Arabella

Holy heck! It was him. The guy at the airport, from back when I’d been running to make it to my flight after dropping off Carissa’s wedding cake. The brick wall I’d bumped into who’d had me wishing I could forget about going home because London would be a lot more interesting if I spent my time there with him. He hadn’t said a word back then, but it didn’t lessen the impact he’d had on me. At six feet and two inches, with a muscular build, dark hair begging to be touched, piercing brown eyes, a strong jawline, and firm lips that looked like they rarely tilted up in a smile; he’d been impossible to forget.

My heart raced as I took in the way he was looking at me. His brown eyes darkened to a nearly black color as they swept down my body and back up again. The heat building in them made my knees shake, and I tightened the sash on the robe I’d thrown on when I heard him knock on the door. A muscle in his jaw flexed, and a satisfied smile spread across his face. Maybe the fascination hadn’t been one-sided, and fate had given us a second chance.

“You’re Vaughn’s friend?”

He nodded and strode towards me. “Gaige Taylor.” His raspy voice sent shivers up my spine. “And you’re Arabella Green.”

“I am.” My reply was as shaky as my knees felt.

He didn’t stop until he was standing less than a foot away from me. He reached for my hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. “You don’t need to be scared anymore, sweetheart. I’m sorry I didn’t find you sooner but I’m here now, and I’m not going to let anything bad happen to you.”

“Sooner?” I echoed. It was hard to think straight with his thumb stroking my palm, but I was pretty sure I wouldn’t understand what he meant even if he wasn’t touching me because it didn’t make any sense. None at all. “Celina only reached out to Carissa five or so hours ago. I’d say you got here pretty darn fast.”

I didn’t resist as he tugged me further into the sitting room and settled me on the couch. When he sat down next to me, he still had his hand wrapped around mine. “Airports seem to be our thing. I was walking through McCarran when Vaughn called me.”

Oh, yeah. He remembered me. “Vegas? I hope I didn’t interrupt anything important.”

He shook his head. “Just a spur of the moment vacation.”

“With your girlfriend?” As soon as the words left my mouth, my cheeks heated. I couldn’t have been any more obvious if I’d tried, something which Gaige was well aware of judging by the pleased smirk he flashed me.

“Nope. I was on my own for this trip.”

“Oh.” Drat, that wasn’t enough information to know for sure if he had a girlfriend or not. He could have been by himself because she couldn’t make it or something.

His thumb stroked across my palm again as he gave me a knowing look. “I don’t have a girlfriend, Arabella.”

“I don’t, either,” I blurted out. His chuckle made me realize what I’d said. Apparently, I didn’t have a filter when it came to him. “A boyfriend, I mean.”

“Good.” He smiled at me. “Not that it’d change a thing if you did. I’ve waited too long to let another guy stand in my way.”

He couldn’t have meant what he’d said how I was taking it, but I found myself asking for clarification and hoping I’d get the answer I wanted. “You waited too long”—I coughed to clear my throat—“for what exactly?”

“For the woman who knocked me on my ass.”

I tilted my head and narrowed my eyes at him. “But —”

“Proverbially speaking, of course.”

There was no doubt about it; he was talking about me. He’d stopped me from literally falling on my butt in the airport, and we’d both been affected by it. He’d been waiting for me, the same way I had him. Even though the odds were against me ever seeing him again, I judged every other man by the memory of that moment with him. Since nobody else measured up, I put all my energy into building my career and left dating until I found the right man. And it looked like my wait was over. I didn’t need to find another man like Gaige. Not when Gaige had found me.

His hand released mine, and he trailed his fingertips over my wrist. When I shivered, he leaned closer as his fingers glided up my arm and across my collarbone to cup my chin and tilt my head back. “Fuck, you’re even more gorgeous than I remember.”

Blushing harder, I nervously pushed my hair away from my face. I knew I didn’t look my best. Even though I was exhausted, I hadn’t been able to fall asleep. I’d tossed and turned, which had left my hair a mess. The make-up that had been professionally applied at the studio had been washed off hours ago. And my robe wasn’t one of those sexy, silk numbers designed to tease a man. It was a rose red, terry cloth robe that my sister had bought me because I’d complained about how cold I was in the mornings when I’d moved to New York to study under one of my idols for a year. I’d worn it every day over the last three years. Although it had held up fairly well under all those washes, it was the furthest thing from flattering. “That can’t possibly be true.”

“It is, sweetheart,” he breathed against my lips. My eyes drifted shut just before his mouth brushed against mine. His lips were warm and soft, making me sigh. Then a groan bubbled up his throat, and he slanted his head. He nipped at my bottom lip, and I let out a startled gasp. He didn’t waste the opportunity, and his tongue swept into my mouth to tangle with mine. As the kiss deepened, I ignited in his arms. My hands reached for his shoulders, trying to tug him closer. His grip tightened on my chin, and he tilted his head more to get better access to my mouth.

He switched between quick nibbles on my lips, gentle sucking tugs of my tongue, and leisurely strokes into my mouth. I was out of breath when he lifted his head, but I wanted more. So I slid my hands into his dark hair to try to hold him in place.

“Don’t worry, sweetheart. I’m not done yet,” he murmured against my ear before kissing his way down my neck. “I’ll let us have a little more before I do the right thing and let go.”

I whimpered at the thought of this ending. “Only for now. Not forever,” he promised. Then he scraped his teeth against the skin at my pulse-point. Deft fingers untied the sash at my waist, and he pushed the material aside to kiss his way along the scoop-neck collar of the cotton night shirt I’d worn to bed. I moaned at the feel of the heat of his mouth against my skin, the sound loud and ragged in the quiet room. It had been too long since I’d been touched by anyone. Years. And the teenage groping back then had nothing on Gaige’s expert caresses.

“Damn, Arabella,” he groaned. “I couldn’t forget you after getting a look at you and feeling your hands on my chest. It didn’t matter that I didn’t even know your name. But if I’d had even the tiniest taste of you back then, I never would have been able to let you walk away.”

I grinned at him, feeling about ten feet tall with his admission. “Really?”

“Fuck, yeah. You’re potent, sweetheart.”

“It’s you, not me,” I confessed shyly. “I’ve never been”—I paused because the word he’d used seem so foreign when it came to me—“potent before.”

His mouth crashed back down on mine, harder than before. After he’d kissed me senseless, my lips felt puffy and tingly. He rested his forehead on mine, and his dark eyes burned with jealousy as he growled, “The last thing I want to hear about is you with other guys.”

“That’s not something you need to worry about,” I reassured him. His caveman reaction had me admitting something all the dating books would have told me to keep quiet about. “I haven’t so much as kissed another guy in more than two years. No first dates. No random hook-ups. Nothing.”

My bravery was rewarded when he rasped, “Neither have I.”