Page 80 of Patrick

“Right about what?” He murmurs back, nibbling my lips the way that makes my eyes flutter—not to mention my belly and my heart because they’re fluttering all over as if the entire collection from Butterfly World in Florida popped in for a visit.

“My redesign…” Nibble. Flutter. “Of your hockey jersey…”

“You mean your hockey jersey, the one with my name on it that you’re going to wear?” His low rumbly voice reverberates down to my toes, and he gives me one of those predatory looks. Tightening his arms around me, he drags a hand up my back until he clenches it in my hair, holding me in place to face him. As if I could look away.

“Yes. No, a new feminized version of it.” My voice is a heartfelt whisper because he’s nothing but serious now.

“Make it extra special—and by that, I mean sexy.” His words sound big and clear against the uptick of wind outside the car.

I can’t help laughing. “I’ll make it sexy—and wearable in public at the same time.”

“I’ll try not to be disappointed.”

“You’re incorrigible.” But he’s pushing all the right buttons to light up more than my funny bone.

“That’s why you love me.” He rumbles as he nibbles my ear, and I shiver, then go as still as the night. What did he just say?

“I love making you shiver.” He sucks on my neck, and I can barely hold myself together because I want to fall apart in his arms so badly. Does he really think I love him, or was that just nooky-talk?

“Talk of love will do that to me,” I say, hearing the strain in my voice. He hears it too.

He lifts his head to face me. “Talk of…” The puzzle fades from his expression. “Oh… I⁠—”

“Don’t you dare apologize.” I pull from his grasp, wishing I could turn back the conversational clock a few sentences and get back the teasing vibe.

“I wasn’t going to.” He stops talking when he should have kept going.

“Your voice box seems to be allergic to talk of feelings.”

“You’re right. Feelings are my kryptonite. The slightest exposure to mentions of the L-word, and I lose all my powers.” His smile is crooked, but I’m not fooled. I see the tension.

“Be serious.”

“Now you’re looking for trouble. You want me to collapse into a heap?”

“Stop it. Be real. For just a minute, Patrick.”

He keeps his mouth shut, but his eyes are wide open and staring at me with devastating seriousness. My breath hitches and my heart tap dances like Shirley Temple gone wild.

“I’m falling for you deep and hard.” I let the words whoosh from me like fairy dust on a breeze, feeling magical and inevitable and so fragile.

He blinks, and then before I take my next breath, he takes it from me. His mouth captures mine and holds on. His arms wrap me in giving warmth. The kiss is like an exchange of vows, our tongues mingling, communicating in their own language.

A blanket of tingling awareness settles over me as I sense every part of him touching me, his hands as they caress my back, his hard chest and beating heart against mine, his lips as they suck and kiss, trailing a path to my ear. He stops and nibbles while I catch my breath and lean into him, feeling every little thing in technicolor, memorizing it so hard and intensely that I know it’ll last years and eons, past any other memory and never stopping.

He murmurs, his voice shaky, “I’ll catch you, Fifi. Because I’m already there, waiting with open arms.”