creased as he used a thumb to caress her hip bone. “Want to know one of my secrets?”
“Always.”
Kissing her dimple, melting her bones, he said, “You have no idea how many times I had to, um, take care of business after flirting with you.”
• • •
“Let’s just say a certain battery-operated boyfriend did a lot of heavy lifting thanks to you.” Throwing her leg over his with that sinful confession, Garnet ran her nails down his chest. “I know it must still hurt you—don’t hide that from me, either.”
Kenji hadn’t talked to anyone about his diagnosis, not after he’d completed the mandatory counseling sessions. Even then, he hadn’t really opened up, had done just enough to get his medical clearance. But this was Garnet, the woman who lived in his heart. “Yeah,” he said, and then, for the first time, he spoke without shields about what the news had done to the twenty-three-year-old man he’d been.
Garnet listened, she never broke skin contact, and she loved him, the pulse of it a ferocious wildfire inside him, a wildfire that tasted of steel and Garnet. “I’m going to buy you a violin.”
Yes, this woman understood the beat of his heart. “I still have mine,” he admitted. “Couldn’t bear to get rid of it.”
Smile deep, she pushed playfully at his chest. “When do I get a recital?”
“I’m going to be rusty as hell,” he warned.
“I’ll rate you on a scale going from ‘my ears are bleeding’ to ‘the angels weep.’”
A kiss from his mate, the sensual slide of skin on skin. The sound of his brain cells popping in delirious pleasure.
“I bought you a ring before your twenty-first,” he said a long time later, watched her eyes widen. “I wasn’t going to give it to you then, but it was like my talisman for what I hoped we’d become.”
Poking at his abdomen with a censorious finger, she said, “You’d better still have it.” It was a growl.
He grinned, because damn, that was Garnet. Demanding and strong and his. “I keep it in that little wooden box you gave me for my eighteenth birthday.”
Her smile was luminous. “I made that box in woodworking class!” She kissed him. “It’s awful. I was terrible at woodwork!”
“I know. The lid doesn’t close properly and it’s lopsided.” He laughed along with her. “But you gave it to me.”
“Stop it,” she muttered, lower lip quivering. “You can’t make me cry. I’m a hard-ass lieutenant.”
He kissed the tip of her nose. “You can cry with me.”
Tucking up her arms between them, she made a face at him. “I threw all the stuff you ever gave me down a big crevasse,” she told him. “I did it the night after my twenty-first.” Narrowed eyes. “I’m still not sorry.”
His shoulders began to shake. “Good thing I never gave you that ring. It cost me three-quarters of all the cents I had at the time.”
“Three-quarters? What happened to the last quarter?”
“I spent that on your twenty-first present. A bracelet from that designer you used to like—with the cut stones.” Bright and sparkly but not large. Delicate. To suit her bones.
“Is it in the box?”
“No.” The memory of the stones cutting into his palm as he stood numb and angry in the corridor outside the infirmary, it was as vivid now as the day it had happened. “I broke it I was holding it so hard . . . and it just seemed like a sign.”
She petted the side of his face. “I’ll forgive you that one.” A nuzzling kiss. “Especially since I took a baseball bat to the snow globe you got me for my sixteenth.”
He burst out laughing. “Remind me to never make you angry,” he said when he could speak again. “I fucking love you.”
Growling playfully, Garnet tumbled him over onto his back. “I love you, too, but I’m still mad at you for forcing us to wait this long. Make it up to me.”
He ran his hand all the way down her back, stroked up again. “Come here.”
A luscious kiss, then more, and more. Things were getting hot and sweaty and interesting when Garnet’s phone went off and kept going off.
“Grr.” Grabbing it, she stared at the screen. “It’s Tex.” She answered the call, started scrambling out of bed in the next heartbeat.
Wolf lunging to the surface of his skin as his brain clicked, Kenji got out and hauled on his own clothing.
• • •
Ruby’s pup might have been laggard to this point, but he was now in a tearing