Nate’s family is a close one, and I’ve met his brother Leo several times, his sister Casey, and his even his parents, who are friendly, stable people who love to cook, laugh and entertain. Their house is a haven-like place that’s always full of visitors and guests. Leo is a serious character, good-looking and hard-working and totally focused on the company he runs with Nate. It’s Nate’s sister Casey who has become my closest friend. We’ve started talking on the phone almost every day, and having lunch together. When Nate’s away for business, we sometimes go to a movie together. She’s as kind as her older brother, and quick to laugh. It’s been a long time since I’ve had such a relaxed, meaningful friendship take hold.
It’s the people even more than the place that are giving me a new, unfamiliar sense of sprouting both roots and wings.
I see Riley sometimes, when we’re socializing, or at Walker family gatherings. He’s still one of the easiest people to be around that I’ve ever met, and we share a bond, a memory, a secret of sorts, that links us in an intense and unusual way. In spite of this, or maybe because of it, we enjoy each other’s company immensely. I feel like I’ve known him a long time and I feel almost indebted to him, in a way, for an opportune incitement that ended up changing my life.
Nate has become both my rock and my guiding light. He astounds me each and every day. He is an insatiable lover, a magician between the sheets, and the most brawny, perfectly imperfect, beautiful human being who ever walked this earth: I’m convinced of that. I trust him implicitly and I nurture his trust in me; it’s something I never, ever take for granted.
He’s busy with his work and so am I. This, I think, makes our time together something we treasure even more. Our relationship has taken on an intensity in just four months that would scare me if it was anyone other than Nate. He told me he loved me one week to the day after we met and he’s been telling me every day since. I never once thought that true love existed until I felt him touch me that very first time. In that pool, on that roof. I just can’t imagine anything being as life-affirming and soul-satisfying as the way Nate Walker makes me feel.
I love him with everything I have.
It’s late. I’m in bed, in that drifting state between wakefulness and sleep, when I hear him come in. He slips into bed with me and cradles me into his iron-strong embrace. He’s feeling for my hand and he finds it. My finger. There’s a coolness, and he slides something over my knuckle, settling it in place. “Don’t look now, but I bought you a present.”
I breathe him in, pulling him close to me. “What present?” But I know.
He knows I know. I can feel his smile against my neck. “Say yes,” he whispers, and I can feel him, opening me, finding his way inside.
I’m learning to control the pleasure, at times, but it’s bigger than I am. It fills me as he fills me and it’s all I can do to answer him. “Yes.”
Also by Juliette Jones
BILLIONAIRE
Coming soon:
BILLIONAIRE (Book Two)
WILD RIDE Page 11