“What’s up?”

“You look beautiful,” he said, and came toward me. He moved slowly, like a predator, inspecting the length of my dress and stalling at the neckline, the cleavage, before slowly bringing his eyes to mine. “Absolutely stunning.”

“Thank you, but that’s not why you came. Are you…?”

“Not backing out. I just have a question. Something I haven’t been able to stop thinking about for days.”

“What?”

As he continued moving closer, my chest warmed. That heat spread through my limbs until my fingertips buzzed with warmth, a need to reach out and run my hands down his lapels. Settle my hand at his heart to see if it was racing as much as mine.

“Before we go out there and do this, I wanted to know how you wanted to handle something.”

“The ceremony?”

“No.” He stopped directly in front of me. So much taller than me normally, with my high heels, I barely had to tilt my chin up to meet his gaze.

His dark eyes slid back and forth, scanning my face, my own eyes. He smelled like spice and pine trees and a crisp, fall day in the Northeast.

“What then?”

“The kiss.”

He swallowed as he said it, and I swore his eyes dropped to my mouth before quickly flipping back up to meet mine. That heat running through my veins grew hotter, until that burn crept up my throat to my cheeks.

Oh God. I hadn’t considered. I hadn’t even thought of the kiss. He’d brought up sex, quickly kicked it off the discussion table.

And yet… “Well, I guess, friends can kiss? Maybe on the cheek.”

“That won’t work.”

“Why not?”

He lifted his hand, brushed his knuckles along my jaw. I swore he leaned in even closer. A hair’s breadth away from me. Inches. So close I could see his pulse at the base of his throat.

“Because I haven’t been able to stop wondering what your lips will feel like.”

“Oh.”

Ohhh… I blinked rapidly. Several times. That meant he… he thought of me. Like I’d thought of him?

His hands cupped my cheeks, thumb brushed along my chin and he was there, bending down, lips kicking up at the corners once his mouth was almost to mine.

“Breathe,” he whispered, and then his lips brushed against mine and time stopped.

And wow. The earth spun and stopped. It tilted and righted itself. Everything inside of me shook and settled as our lips pressed together, learned the feel of each other. It was barely a kiss, but soft and warm and the heat that had begun dissipating earlier returned full force until I reached up and wrapped my hands around his forearms. Braced myself against him while he knocked me off my axis.

Until Kane’s thumb brushed over the spot where my stitches were removed.

Oh God. I was kissing a man who didn’t want me, even if this kiss made me believe different.

Hadn’t I wasted enough years with a man who wouldn’t want me, and only me, forever?