Free Atlanta Heat by Lora Leigh

so special?”
    “You don’t understand. It’s not like that.”
    “Then what’s it like, sweetheart?” He lowered his head, touched her lips, kept his eyes on hers. “I love you, Emerson. Do you really expect me to walk away now that I’ve found the woman I’ve searched for my entire adult life?”
    He loved her? How could he love her? She was gawky, accident-prone, and she didn’t know how to love. She would mess it up. Just by being her, she would exasperate him, frustrate him, until he didn’t love her any longer.
    “You’re wrong.” Her heart was racing in her chest, making it hard to breathe. “It’s just sex. It’s always just sex with you. Everyone says it is. All your lovers—” She shut up, her hand clamping over her mouth as a wicked smile bloomed across his lips.
    “You bothered to check me out with old lovers? I’m impressed, Emerson. I really am. Tell me, how close were you to clawing their eyes out?”
    So close it had terrified her each time. But she wasn’t about to admit it. “You’re crazy.”
    “I’d hate to run into one of your past lovers.” He was stalking her now, drawing closer. “I know who each one of them is, where they live, where they work, and what could destroy them. If I had to meet one of them, I’d break their bones.”
    Her eyes widened. He couldn’t be serious. It had to be a game.
    “Macey.” She held one hand out as he drew closer and she blinked back her own tears. “Don’t. Please. I can’t handle this.”
    “You don’t have a choice, Em. You have to face it,and you have to handle it. Because you’re going to have to look me in the eye and tell me you feel nothing for me to stop this. Can you do that? Can you tell me that all you wanted was a one-night stand?”
    Her lips parted, the need to tell him just that, to take the escape he was offering. But she was staring in his eyes, saw the pain in them, and the hope.
    “Why are you doing this to me?” Her hands fisted in the sheet as her control broke. Years of control, the determination to never cry or ask for love again.
    Her parents had always given her that vague pitying look whenever she cried, whenever she asked for hugs as a child. As though they weren’t quite certain what to do with her.
    “Because I won’t watch you run away from me.” He moved too quickly for her to avoid, pulling her into his arms before she could retreat further.
    “Put your arms around me, Em.” He lowered his lips to her ear as he held her against his chest. “Hold onto me. Let me hold onto you. Don’t you know, when you’re in my arms, I finally feel like I belong to one person rather than just having parts of me allotted out to family, friends and the Navy? When I hold you, Em, I’m whole.”
    “Don’t do this to me,” she whispered against his chest, and wrapped her arms desperately around his neck, terrified of falling.
    She was strong on her own, she knew how to do that. She knew how to be alone. She didn’t know how to be a part of a couple, she had proved that.
    “What am I doing to you, baby?”
    “You’re making me weak, Macey.” Tears slipped from beneath her lashes. “Don’t make me weak. I won’t survive when you walk away.”
    “I won’t walk away, Emerson.” He leaned back, one hand threading through her hair to draw her head back, allowing him to stare into her eyes. “Don’t you know that about me? I never walk away.”
    She did know that about him. Everyone knew Macey was stubborn, hard-headed, and he didn’t back down.
    “Why? Why do you love me?”
    His lips quirked. “Why do you love me?”
    Because he was funny, flirty, strong and certain. Because looking at him made her soul ache and her heart hope. But she didn’t say that; she couldn’t say that.
    “I love you, Em, simply because you’re you, and you belong to me. Your heart belongs to me. I want your kisses and your touches, your laughter and your fantasies to belong to me.”
    They had belonged to him for