I ignored the pounding in my head from getting up too fast and looked around, panic welling in my chest. “What’s wrong?”

“You scared the shit out of me, Bai.” His voice rose. “What the fuck are you doing asleep on the bathroom floor?”

I shrugged, shrinking into myself. Stupidly, I pointed to the wall and murmured, “I must have passed out counting the tiles.”

His brow bunched, his gaze moving to where I was pointing. “The what?” he huffed.

“The tiles,” I whispered. “I count them when you’re not home. It helps…” I trailed off.

His features changed from confusion to understanding, and he looked over at the wall, his eyes moving quickly from side to side as if he was able to count in a few seconds what typically took me hours. Then his head dropped forward, a long sigh leaving him. “I’m sorry,” he said, blindly reaching for me.

I met him half way, my fingertips grazing his before I settled my palm in his waiting one. And when he looked up, his gaze locked on mine, I saw the darkness around his eyes, the redness surrounding his pupils and the agony in his stare. “Let’s just go to bed, okay?” he said. “I just want to hold you.” So I let him help me to stand, let him lead me to the bed, and when he stood on the side of the single piece of furniture I spent the last three years dreaming of and yearning for, I realized how stupid I’d been. Nate—he didn’t have to do any of the things he’d done for me, from the moment he found me, to the moment he saved me, to now.

He owed me nothing.

And I owed him my life.

Stepping forward, I flattened my hand on his chest and looked up at him. He was so tall, so intimidating. “I missed you tonight,” I told him truthfully. “I mean, more than I normally do.”

“When I got home, and you weren’t in bed…” His voice cracked and he pulled away, just enough to search my gaze. “…And then I found you on the bathroom floor, and I thought…”

“Nate…”

It was almost as if everything left him at once—the air in his lungs, the fear in his heart, even the will to stand. He inhaled deeply as he sat on the edge of the bed, his eyes drifting shut when he wrapped his arms around me, holding me close.

There was nothing between us now. Nothing but a moment I didn’t realize was defining until it was it too late.

With a shaky breath, he pulled me closer, my legs between his and when he looked up, dark, sad eyes stared into mine. “It’s bad enough I can’t be around to protect you, but fuck, Bailey, I don’t know what I’d do if anything ever happened to you.” His words felt so real, so raw and so full of anguish and in that moment, there was absolutely nothing more I wanted in my life than Nate DeLuca. And when his eyes began to fill, and he dropped his gaze, hoping I hadn’t seen his agony, I ignored the voices in my head, yelling and screaming that he wasn’t enough, and that he never could be.

“Look at me, Nathaniel.”

He rubbed his eyes against my shirt, sniffing once before looking up, and when he did, vulnerability flashed in his eyes, a moment of weakness his pride wasn’t strong enough to hide. He started to look away, but I held his head in my hands, forcing him to face me. “Don’t do that.”

“Do what?” he asked, attempting to move away from my touch.

I held on to him tighter. “Don’t you dare hide your pain or your fear.” Breaking our stare, I added, “Look around you, Nate. Every second of every day, that’s all that surrounds me. Pain and Fear.” I switched my focus back to him. “I’m in the safest place I could possibly be, and you made sure of that. But you—you’re out there every day, and every day it’s a risk. I spend minute after minute worried about you, wondering if you’re going to come home to me.” I leaned down, watching his eyes drift shut in anticipation of my touch. “Don’t hide it,” I whispered against his lips as my hands lowered, my fingers toying with the top button of his shirt. “I feel your pain. I live your fear.”

His kiss was calm, his touch was not, and as I fumbled with the buttons of his shirt, his mouth moved to my neck, my shoulder, my collarbone. The air felt thick in my lungs, as heavy as the weight of our repressed feelings. When I was done with the buttons, I pushed his shirt off his shoulders and laced my fingers through his hair, gripping tight and making him look at me. “We can suffer together, Nate.”

I don’t know if it was my words or the moan that escaped me when his thumb brushed my nipple, but something in him switched. There was no longer a trace of vulnerability within him when he slid his hands up my sides, pushing my shirt up and over my head.

I stood there in nothing but a pair of his boxer shorts, my naked breasts only inches in front of him. I started to cover them, but he held on to my hands, not forceful but gentle because he knew. He knew I’d want to cover my body, this part of me that no other man had seen before him. And even though my pulse raced when his eyes lowered, taking me in for the first time, I knew I trusted him. Because he’d done nothing but make me feel safe from the moment he saw me. So when he leaned forward, his wet lips parting as he glanced up at me through his thick, dark lashes, I released all prior insecurities and let him do what he thought he needed to do.

What he was best at.

I let him take care of me.

The warmth of his mouth covered my nipple, and my back arched involuntarily, my fingers gripping his hair. He moaned against me, the vibrations pulsing through my skin, through my veins, directly to my core. My body was on fire, my muscles weak beneath his touch. He must have sensed it. Felt it somehow. Because he wrapped an arm around my waist, his mouth still around my breast as he lifted me slightly, his other hand grasping my thigh. He settled me back down on his lap, his mouth switching to my other breast while his hand flattened against the small of my back, fingers splayed as he pulled me closer to him.

I could feel his hardness pressed against his slacks, rubbing against my center while his tongue circled agonizingly slow. And I couldn’t tell you if I was breathing harshly, or not breathing at all because all other sensations fled, and the only thing I could feel was the pleasure building in my center. My hips circled, my head lolled back, my hair brushing against my lower back. It must have tickled his thighs because the next thing I knew, my hair was being tugged, over and over as if his hand had grasped the ends and wound and wound until it was wrapped in his fist.

It was almost too much, the lightness of his tongue against my flesh as he moved from my breasts, up my chest, and onto my neck, leaving a trail of wetness behind. The heat of his lips mixed with the cold of the thick air set off a burn somewhere deep in the pit of my stomach. It wasn’t the first time I’d felt it. In the past, when he’d kissed me, when he’d touched me in ways not meant to create the thoughts that would subsequently run through my mind—touches meant to comfort, not to tease—I still wanted more of him but was too ashamed to ask.

“Fuck, Bailey,” he said before his teeth clamped down on my shoulder and his hands did the same to my thighs. “You gotta stop with those noises.”

I didn’t realize I was making any.

“And you gotta stop moving. Just for a second.” It was a plea. One I didn’t really understand until his hand left me to undo the button and fly on his pants. His cock sprung free, still restrained in his black boxer shorts, but it was there, and it was hard and when he said, “You keep moving on me like that, and I won’t be able to hold off,” I knew it was for me.