Maybe he hadn’t actually said he loved her, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t see how much he cared about her in every look he gave her, and feel it in every kiss, every time he was moving inside of her and making her soul take flight.

She heard Rafe’s boots on her front porch and purposely said the one thing she knew would send her parents into even more of a tizzy. "Speak of the devil," she said with particular emphasis on the word devil, "he’s just coming up the stairs now. I’ve got to go."

"Brooke—"

She didn’t just hang up on them, she actually pulled the entire phone from the wall, leaving chocolate handprints on everything she touched.

"Thank God you’re here," she said to Rafe when he stepped inside.

He was instantly worried. "What happened?"

She shook her head, reaching for him. "Nothing you can’t fix." As he caught her up in his arms, she asked him, "How did you know I needed you right this second?"

"Because I need you, too. So damned bad that it nearly killed me to leave you alone so that you could get your work done."

"I don’t want to be left alone." Not when he was everything she needed.

"Tell me what you do want, sweetheart."

"You." She pressed her mouth to the pulse point at the side of his neck. "Just you."

Chapter Twenty

Rafe lifted her up onto the kitchen counter so that she could wrap her arms and legs around him as he kissed her. "You taste so sweet."

"It’s the chocolate."

"No, it’s all you."

Her eyes filled up and her breath hitched in her lungs. Just as she’d told her parents, Rafe was different. Special. And he’d always noticed more than other people.

To distract him from the questions she could see in his eyes—questions she didn’t want to answer until she’d drawn strength from the beauty of their connection—she dipped her finger into the bowl of cooling ganache. "Taste this."

She knew she hadn’t fooled him, but he was kind enough to let her sidetrack him as he lowered his mouth to her finger and licked it off.

"Do you like it?"

"I do," he said before he dipped his own finger into the bowl. Instead of feeding it to her, his mouth curved into the wicked smile she so loved to see. "But I’m guessing it will taste even better like this."

He slowly slid his chocolate-covered finger across the upper curve of one breast above the neckline of her sundress. The anticipation of feeling his tongue in the same place held her breath captive in her lungs. Of course, he made her wait by tracing another stripe of chocolate over the other side.

Finally, he lowered his head and slicked his tongue, warm and wet, over her skin. His shoulder muscles were hard beneath her hands as she held onto him for dear life. It was either that or go sliding off the counter in a puddle of liquid heat.

"I was wrong," he said after he’d licked up all of the chocolate.

The feel of his tongue on her bare skin, especially in the middle of the day in her kitchen while she had her legs wrapped around him, had turned her brain to mush. Somehow, she got her synapses to fire enough to ask, "You were?" even though she honestly couldn’t remember what he could be wrong about.

"You taste so good that even the best chocolate in the world can’t compare."

She’d been with men for months who hadn’t made her feel as special as Rafe had in less than a week. She’d always been a little bit in love with him as a girl, had watched him be wild and free with stars in her eyes. But now she knew just how much more there was to him. He was a man who would do anything for his family. He was the P.I. who helped strangers with their problems by tracking down the answers they needed. And he was her lover who whispered the sweetest words she’d ever heard.

How could she do anything but fall all the way?

Brooke cupped his face in her hands and kissed him with all the love in her heart. But even though his kisses were pure magic, right now she needed more. She needed all of him, needed to feel him move inside of her and fill up all the spaces that the phone call with her parents had left empty.

She grabbed at his T-shirt so hard that it ripped as she yanked it up over his head. Her hands were at the fly of his jeans a heartbeat later, and thank God, he didn’t try to stall her this time, wasn’t planning to tease her today until she was begging.

He kicked off his jeans and boxers, and then he was lifting her hips off the counter enough that she could pull off her own dress. She was unhooking her bra when he reached for the lace between her legs and tore it from her body.

The thrill of being wanted, of being desired this much, shook through her. Completely naked now, she threw her arms and legs around him as he fisted his hands in her hair. Rafe tilted her head so that he could plunder her mouth in a sizzling kiss that told her exactly how he wanted her, hot and writhing beneath him, skin damp as she came again and again at his command.

The next thing she knew, he was pushing her bottom toward the center of the kitchen counter, and he was climbing up onto it with her. The granite was blessedly cool beneath her overheated skin, but Rafe’s hands moving over every inch of her were more than enough to warm her again.

Both of them had slid into the chocolate by then and were covering each other’s skin with it as they stroked and touched, licked and nibbled. What a thrill it was to have her two favorite things in the world at the same time: Rafe and chocolate.

She was just thinking how much easier it would be to never taste or make truffles again than it would be to lose Rafe when he sent all thoughts of loss from her head by moving fully between her thighs and driving into her in one perfect thrust.

"Oh God, Rafe."

Her words sounded as if they had come from a great distance rather than from her own lips. She was faintly aware of one of his large hands cradling her head while the other cupped her hip, protecting her from the granite, but she would have gladly gotten a few bruises. She didn’t care about being safe, didn’t care about anything but loving—and being loved—by the most beautiful man in the world. When they were together like this, nothing else mattered, only the joy that took her over from head to toe, inside and out.

She couldn’t stop saying his name as he took her higher, and then higher still, and she finally realized he was saying her name, too, as their mouths found each other again in a heated kiss. Even caught up in desperation, they moved in perfect sync, from fast to slow and then back again. And when the wicked beauty of their lovemaking finally overwhelmed her, she arched back to take him even deeper as he held her tighter than he ever had before. Brooke had never felt more whole than she did as she came apart beneath him, his own release just moments behind hers.