Confessions from the Quilting Circle - Maisey Yates Page 0,92

got in and asked you out before I did, and it doesn’t matter if it was nothing with him—it won’t be nothing with everyone. You won’t be alone forever.”

Sometimes truths came together slow and easy. Like looking through a soft-focus lens slowly being narrowed in, bringing detail into focus and making all things clear.

This was a soft focus. It was not a gentle truth. This truth fell from the sky fully formed and hit her on the head.

Sharp. Hard.

Adam.

She wanted him.

Wanted.

Not a dinner date. Not a nice conversation.

But to kiss him. Touch him. Taste him.

And it wasn’t fresh, or new. There was a reason she sought him out when she needed someone to talk to. A reason she wanted to be near him.

It was a great and terrible realization. It had been an easy thing to go on a date with Mark because she didn’t want him. Because he wasn’t dangerous. Not like this.

This was the great and terrible truth that had vibrated beneath the surface of her skin all night. She wanted to date because she didn’t know what else to call it. She didn’t want to date because she wasn’t ready for a relationship, and she didn’t want to insert another man into her life.

She wanted something much more direct. Something raw and naked.

Something that was about her. Not about anyone else.

It wouldn’t heal anything or anyone.

It wouldn’t bring Jacob back or make her relationship with Emma better.

It wouldn’t repair the relationship with her mother.

Wouldn’t help Anna with her present plight.

It wasn’t about being a caregiver, or a fixer. A mother, a sister or a wife.

It was about being a woman. A woman who wanted a man.

And...she was going to do it. Before she could lose her nerve, before she could think more about it.

She wrapped her arms around his neck, and she kissed him deeply. She had only ever kissed one man in her life, and it was the strangest thing in all the world to have a different mouth beneath hers.

To learn a different flavor, a different texture. The way that he held her was different. So was the way her body fit against his.

And he was... He was hard, and he was strong, his arms like a steel band around her, his chest a wall, his heart thundering beneath.

She wasn’t hiding from his scent now—she was letting it envelop her, letting it overtake her senses completely.

She had forgotten what it was like to be kissed like this, and then again, she had never been kissed quite like this, because she had never been kissed by him.

“Maybe we shouldn’t stand in the doorway?” he whispered against her mouth.

“Right,” she said. “Upstairs?”

He paused for a moment, his blue eyes hot and sharp with need.

“Are we clear on what you’re asking for?” He took a step back. “Because I don’t want to go upstairs and have a talk.”

“Neither do I,” she said.

He pulled her inside, pulled the door shut behind her and turned all the locks again. Then he quickly turned off the lights in the diner.

“I figure we don’t need to advertise it to half the town.”

“Thank you,” she said.

She was trembling. She felt like a virgin.

Well, she practically was.

It had been so long since she’d had a first time.

Since she’d been afraid of what it would mean to be naked in front of a man. It had become casual to be naked in front of Jacob.

There was an ease that they had with each other, and with each other’s bodies. And even when they’d been unable to have a sexual relationship, that ease had remained. She didn’t worry about stretch marks, she didn’t worry about cellulite on her butt and her thighs.

She knew that he wasn’t comparing her to other women, because he hadn’t been with any other women.

She knew that he remembered when her breasts had been fuller, and when they been a little bit perkier, but she also knew that he loved them the way that they were. He remembered when her stomach was tighter, but he loved to run his hands over it when it was just a little bit softer all the same.

She didn’t know anything about how many women Adam had been with. What he was used to. What he liked.

She didn’t know what he would think of her body, and she kind of wasn’t sure what she thought about her body. Because she hadn’t thought about it all that much.

Her body had been faithful to her all these years. She