The Last Straw (The Jigsaw Files #4) - Sharon Sala Page 0,105

comfort, but he stood his ground and wouldn’t let go.

Eventually, he felt her body give, and when he did he pulled her closer. He felt her tremble, and then she turned her face against his chest and began to cry slow, silent tears.

“Let it out. Let it go,” he said softly and laid his cheek against the soft skin on the crown of her head.

His empathy was more than she could master, and his kindness pulled her under. She wrapped her arms around his waist as her quiet tears turned to sobs, and then she was crying so hard she couldn’t stop.

Twenty

With every choking sob that came up Wyrick’s throat, Charlie tightened his grip until it felt like he was all that was holding her together. With every breath that she took, it affirmed one thing he could no longer ignore. He didn’t want to let her go. She was the only important thing he had left in life, and he wasn’t giving up without a fight.

He turned her loose, and then immediately cupped her cheeks, turning her tearstained face up to meet his gaze.

“I support anything you need to do. If you’re leaving, then you leave, but you’re not leaving me behind. I don’t care if this is not what you want to hear. I don’t care whether you like it or not. But you’re the only person left in this world that means a damn to me. I don’t need to find any more lost people, but if you want to get lost... I know how to make that happen. The only promise you have to make is to take me with you.”

Still reeling from the depth of emotion in his voice, Wyrick was afraid to believe what she was seeing in his eyes, and then he began coming closer. His mouth was only inches from her lips when she saw her own reflection in his eyes.

Charlie had given her all the time to say no, or to push him away, and when she didn’t, he brushed a kiss across her forehead, then wrapped his arms around her and kissed her.

Gently.

Reverently.

With a promise she could not mistake.

And then like he would die if he ever let her go.

She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him back. And when she did, the last of what life had broken in her slipped back into place.

Charlie swept her up in his arms, carried her to his bed, then fell in beside her, lost in the passion between them.

They were a tangle of long arms and legs, trying to undress without losing the bodily contact that had set them on fire, and then finally they were lying skin to skin, looking into each other’s eyes. Charlie started to turn off the light when Wyrick stopped him.

“No more hiding,” she said.

She caught a glint of fire in his eyes, and then his hands were all over her body, making peace with the dragon as he made love to her. It wasn’t just the joining with a man she’d loved for years that made this matter. It was the resurrection of Jade, the woman she’d buried so long ago.

When Charlie leaned down and kissed her mouth, he didn’t stop there. He took his tongue and his lips all the way down to her belly, before kissing his way back up.

“I love you, Jade Wyrick. Even if you don’t love me back, trust me enough to let me stay.”

She locked her hands behind his neck.

“You don’t get half of nothing from me, Charlie Dodge. I have loved you forever. First, because of the way you loved Annie. And because you let me into your life and kept me there, even when I was a pain in the ass. I have loved you for so long, and accepted your friendship as enough. This moment is a gift, and you can’t have it back. I want you, Charlie. I want you forever in my life.”

Charlie moved between her legs and then slid into her body, and it felt like he’d always known this. When she wrapped those long legs around his waist and pulled him tighter, he began to move. She met him thrust for thrust, holding him close, pulling him deeper.

It was a dance.

It was a war.

It was the end of one thing and the beginning of another, and they would never be the same.

Wyrick had already locked herself into the rhythm of his heartbeat, and the building lust of his climax so that