She was awakened with a kiss.
She responded without thought, knowing the shape and taste of this mouth as well as she knew her own heart. When he lifted his head, she sighed and murmured, "Declan." Then she blinked in the darkness of her room, memory and reality colliding with a suddenness that left her gasping and staring at the shadow above her. "Declan?"
"Probably should’ve let you sleep but couldn’t resist. Also, I kind of broke your door security. Sorry."
It sounded like Declan, felt like him, smelled just as delicious, but… "How…how…?"
He chuckled. "Go back to sleep, honey. We can talk in the—"
"Wait," she commanded, fisting a hand in his shirt to keep him there and reaching over to touch a light control.
Warm light flooded her bedroom, illuminating the miracle sitting on the edge of her bed. Declan. His blue eyes sparkled in the light with a teasing flash of indigo, his dark hair and the rugged planes of his face making him look like a devilish pirate.
"You’re here?" she squeaked, utterly dumbfounded.
"Yeah. After you left, I got read the riot act by damn near everybody. Except Pete. He stopped talking to me. My mother even…" He paused, rubbing at his right ear with a wince. "Well, she got ornery. Demanded to know why the hell you had to be the one shuttling back and forth, and when was the last time I took a blasted vacation. She insisted you were worth any risk. Pretty much threw me off my own station."
Ryelle slowly sat up, studying his face. He had a queer little smile on his face and he was staring at her collarbone with a darkened cast to his cheekbones.
"Risk?" she whispered.
He sighed, shifted on the mattress, and then lifted his gaze back to hers. "I’m an idiot."
"Declan, you’re scaring me. What did you do?"
"I fell in love with you again. No, I fell in love with you more. Never stopped. You’ve been twisting me in knots since I was nineteen." She tried to speak, but he covered her mouth. "Let me finish. I tried to forget you, tried to move on with life, but then you showed up again, and I remembered all the reasons I fell for you in the first place, plus a few more. You always did have the most amazing view of the universe, but now you’ve got this way of changing directions on the fly that keeps me on my toes. I want you to keep me on my toes the rest of my life. I don’t want to live without you anymore. I don’t think I can. Ryelle, will you marry me?"
She tackled him. Since she did it with everything she had, including her talent, neither one of them was in any shape to speak for a very long while.
When they finally lay, naked and sated, limbs twined and breath slowing, he rasped, "Was that a yes?"
Face pressed to his chest, she mumbled, "If I had an ounce of energy left in me, I’d hit you."
"Why?"
With a sigh, she gathered her strength and drew herself up until they were face to face. "Because I’ve loved you forever. And I’m going to love you for the rest of forever. Of course it was a yes."
For the first time in fifteen years, Ryelle saw his sunshine smile and heard that warm honey voice shaping her name again.
* * *
If you enjoyed this story, be sure to look for more titles by Michelle O’Leary in the Kindle Store, or visit the author’s website Fertile Ground at: http://www.michelle-oleary.com
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