A four-letter word. It shouldn’t have been complicated. There were probably thousands of four-letter words in my mother tongue. But my mind was a treacherous thing, and it betrayed me. Often. And the only word I could think of was a very particular one. One that, despite not being too long, was powerful enough to change things. To change people’s lives. To move mountains and start wars.

It was a big word that I had promised myself I wouldn’t give anybody without being sure I meant it with every single molecule in my body. Without being sure I was safe.

My silence seemed to give Aaron the perfect opportunity to keep exploring my skin. His mouth causing my heart to pound against my chest.

“I don’t know,” I murmured distractedly. Scared and turned on too.

More kisses were brushed against my skin, making me fight to catch my breath.

“It’s okay,” he said like he really meant it. “We can break the rules. That’s the magic in being us, the ones making them.”

He took my mouth keenly, getting me out of my head for a blissful moment. And when we came up for air, his head dipped one more time, placing an openmouthed kiss above my heart. “Corazón,” he said softly, so softly that the word seeped into my blood, mixing with my own so it would never be able to leave. “Heart. That’s your heart. Seven letters.”

Looking into his eyes for a long moment, I swore I could see in them everything he wasn’t voicing. I’ll make it mine. And everything I wasn’t brave enough to say. Take it.

When Aaron finally spoke, it sounded like a promise. “I’ll earn my four-letter word.”

And there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that he would. But at what cost?

Chapter Twenty-Four

The experience of waking up next to Aaron that following morning had absolutely nothing to do with the two other times I had opened my eyes to find him lying in the same bed.

For one, we were naked. Something I thought I could quickly get used to. Effortlessly.

Then, there was this teeny-tiny thing that separated this morning from the previous ones. A technicality really. And that was the beaming grin already on my face. It was stupidly wide, and I was afraid I might have slept with it. Ridiculous, I knew. But who had the time to be embarrassed when Aaron Blackford was right there, all big and naked and ready to be eaten?

Not me.

And not when something definitely not tiny was throbbing against my thigh.

Aaron grunted, shifting and pushing that pulsating part of his body into me.

Ah, hello, new favorite limb.

“Morning,” he rasped. His voice was thick with sleep, begging me to snuggle into him.

“Mmm,” I managed to answer.

It was terribly rude of me, but I was busy with more important stuff. Like learning every inch of his chest with my hands. Or the abs that topped his stomach. And that narrow trail of dark hair. Yes, I needed to get well acquainted with that too.

“Your parents are picking us up soon,” he told me almost breathlessly.

“Yep.” I was aware. “But one hour is sixty minutes, and if we manage to pack our suitcases in five and shower in … three? That leaves us with fifty-two whole minutes.” Time I was planning to spend learning more of Aaron’s body. “One can do many things with so many minutes. It’s all about time management.”

My fingers continued their pathway down, down, down. Finally closing around his length. Aaron pushed his hips up into my palm.

“Baby.” The word sounded strangled. But I continued palming his hardness up and down. “Do you want to kill me?”

He kept asking me that as if I had the answer.

“No?” I rasped, my focus completely gone. “Yes?”

His hips thrust into my hand again.

“What was the question?”

Aaron groaned, and his hand came to rest on the small of my back, pulling me to his side—hard—making me straddle his hip. Unconsciously, instinctively, I rocked against him, looking for release. Just like Aaron was doing into my hand.

At that moment, I was starting to consider the possibility of forgetting about my suitcase, my parents, our flights back, work, life, and basically anything outside this bed. Anything that wasn’t Aaron. I simply didn’t care enough.

And the next thing I knew, we were up in the air. Well, I was.

With my body in his arms, Aaron crossed the distance to the en suite bathroom in a few long strides. He turned the shower on without placing me on the floor.

“I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but fifty-two minutes is not nearly enough time for what I want to do to you. So, we’ll need to multitask,” he explained, placing me under the stream of hot water. His eyes roamed up and down my body, hunger obscuring the blue in them.

“Time management and multitasking,” I told him, watching him step inside the shower with me. “You have an impressive résumé, Mr. Blackford.”

His hands came to rest on my hips. The grip of his fingers demanding. Desperate. “And I don’t shy away from a challenge. Please add that in there too.” His body pressed mine against the cold and smooth tiles. “I’ll just have to make you come with my tongue while we shower.” My new favorite word peeked out, traveling along his lower lip.

Hot fucking damn.

“And maybe again while we pack. All of it under fifty-two minutes. But I’m pretty sure I’ll manage.”

Oh boy. And did he ever.

Against all odds, we had made it on time.

Turned out that Aaron’s soft skills were really that impressive.

My parents drove us to the airport with more than enough extra time to have breakfast in the terminal before boarding.

Once in the plane, Aaron’s arm draped around my shoulders, and I snuggled right into his side. My head rested into the crook of his neck, his delicious scent engulfing me and causing a multitude of happy sighs to leave my lips. The feeling of this new sense of normalcy that had been born between us calmed me enough to knock me out, even before takeoff.

It wasn’t until we touched American ground that a familiar alarm went off in my head. The conversation. If I were smart, I would have used that large amount of time we had been confined in the same space to have one. We needed to draw lines, to define and box whatever this thing between us was. To … decide what to do about it. Because while I wouldn’t normally feel that kind of pressure, Aaron wasn’t just anybody. He wasn’t a man I had started casually dating or one I had had a night of amazing, mind-blowing sex with. He was Aaron. My Aaron. My work colleague. Soon, my boss. And that screamed to take a different approach to this. Whatever he wanted it to be. Whatever we wanted to make it.

But for that, we needed to talk.

His hand came to rest at the small of my back, his thumb brushing a circle over my T-shirt. I looked up at him, finding his gaze already on me. Damn, those eyes of his were quickly becoming my favorite thing in the world. Even more so than triple-chocolate brownies.

We had just crossed the Arrivals gate, so we found ourselves in the middle of the terminal. On New York soil. Only a few feet from what awaited us outside the airport. Whatever that was.

“Lina,” he said softly.

Judging by the way he had uttered my name, the weight with which he had said it, I knew he was going to tell me something important. But that simple word—my name, not Catalina, but Lina—from his lips did things to me. To my chest, to my head.

“I love hearing that. My name.” My confession left my lips quietly, as if it were meant to be just a thought. “You don’t call me Lina nearly enough.”

Aaron looked into my eyes for a long moment, not speaking. Not acknowledging my fleeting comment. It wasn’t until I thought he wasn’t going to say anything at all—that we would walk out of that airport in silence and continue our merry separate ways—that he spoke, “Come home with me. To my place.”