Chapter Seventeen

She couldn’t have heard him right. Couldn’t possibly be drawing the right correlation between the words he’d spoken and the meaning her mind calculated in its wake.

Cassie shook her head. Blinked her eyes a few times and rewound what he’d said one more time in her head, but the sincerity on his face didn’t waver. Didn’t flinch or show a single sign of humor. She licked her lips, the effort woefully inadequate for how dry her mouth had gone. “I’m not sure I understand what you’re asking me.”

“You know what I want. What I’ve wanted since the night I picked you up for dinner. I have no intention of changing my mind.” He slid his hand from the side of her neck to the back of her head, his grip implacably holding her in place for his steely stare. “Be mine. Only mine. My wife.”

Holy hell.

As proposals went, it was completely unapologetic. An alpha’s open declaration of pursuit and verbal claim wrapped up in the guise of a request.

But he wanted her agreement. Her acquiescence and complete surrender. Not just a personal surrender, but of life as she’d known it—her career included. The stark determination was written in every feature—in the harsh press of his lips, the sharp angles of his cheeks and jaw and the unyielding resolve behind his ice-blue eyes.

It would be so easy. Too easy after the day she’d had. But rash decisions seldom paid off. Particularly when made in the aftermath of sudden change. Hell, she’d had a month of sudden changes.

She eased into him. Stroked her hands from his elbows to his shoulders and savored the strength of him beneath the cool, crisp fabric of his fine shirt. “I won’t lie to you. I want to say yes. Want to give you what you want and drown myself in the promise of some idyllic happily ever after.”

“Then do it.”

“It’s not that easy, Kir. Everything has changed for me since I met you. My day-to-day routine. My home. Twice. How I’m looking at my life, and what I want from it. Not to mention losing the job I’d fought so hard to build and finding myself in the middle of a murder.” She wrapped her arms around his neck. “I didn’t just choose honor today. I followed my conscience and the future I think the two of us can have together. The future I want for us to have. But I need for you to give me time to make sure I can commit at the level you want. Time to make sure my answer isn’t driven on wanting an escape, but on a real belief we can make it. That we’d be happy with each other for the long haul.”

“You know we will be.”

“I think we will be. But I’m reeling right now. My emotions are all over the board. Definitely not a frame of mind suited to making life-altering decisions like marriage. You deserve an answer I feel in my gut as well as my heart and my head. We both do.”