I tugged gently and his head came up.

I drank him in.

Scar and all, he was beautiful.

To tell him this I slid the fingers of one of my hands to his face, running the tips along his cheekbone, down his nose to trail the path of the line of his lower lip. I trailed them over the scar on his upper lip then up again over the scar on his cheekbone, his temple and through the white streak in his hair. Once I’d accomplished this, my other hand slid the hank of hair that had fallen to his forehead to the side and, as expected, it fell right back to its original position.

I didn’t get to try again as Creed’s big body shifted up over me, settling in, covering me.

He pressed one hand under me so he was braced on one forearm in the bed but still holding me while his other hand curved against the side of my head, thumb sweeping out over my cheekbone and he spoke.

“To respond to your earlier comment, beautiful, yeah, like I mentioned before, I like ass play. But it’s not what you think. It’s tight, it feels good, absolutely, but that’s not it. It’s about trust. It’s about sharing. It’s about giving. For most people it’s about losing your inhibitions and opening yourself up to the next level of intimacy. And with you,” his face dipped closer as his voice dipped lower, “it’s about me giving back what was taken from you and you trusting me to do it. That wasn’t huge. That was something so big, there isn’t a word for it but the closest I can come to it is that it’s beautiful.”

He was not wrong so I agreed, “It was beautiful, baby.” My arms slid around him and held him tight. “And so are you.”

Creed’s eyes, already warm, warmed more, warming straight through me before he grinned and stated, “Glad you didn’t renege on your part of losin’ the challenge.”

I grinned back. “Me too.”

His thumb moved over my face, my cheekbone, down to my jaw and over my lips as his eyes watched and his grin faded.

Then his gaze came back to me.

“That month I was following you, watchin’ you, seein’ how you lived, dressed, what you did, I knew somethin’ had gone wrong. I didn’t know what. I thought you were with Dixon and he cheated on you, didn’t treat you right. The only thing I knew, your Daddy lied, you weren’t happy.”

I contradicted him gently, “Actually, I was happy, Creed.”

“Not the way you deserve to be happy,” he returned immediately.

I didn’t have a reply to that mostly because it didn’t need one. He was right.

He continued to hold my gaze and I knew he read what lay behind it when he whispered, “I’m glad you’re happy, my Sylvie.”

He gave it to me, kept giving it to me, open, honest, putting it right out there so I licked my lips and gave it back to him. “I have the only thing I ever wanted lying on top of me, so thanks for making me happy, Tucker Creed.”

Creed, being Creed, kept right on giving.

“Right back at ‘cha, baby.”

Okay, shit, God, shit!

I loved this man. I knew it but way back when, being young, I didn’t understand.

Now I did.

I so did.

It was time to steer us into waters that didn’t include me possibly bursting into tears and blubbering like a big girl.

“So, you’re the boss tonight, what’s the plan? Are we gonna sleep all oiled up or are we gonna shower before we go to sleep?”

“Sheets are f**ked up. We shower, we gotta change them or we’ll get oiled right back up again.”

This was true, so I gave him the info he needed to make his decision, “I know one thing, I’m not changing sheets tonight.”

Creed smiled. “Then we sleep oiled up.”

That worked for me.

He rolled to his light, I rolled to mine and I barely had it out before I was hauled back to the middle of the bed, tucked close to Creed.

My body, tired out, relaxed, loose, felt sleepy. My mind didn’t.

I was thinking of him following me for a month and wondering, if the roles were reversed and it was me who found him again, how I’d feel. What I’d do. How difficult it would be to stay remote and not approach, especially if I discovered he hadn’t left me of his own free will but had been coerced into it.

“How’d you do it?” I asked his throat in the dark.

“Do what?” Creed asked back.

“Follow me, watch me, go through my shit and keep distant? If it was me –”

His voice held a hint of humor and a hint of hardness when he cut me off. “You would have shot me.”

I tipped my head back and grinned at his shadowy face. “Yeah. But if I figured it out, if I learned it was as it was, I wouldn’t have been able to do it.”

His arms around me pulled me deeper into his warm, hard body as he replied quietly, “If it was you, except for the scar, I haven’t changed. Got older but not changed. There wouldn’t be a reason to delay approach. You…” he trailed off and didn’t speak again.

“I changed and that freaked you out?” I guessed.

“You did and you didn’t but the way you did meant my approach needed to be cautious. That tough skin, those sharp edges, both of them you had in a way a man could work a lifetime and not break through, proceed with caution and still get sliced to shreds. I wanted you back and I needed to find the right way to finesse that. When I went through your house, I saw you’d kept my necklaces so I had hope but I knew I couldn’t go gung ho. I had to understand what forced the change in you and I had to get that from you so I could form a plan.” His hands slid up my still slick back. “Which is what I did.”

And I was glad he did.

I pressed closer and said softly, “It killed.”

His hands stopped moving so his arms could wrap around tight. “Yeah, watchin’ you. Followin’ you. Goin’ through your stuff. Knowin’ your life didn’t go as I was promised it would but something went down that was not good, yeah. It f**kin’ killed.”

I closed my eyes and shoved my face in his throat.

“It’s also over,” he went on.

“It’s over,” I agreed, holding him close.

“And bottom line, it meant you weren’t in Kentucky livin’ a good life without me but open for an approach. It might have sucked for a while but now we got the future we both didn’t think we would ever have, so it was worth every f**kin’ minute.”