Ty completely tuned out what Sam was saying, focusing instead on the way the soft dress Imogen wore clung to her ass.
“Isn’t that right, Ty?” Sam asked him a minute later.
“Yeah, absolutely,” he said with no clue as to what he was agreeing with.
Given the look Sam gave him, he hadn’t fooled his crew chief.
And he didn’t care. He was in love and at the moment nothing else seemed to matter quite as much as that did.
Ty stared at Imogen, his chest tight, his mood elated, knowing he could just watch and watch her indefinitely . . . that she made him happy. God, he was in love with her. It was true. When you knew, you knew.
“We need to leave,” he said suddenly, interrupting Sam mid-sentence in whatever he was saying to Imogen.
Both Sam and Imogen swung their heads to stare at him.
“Are you okay?” Imogen asked him, her eyes filled with concern.
“I’m fine. Great. I just realized there’s something I need to do.” What he needed to do was get her alone and tell her how he felt, because now that he knew, he felt fairly bursting with the knowledge.
“Okay. I’ll catch up with you later,” Sam said. “Nice to meet you, Imogen.”
Imogen said her good-byes, then they were rounding up the kids and hustling them back to their parents. At least Ty was hustling. Imogen didn’t seem in a hurry and the kids were downright dragging their feet, which was making him agitated.
By the time they got to his coach, he was about to crawl out of his own skin. It felt like his whole life had just shifted in an instant and he needed to share that with Imogen, the first woman he had ever truly fallen in love with, the woman he wanted to spend every moment with, the woman he wanted to wake up next to.
“What on earth is wrong with you?” she asked as he threw open the door with a fair amount of force and strode into the coach.
Ty just turned around. “Close the door behind you.”
“I did.” She put her hands on her hips, the gesture bunching the fabric of her soft blue dress. “Did you drink too much coffee, Ty? You’re acting like you’re hopped up on caffeine or amphetamines. It’s a little unnerving.”
He took a deep breath, then twined both of her hands through his. “I’m fine. I just wanted to be alone with you.”
She smiled. “You are incorrigible and oversexed.”
“Not today. I haven’t had sex at all today.” He leaned forward and kissed her, closing his eyes briefly.
“Very funny.”
“Hey, Emma Jean?”
“Yes?”
“Do you recognize this quote? ‘When I saw you I fell in love, and you smiled because you knew.’ ”
There was a pause, and she looked at him puzzled. “Yes. That’s Shakespeare, of course. Why?”
“Because that’s the way I feel. I think the first day I met you I fell just a little bit in love with you, and you knew. Something has drawn us together from the beginning, don’t you think?”
“It sort of seems that way,” she whispered.
“We’ve both been attracted to each other for months, but we didn’t do anything about it, and now that we have, well, it’s so good. It’s better than good. It’s . . . amazing.”
She nodded. “It is. I’m very happy with you.”
God love an honest woman who played no games. It was one more reason he adored her.
So he squeezed her hands more tightly in his, locked eyes with her, and said, “I love you.”
Her eyes went wide. “What?”
“I love you. I am in love with you. I’m both of those, and I want to be with you.”
The corner of her mouth lifted in a small, sweet smile. “Oh, Ty, I love you, too. I do. It’s not logical to feel so much so soon, but I do. I truly love you.”
Those were the sweetest, most poetic words he’d ever heard in his life.
TY loved her.
He loved her.
Her.
Imogen was stunned, thrilled, inflated with her own overwhelming feelings of love for him, and when he kissed her, she kissed him back with fervor. That was it. The big It. Love.
The very concept amazed her.
It was beautiful and overwhelming, and she poured her heart into the kiss, feeling that her words were inadequate, that she needed him to understand.
His hands raced across her br**sts, then down her hips to her thighs, hiking up her babydoll dress. It didn’t surprise her. Ty liked sex, and she loved that about him, too. Anticipating that he would shove her up against the nearest wall or toss her onto the couch, Imogen was startled when he dropped to his knees.
“What are you doing?” He was sliding her panties down and she already had a good idea of what he was planning, but for some reason it surprised her.
“I just want to taste you . . . I want you to hold my head while I satisfy you.”
Her dress was bunched around her waist and his mouth was already on her, nipping and licking and sucking. Her hands did wind up on his head, gripping his hair tightly as the passion, the pure physical delight, intermingled with the emotion of realizing that she loved him. Ty flicked his tongue over her, in her, and she came quickly, overwhelmed by everything she was feeling.
“Oh!” she said. “Oh, my God, I only lasted about thirty seconds . . . I should be embarrassed.”
He smiled as he stood up. “I’m choosing to take it as a compliment. Come to the bedroom.”
They went down the narrow hall to the small room, which was like a more claustrophobic version of his bedroom at home, and Imogen marveled at the look on Ty’s face. There was lust in his eyes, no question about it, but mostly, he was staring at her with so much tenderness, so much love, that she wanted to pinch herself, wanted to suck it in and hold on to it, wanted to bask in the feeling of serenity and pleasure she experienced with him.
And when he peeled her clothes off slowly and carefully, and laid her down gently on his bed, Imogen felt tears pool in her eyes. While she loved Ty’s dominating tendencies, while she really, really enjoyed when he took her hard and fast, when he teased and tormented her with his dragging their pleasure out, she thought this was the perfect way to make love in this moment.
Brushing her hair off her face, he paused to drag his finger across her bottom lip. Then he eased into her until he filled her completely.
As Ty started to move slowly, pushing deeply inside her, his eyes trained on her, Imogen wrapped her legs around his waist. “I love you,” she told him, in case he hadn’t believed her the first time she’d said it.