truly surprised him. She hadn’t intended to drop a bomb, but he so clearly didn’t see it at all.
“Yes.”
“Why? How? How can you tell she looks at me like she’s in love with me?”
She rolled her eyes. “Because I recognize the look.”
The look on his face was no longer shock. It was hope, and the dawn of something so much more. “You do?”
Then she realized she’d practically said it. “Yes.”
“How?”
“Because it’s how I look at you,” she said, the words falling from her lips in a tumble. Time slowed, and the moment became heady, rich with possibility. The air between them was charged, electric, like a storm. They were magnets, needing their opposite.
He reached for her, cupping her cheeks, brushing his thumb over her jaw then her bottom lip, watching her shiver. She looked up at him, and his eyes were fixed on her. Waiting for her. His lips parted, and she was wound tight with anticipation of what he’d say. “I love the way you look at me.”
Tingles ran down her spine, spreading to her arms, her fingers, all the way to her toes. “You do?
“I do. I love the way you touch me,” he said, taking her hand, and spreading her palm open on his chest. “I love the way you talk to me. I love everything about you. And I recognize the look in your eyes, too. Do you know why?”
She shook her head, and her entire body was trembling with want, with hope. “Why?”
“Because it’s the same as in mine. Because I love you, Julia. I am completely in love with you, and I love you, and I want you to love me,” he said, never breaking his gaze from hers, his beautiful brown eyes flooded with love.
“I do. I do. I do,” she said quickly, the tension in her chest disappearing, and relief washing over her in waves. “Clay, I love you so much.”
He ran his hands through her hair, burying his fingers deep. She felt him trembling. He returned a hand to her face, brushed the backs of his fingers against her cheek, and she leaned into him, savoring the gentleness of his touch. Feeling the reverence that he treated her with, like she was precious to him. He ran his hand down her neck to her throat. “Julia,” he said, his voice low but so intense as he spoke. “I have never fallen in love like this.”
His words bathed her in some kind of bliss, as if her veins flowed with liquid gold. “How have you fallen?” she asked, overwhelmed with all she felt for him, with the way her body seemed to reach for him, to need him.
“With everything I have. There is no part of me that isn’t in love with you. There is no part of me that holds back,” he said, his voice steady, certain.
Allness. That’s what it was for her, too. An utter allness. A love so deep and consuming it filled her organs, it rode roughshod over her skin. It was a mark on the timeline of her life. Before. After. She raised her hand, and touched his face, stroking his jawline, watching with wonder as she made him gasp after a simple touch. He grasped her hand, linked his fingers through hers, and brought her palm to his mouth, kissing her there. “I love you.” He bent his head to her neck, brushing his lips ever so softly against her skin, then up to her ear. “I am so in love with you,” he said, as if he couldn’t stop telling her. “I love you so much.”
“I am so in love with you.” She stretched her neck so he could kiss her freely as he wanted to as she ran her hand through his hair. “So in love.”
He stopped kissing her, pulling back to look her in the eyes once more. His gaze melted her from the inside out. “I can’t wait to take you home with me tonight. To spread you out on the bed. To make love to you all night long.”
“I want that. I want that again and again. And over and over.”
“Now go back in there,” he said, gesturing to the restaurant. “Even though you look like you’ve just had sex.”
Her cheeks felt rosy. She was sure there was a glow in her eyes. “I feel like I’ve just had sex. Sex with the man I love,” she said, playing with his hair, not wanting to let go of him, but needing to.
“You will have that. I will give you everything, Julia.”
* * *
He’d join her shortly. He would. He just needed to take care of this matter. The text on his phone was loud and clear. Business came first right now, and later, he’d find a way to explain.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Julia skipped down the sidewalk at two in the morning. Every move she made brought a smile to his face, and touched down with happiness in his heart.
She’d done it. She’d won big. After precariously losing to Michele for a while there, she’d made a few big bets on a few big hands, and had pulled out ahead. She’d wrapped her arms around the chips, and tugged them in tight. She sure looked like she wanted to kiss them, to bring each and every one to her lips, and then shake them at the sky victoriously. Instead, she’d stacked them, handed them to Liam since he’d acted as the bank, and watched with wide eyes as those chips turned into cash.
She threw her head back, twirling on the street, as if she were a kid catching snowflakes on her tongue.
“And here’s your money, sir,” she sang, pretending to hand it over to Charlie. “Now, go f**k off forever.”
She was jubilant, ready to lead a victory march. Clay grabbed her arm and pulled her in for a kiss, bending her back and kissing her like they were on a postcard. Let the whole damn city be jealous. Let the world want what he had. He claimed her mouth with his own, kissing her hard and passionately, like he planned to always. He’d never tire of the way her lips tasted, of her sweetness, of how she responded to him. She wrapped her arms around his neck, and held on tight.
“Take me home, now,” she said. “I want to know what it feels like to have you as a free woman.”
He tensed briefly as she said that. But that was ridiculous. She was free. Completely free. He hailed a cab, and ten minutes later he had her in his home, stripping her clothes off as they somehow made their way up the stairs, tangled up in each other. He was still buzzed on the night, on the things he’d said, on the way she’d won, on her sheer and utter happiness, and on telling her he loved her.