Page 49 of Just One More Night

“It was you, Stefan. I thought of nothing else for two years, and then I came here to find that you’re everything I had imagined and so much more.” Her heart was thundering at her. She felt almost shaky standing still. But she looked at him and none of that mattered. “You were right—there was part of this that terrified me. I walked away, but really, I think I only did it to see if I could. To see if you’d let me. And you did.”

“I’m doing the same thing now,” Stefan gritted out. “But I should tell you, I was never much of a martyr. The longer you stand here, not leaving, the less I can remember why I’m not convincing you to stay.”

“You can’t convince me to stay,” Indy said softly. “No one could ever convince me to stay. Because a long time ago, I decided that I needed to be a rolling stone. That I could never stay in one place too long. That it would take something from me if I did. Do you know what I think that was?”

Another hint of dryness. “Not daddy issues, I understand.”

“Because I thought I had to be different from how I started. Just like I decided I couldn’t do well in school because my sister did. I had to distinguish myself.” She pulled in a breath. “I took something that might have cut a different girl off at the knees, a dumb older boy taking private things and making them public, and I owned it. And do you know what, Stefan? It felt good. Powerful.”

“As it should.”

“I tasted that at fourteen and all I wanted was more. So I had whatever sex I felt like having. I was a stripper because why not? I liked taking off my clothes, and more than that, I liked people’s reactions when they found out that’s what I did.” Indy had never talked about these things like this. She had never laid out her life, not like this. But it didn’t feel likeherlife any longer, did it? She focused on him. “And ever since then, I’ve done exactly as I pleased. I’ve gone wherever I wanted, taken lovers and friends as I liked and left them, too, without a qualm. You’re the only man I’ve ever come back to. Twice.”

“This is how I know you will come back again.” His voice was a low, rough sound. “As I have told you, I will wait for you.”

“But yesterday taught me something,” Indy said, as if he hadn’t spoken. “It taught me everything. I already know what my passion is, Stefan. I finally figured it out.”

She watched him gather himself, as if he expected a blow. And she could tell that he was a man used to taking blows, and returning them in kind. Those hands might curl into fists but she knew, deep inside, that he would never strike back when it was her.

“It’s you,” Indy said softly. “My passion is you. And with you, Stefan, I can do anything.”

He let out a sound she didn’t recognize, because it was low, almost animal.

And she didn’t wait. She vaulted onto the counter, and then crawled across it until she was kneeling there in front of him, her face to his. Then she took the jaw that had given him away in her hands, and held him there.

Fully aware that he allowed it.

But this would be their life, she understood then. He would always allow her to leave, and so she would stay. And she would have this power over him, because he let her—and because she would never abuse it.

“You need to be sure,” he said, his voice a mere scrape of sound. But his gaze was loud. “Very, very sure. Because if you choose me, this, now... I will not have it in me to be quite so forgiving as I might have sounded.”

“I don’t want forgiving,” Indy told him fiercely. “I want you, Stefan. I’m not afraid of your darkness. I know all about the light and I think deep down, beneath everything, it turns out I’ve been a jealous, possessive, dark kind of woman all along. Can you handle that?”

His smile was a long time coming, but when he finally surrendered to it, it took over his face. “I can handle it. Can you?”

“You and me,” she said. “No one else. I dare you.”

He was picking her up, holding her in his arms and then lifting her up above, as if he needed to look at her in the sunlight. She gazed down at him, aware only when her cheeks began to ache that she was smiling so hard, so wide, she might as well have been the sun herself.

“I will never understand where you came from that night,” he said, his voice as intent as his gaze.

“All that traveling. All those adventures. All of them were leading me to you.” Indy wrapped her legs around his waist when he let her slide down his body, smiling even brighter when they were face to face. “I love you, Stefan. I thought love at first sight was a myth, but then there you were.”

“I love you,” he replied.

And she kissed him, or maybe he kissed her, and everything was a tangle of heat and need and better still—best of all—love.

When he pulled away again, neither one of them was breathing steadily.

Indy hoped they never would.

“Now,” he murmured, his bright blue eyes turning wicked. “About that dare.”

Then he showed her how he met a challenge, right there on the counter again. How he would always meet a challenge, especially if it was her.

How they would always find their way back to each other, to that perfect fit that was only theirs.

Their hot, sweet, life-altering love, that was worth changing a world or two.