When I dropped onto my heels, his gaze searched mine, tight spirals of cobalt twisting in and out of the darker blues in his irises. “Are you sure?”

“I’ve never been more sure of anything.” I took his hand and pulled him across the hall into my room, then closed the door behind us and leaned against it.

The heat in his eyes threatened to devour me.

I pulled his shirt off and dropped it on the floor. Then I had to touch him. “You’re beautiful,” I whispered, running my hands over his chest and down his stomach. My heart beat so hard I could almost hear it.

He laughed, and the sound was deep, like it got caught in his throat. “That’s my line.”

“You already said it.” And I could still see it in his eyes. “So why don’t you show me instead?”

Tod groaned. “If you don’t mean that, please tell me now.”

I stepped back and unhooked my bra. “I mean it.” I let the material fall to the floor between us, and his gaze smoldered. “Show me.”

I closed my eyes, and waited for him, my entire body buzzing in anticipation.

His fingers brushed mine first and the sparks started there, then followed his touch as it skimmed slowly over my knuckles and up the back of my arm. I could hardly breathe. How could such little contact—innocent, yet scorchingly intimate—bring my entire world grinding to a halt, like the planet had suddenly stopped spinning?

His hand rested on my shoulder, warm for just an instant, then trailed up my neck to cup the back of my head. He brushed a strand of hair behind my ear, and my mouth fell open.

Tod’s mouth met mine and he sucked my lower lip between his. I reached for him and when my hands brushed the hard ridges of his stomach, he moaned into my mouth. His hand tightened behind my head and that kiss deepened until I was glad I didn’t need to breathe.

“You are so beautiful…” he whispered against the corner of my lips, when that kiss finally ended.

My eyes opened, and I started to deny it, but he pulled away just far enough that he could look into my eyes. “No. You are. You are selfless on the inside and beautiful on the outside, and I am the luckiest man who has ever walked this earth, alive or dead.”

I had no idea what to say. I didn’t feel worthy of the things he was saying, yet I felt the same way about him. So would everyone else, if they could see the parts of himself he kept hidden from the rest of the world.

“Kaylee, this means something to me.” His hands trailed down my arms to cup my elbows, and his gaze held mine. “With any luck, we’re going to have millions of moments over the course of eternity, and I plan to love every one of them. But we’ll never have this moment again, and this is very important to me.” The twists of blue in his eyes coiled so tightly the color was almost gone, lost among pale shades of a need so deep it couldn’tpossibly be captured in a kiss, or a touch. “I need to know that this is important to you, too. I need to know that this isn’t like last time. That you’re not doing this just so you can say you’ve done it. Because that’s not good enough for me. That’s not good enough for us.”

The ache in his voice echoed throughout every part of me. I hated the doubt in his eyes, but more than that, I hated that I was the one who’d put it there.

I laid my palm on his chest so I could feel his heart beating. “This is nothing like last time.” The last time I’d been down this road, I’d been with Nash, and we’d been traveling for all the wrong reasons. I had no regret that we never finished the trip. “This is important to me, Tod. You are important to me.”

He stared into my eyes for another moment, searching. Reading. Then his irises burst with colors so bright they hurt to see, blues jumping and flickering like the flames at the center of a fire. And that’s what it felt like. Like his eyes reflected the blaze burning deep inside him, and I could feel the heat within me answering in return. That heat built, spiraling tighter and hotter in the narrow inches of space separating us until I knew that if I touched him, I might actually see the spark jump from my skin to his.

Then, suddenly, the anticipation was too much.

Tod lifted me, and I wrapped my legs around his waist. My mouth found his, and I couldn’t taste enough of him. He was warm, when everything else was cold. He was sweet, when the world tasted bitter. He was mine, and I wanted to be his, in every sense possible.

I’m not sure how we wound up on the bed, but suddenly my pillow was beneath my head, and Tod was over me, and I could touch him without having to hang on for balance. His mouth fed from mine, desperately, hungrily, then suddenly his lips were gone, and mine were left open. Empty and lonely.

But then he kissed my neck, and I gasped as he worked his way lower, my fingers tangled in his hair, my body alive with possibility, on fire from every touch.

My jeans came off slowly, his fingers trailing over my hips, then down my legs along with the material.

His jeans came off in an instant, and briefly I wondered if there was some kind of quick-release trigger built into his zipper.

Then my underwear was gone, and his was gone, and he settled onto the bed next to me on his side, one hand at my hip, splayed out like he couldn’t touch enough of me with only the two hands he was born with.

“I love you, Kaylee. More than I’ve ever loved anyone. More than I will ever love anyone. If I could freeze this moment in time and never have to let you go, I would do it without a second thought.”

“I love you, too.” I pulled him down for a kiss. “But maybe we could freeze the next moment instead,” I whispered against his cheek when he settled over me.