Free Darker the Release by Claire Kent Page A

her mouth to answer. To speak one word. To do what she was here to do. Deceive and manipulate him.
    Her throat closed around the sound. She couldn’t speak it.
    Horrified, she looked away, tried to clear her throat—although she ended up gagging a little.
    “Kelly?” Caleb prompted. He wasn’t like any other man would have been in this situation. He wasn’t sentimental or seductive or persuasive or reduced to awkward, mumbling incoherence. He was simply Caleb. Calm and controlled despite his earnestness, with a slight flicker of uncertainty she could still detect.
    “I do,” she choked out, her whole body shaking again the way it had when she’d been on the phone with Jack and realized how desperately she wanted Caleb to be innocent. “I want to be with you.”
    He lifted her chin so she had to meet his gaze, his eyes searching her expression almost desperately, as if looking for the truth of her words.
    “For real,” she added. “I want to be with you for real.”
    There. She had said it. And she knew it had been convincing.
    Because she meant it. For the first time in her entire life. She wanted to be with a man for real. To truly open herself up to someone. To be with him in a genuine sharing of selves. Not just a body but a whole person.
    A tiny, fluttering part of herself—a part she’d thought she had vanquished for good—wanted that. Wanted it so badly her chest began to ache.
    But this was Caleb. And no matter what he was feeling now, and no matter how much he was genuinely trying to be something he’d never been before, he still might have killed her father.
    So she had to hold enough back to protect herself if that was the truth that finally came to light.
    Her reflections hadn’t lasted more than a few seconds, and in those seconds Caleb had raised one hand to her face. He brushed her cheek and then combed his fingers into her hair, curving them around the back of her head.
    “There are things about you, Kelly,” he murmured, “that I still need to know. I don’t do well with unanswered questions. But I’m realizing the questions don’t matter as much as the answers I already have. And I’ve never once, in all my life, wanted to be this close to anyone. This is different for me, Kelly. You know that, don’t you?”
    She nodded, not because he expected her to but because it was the truth. She did know it.
    He looked down at the floor for a minute and then looked back to meet her eyes. “I’ve never been in love. I’m forty-four years old, and this is the first time in my life when I’ve even wondered if I might be. I’m not sure if I know what love feels like.”
    Her breath caught in her throat, and she couldn’t look away from the tenderness, the hesitance, the growing warmth in his eyes. She was trembling visibly now. He would have to see it.
    “But I think it has to feel like this. Like…like you matter more to me than…than even I do.”
    She couldn’t breathe, could barely see. Her whole body was shaking helplessly. She reached out for him, and he took her hands. Held them in both of his.
    “So I’m going to say it,” he murmured thickly. “Because I really think it’s true.”
    “Caleb,” she choked. She freed her hands so she could clutch at him, and he wrapped his arms around her.
    “I want to say it,” Caleb said in a rough murmur, nuzzling her hair and the crook of her neck. He was holding her so tightly it was almost painful. “I want to tell you, blossom. Is that okay?”
    “Yes.” She was almost crying as the emotion spiraled up in consecutive waves of fear and pleasure and grief and joy. “Tell me.”
    He made a guttural sound and pulled back so he was looking her in the eyes again. “I love you, Kelly.”
    She shook with stifled sobs.
    He might be innocent. He had to be innocent. This man could never have killed her father.
    He released a little groan and pulled her back into his arms, murmuring against her hair. “I love you, baby. I really do.