Really.
But I lean down on one elbow and take my other hand, cupping her jaw. We look at each other without walls. Without pretense. But the past is there, hovering, watching.
It needs to see us together.
The past cannot be put to rest, put in its place, until it knows we’ve healed.
Our kiss lingers, the seconds chasing away all the fears, the worries, the condemnation and the insecurities. As we kiss, she moves under me, widening her legs.
“I’m on the pill,” she whispers, removing that concern. The comment brings me back to reality, and I suddenly am hyperaware of every aspect of my body. The cold push of air as she breathes against my sweat-soaked skin. How the moonlight curls into the grooves of muscle in my forearm. The way the curtains billow and make Lindsay’s eyes look like wet lace. The view of my hip against her ass cheek, resting together like two old friends.
How her perfect breasts settle against her chest when she’s flat on her back, her nipples tight like little crowns.
“You’re my queen,” I blurt out. Her eyes dance with amusement, the arousal still there.
“That’s one of the weirdest things I’ve ever heard you say,” she replies, her fingertips giving me butterfly strokes up and down my side, halting at my hip, then moving with a bold perfection until she has me wrapped in her palm, all fire and rigid need.
“But you are,” I groan as she strokes me.
“Make love to me, Drew,” she says, taking me in. The tip is at her entrance, waiting, holding back as I move over her, knees on either side of her nude body, our fervent eagerness making us both shake. She is ready.
I’ve been ready forever.
And now it’s time.
Second by second, with aching slowness, I enter her. Lindsay looks at me the entire time, our eyes locked, and as I move into her, it is like finding holy ground without knowing it. I’ve stumbled across a portal into a place where nothing else matters. Just her. Just me.
Just us.
Just this.
“Oh,” she moans, the tiny hairs on her legs going to gooseflesh, the bumps shimmying up her leg from shin to hip, rippling. I feel it against my own hair-covered legs and I cannot describe it. The sensation is excruciatingly unique. It’s chilly and exciting, in contrast to the warm, wet glory of being inside her. I sink down, deep, and she widens for me.
“Come into me, Drew,” she says in my ear, licking my neck. “Come as deep as you can, until you touch the part of me I’ve kept from everyone else.”
For a split second, I freeze, a single image from that night hitting me full force. No. No. I am not going to let it contaminate this homecoming.
Fuck, no.
They do not get to destroy this. I can’t change the past, but letting thoughts of that hideous night touch one single second of making love with Lindsay isn’t happening.
It takes everything I have not to whisper the word no.
And that no isn’t for Lindsay.
“Drew?” She touches my cheek with one manicured finger and I twitch, jumping out of my own thoughts. “Are you okay?”
“I’m better than okay, baby.” I lose myself in the kiss, her warmth infusing me, coming back into the amazing moment. “You make me better.” I slowly pull back, then move in her, the feeling superb.
She makes a breathy sound of pleasure. “I love you,” she says, eyes closed, a smile on her lips.
Fierce, pure love shoots through me like someone blasted a cannon filled with blood in my veins. “I love you too, Lindsay. God, I truly do. Let me show you.”
“You are showing me, Drew. Let’s show each other.”
And we do.
The build-up comes fast, with lightning speed, until we’re all moans and sighs, our names cried out and she’s so slippery, so wet for me, until all I am is her. We come together, Lindsay clinging to me with a shuddering finality that makes me explode, carried off by waves, the privilege of letting go with her a kind of love I didn’t know we could share.
Sweaty, sated, and breathing hard, I collapse onto her, still in her. She jolts and I move, just enough, face buried in the hot mess of her tangled hair. A sense of accomplishment, of pride, radiates out from my core to my hipbones, my quads, my glutes, up my spine, making me heady and dizzy.
I did it.
We did it.
Four years of pain and heartbreak, of recovery and hiding – gone.
Four years of the unknown, of mourning what we lost, of strategy and hope, of bitterness and regret – gone.
Her breath goes slow, my own steadying as the hot rasp of everything we just shared cycles back against my skin, feeding me, nourishing us. I pull up to say how full my heart is, how much she means to me, and how I will never, ever let her go.
Our eyes meet.
And she bursts into tears.
Chapter 10
Alarm replaces the sense of completion, my gut tearing to shreds as I feel wetness from her tears against my shoulder.