Buzz knew all too well what it was like to want. He’d learned to live with it, learned to live with a lot of things in the last few years. He’d told himself a thousand times he didn’t miss her. He didn’t dream about her. He didn’t fantasize about her. Or want her. Or think about having a future he knew could never be.
But when she moved tentatively against him, all that need exploded, shattering boundaries he’d sworn he would never breach. She gasped when he pressed his hard length against her. Then, taking her hands in his, he slid them above her head and moved against her.
“Some things never change,” he said breathlessly. “This hasn’t changed.”
“We’re going to hurt each other,” she said.
“The way you feel against me…Kel, maybe it will be worth it.”
“Nothing’s worth that kind of pain.” But she didn’t ask him to stop.
Moonlight poured over her, turning her hair to silk, her features pearlescent. He looked down at her, breathing in her scent, putting it to memory, knowing that no matter what happened in the coming days, he would always have this moment.
“You’re beautiful,” he whispered.
She tried to look away, but he cupped her chin and forced her eyes back to his. “I mean that, Kel. You’re beautiful. Inside and out and every place in between. Whatever happens after tonight, I want you always to know I feel that way about you.”
A small, embarrassed smile curved her mouth. “You know better than to say something like that to me at a moment like this.”
“Why?”
“Because we both know we’re about an inch away from making a very big mistake.”
“We’re pretty good at that, aren’t we?”
“We’re good at a lot of things.”
Lust and need and something else he didn’t want to name coiled deep in his chest. Vaguely, he was aware of his own heavy breathing. The pounding of desire in his groin. The wild flutter of his heart. “If you want to stop this, I suggest you say so in the next thirty seconds,” he said.
“Being with you like this won’t solve anything. I think we both know it will only make everything worse.”
He knew she was right, but he wasn’t a good enough man to admit it. And he sure wasn’t a good enough man to stop. Instead, he bucked logic and kissed her again. Hard and without the finesse she deserved. For an instant, he thought she would turn away, turn him away. Instead, she melted in his arms, opened to him. Her arms went around his neck. He groaned when she moved against him.
Her softness met his hardness with a silent crash, and Buzz saw stars. He skimmed his hands down her sides, pausing at her breasts. It had been so long since he’d touched her like this, since he’d touched any woman, but his hands hadn’t forgotten the sheer perfection of her. She shivered when he skimmed his thumbs over her breasts. The hardened peaks of her nipples teased his palms through the silk of her bra. Cupping her, he molded the soft flesh. She arched into him, trusting him, giving him full access. Her nipples were larger than they’d been the last time they’d been together and he marveled at the ways pregnancy had changed her body, a body he’d once known intimately.
A body he desperately wanted to know again.
A new urgency burned through him. Lifting her T-shirt, he tugged it over her head. Her hair tumbled wildly over her shoulders. Her bra shimmered white in the moonlight. He could see the peaks of her nipples through the material, the frosting of lace against her flesh. Never taking his eyes from hers, he reached behind her and unfastened the tiny hooks. The scrap of material dropped to the ground.
The sight of her awed him, made him realize just how long it had been, just how desperately he’d missed this, how desperately he’d missed her. “Having a baby made you even more beautiful,” he whispered.
She laughed, but it was a nervous laugh. “I sort of looked like a basketball when I was pregnant.”
He smiled, trying to imagine her body rounded with child, and felt a sudden, stark sense of loss. He didn’t want to feel that. Not now. All he wanted at the moment, all he needed was the pleasure he knew only she could give him.
“I’ve thought of you a thousand times in the last five years,” he said. “Touching you like this.”
“I’ve thought of you, too.” She closed her eyes for a moment, then looked at him. “Buzz…”
Her voice trailed when he skimmed his fingertips gently over her. “Like this?” he asked.
She shivered. “Yes.”
The word ended in a gasp when he bent his head and took her nipple into his mouth. She cried out softly, arching and throwing her head back as he laved the hardened peak with his tongue. He suckled her, nipping and tonguing, first one breast and then the other. She writhed beneath his manipulations, her cries of delight echoing amongst the rocks to be lost at the treetops and fading into the night.