But she knew he would. She was about to speak, but when his mouth touched her there, her thoughts exploded into chaos.
He kissed her deeply, and she closed her eyes against the blinding burst of ecstasy. In the back of her mind, she wondered how a man could make love to her like this and at the same time know they couldn’t be together forever. Pain clashed with pleasure, tearing at her like violent waves against the fragile shore.
Opening her, he stroked her and Kelly lost control. Her senses exploded, overloading her system, then shut down one by one until she was aware of nothing except the moment between them.
She was still trembling when he moved over her. She could feel him shaking, too. Bracing his arms on either side of her, he looked down at her. She’d never been able to read Buzz fully—that was one of the things that had always driven her nuts when they were married. She’d never known what he was thinking. But in that moment, she could see all the way into his soul through his eyes. And she saw all the things she felt in her own heart. Things she didn’t want to see. Emotions that would make their eventual parting even more difficult.
“Easy, honey.” He kissed her cheek, her temples, the tip of her nose. “You’re shaking.”
“You’ve always made me shake.”
“Is that good or bad?”
“Very, very good.”
The lines of his face were taut when he looked down at her. Never losing eye contact, she opened to him. They didn’t speak, but in that instant, they didn’t need words.
Her vision blurred when he entered her. There was a moment of discomfort and then an electric shock of pleasure. She would have cried out, but he stole her voice with a kiss. The world shook when he began to move within her. Long, steady strokes that made her feel wild and out of control. Her body bucked beneath his, taking him deeply within her. She heard a heartbeat racing out of control, heard his name, realized she was saying it over and over again, only he was kissing her and her cries were little more than moans of delight.
Emotion and physical sensation melded. Kelly felt the war in the deepest reaches of her heart. And while her body surrendered, her emotions refused to submit, and she knew there would be no victor.
All the while, Buzz kissed her as if knowing these would be their last moments together. Kelly felt the same desperation egging her on. She kissed him back with every emotion exploding inside her. Regret. Fear. The tattered remnants of her love for him.
Violent waves built deep inside her, pounding her like a relentless sea. Kelly rode the waves, letting them tumble and shake her until she didn’t know up from down. Pleasure streaked through her like a scream echoing in a cave. The intensity of it took her breath and jumbled her thoughts until all she was aware of was his body moving within hers, stretching her and filling her and driving her to slow, inescapable madness.
Completion crashed over her like a tidal wave. She heard her name, realizing he’d uttered it aloud. Once. Twice. He shuddered above her, his body going rigid. She whispered his name and accepted him without question, without hesitation.
And she knew neither of them would ever be the same, and that the mistake she had just made would cost her something she would never be able to get back.
Buzz lay awake in the sleeping bag, his body aching with exhaustion, his heart heavy with the knowledge that he’d just made the worst mistake of his life. It had taken him five long years to learn to live without Kelly, to convince himself he was better off alone. While he might not have managed to make himself believe it, he had managed to accept it, to live with the decision they’d made.
Tonight, he’d proven to himself just how wrong a man could be when it came to denial.
Around him the night throbbed with life. An owl screeched from a nearby branch as it dove for a scampering field mouse. The treetops whispered like recalcitrant children as the winds continued to whip down from the north.
Buzz stared up at the sky and tried to turn off his thoughts. He needed to sleep, needed to rest so he could get the pick-up arranged for first thing in the morning and get Kelly and that little boy out of his mind, out of his life, out of his heart once and for all.
Of course, his mind refused to obey.
Next to him, the woman in question succumbed to exhaustion and slept. Moonlight turned her complexion to porcelain, her hair to silk. She hadn’t bothered to dress after their lovemaking and her body was warm and soft against his. At his age, Buzz had thought he’d experienced it all when it came to sex.
Tonight had proven him dead wrong.
He wanted to believe the emotions that had pounded through him when he’d been inside her, the power of the physical sensations coursing through his blood had been so intensified because it had been so long since he’d had sex.