“What?”
“It’s how mismatched this feels. Like, how can I be so sure about us—ready to marry you, ready to raise a kid, with or without you—and you have no fucking idea what you want?”
She thought about that long and hard, emotions bubbling up to leave her face hot and no doubt red. “Because one of us knows themselves, and the other’s a fucking mess.” Her voice broke on the swear, and in a blink tears were stinging. She willed them away, not wanting to cry. Not wanting to seem weak, to give this man any reason to pull his punches when it had taken so much pushing to get him to be honest in the first place. Still, fear was rising inside her, gathering dark and dense as a storm cloud. Where’s this going?
He didn’t reply right away.
She’d never felt this cut off from him before, and it couldn’t be a coincidence that they hadn’t had sex in two weeks. Was that how it worked? Take the fucking away and they just fell to pieces? Was sex that powerful, or was what connected them simply that tenuous, when you got right down to it?
“Look at us,” he said quietly. “You’re ready to move on, and good for you. But me, I’m stuck feeling all this grief and shit, like the miscarriage started this morning. How can we be so fucking far apart?”
How indeed, when he was close enough for her to feel the heat coming off his body?
“I don’t know. Maybe because I’ve had the luxury of focusing on how I feel this entire time, and you’re only now just letting yourself think about it. Or because part of me was relieved by what happened, and you clearly weren’t.”
“Maybe.”
“I hope you know how much I appreciate you being there for me, through all this.”
“You told me every single day.”
“Good. It’s meant a lot. I don’t know how I would’ve survived it all, without you.” A couple days into the ordeal she’d told Anne what she was going through, and her friend had been great—eager to console and distract—but it had been Flynn’s strong and steady presence that had seen her to the light at the far end of the tunnel. “I only wish I’d known you were hurting this much, so I could’ve been there for you. We could’ve hurt together.”
“Maybe,” he said again.
“Maybe we’re not so far apart, after all.” She sought his gaze, nervous, desperate for some taste of connection, for proof their bond was still intact. “I feel like I let you down.”
He looked to the glass resting between his ankles, shook his head. “You didn’t know. I didn’t want you to.”
“Well, tell me what you need now.”
He raised his chin, attention somewhere in the middle distance. “Fuck if I know.”
“Time, probably. But anything else you think of, tell me.” If only his needs were as obvious as back rubs and ibuprofen.
“Do you want me to go?” she asked.
His lips twitched.
“It’s okay if you do. If you’re grieving, sometimes that’s easiest to do alone.”
He picked up his glass from between his feet, draining it then setting it on the table. He turned to face her and she did the same, surprised but relieved when he reached out to cup her neck. He urged her close and kissed her deeply, tasting as he never had in all the time she’d known him. Feeling as he never had either, his lust—if it could be called lust—tinged with something brittle and needy.
She couldn’t guess where he wanted this to end up, but she was prepared to find out, to go with him wherever he needed to be.
He grabbed at her hips and she took the cue, straddling his lap. Her skirt rode up, bare legs hugging his clothed ones. Hungry, coarse hands rubbed her thighs, thumbs tracing the hems of her panties at her hips then slipping beneath them.
His kiss matched the touch, feeling more like the Flynn she knew—masterful, if not entirely present. He tugged her close, her soft sex pressing along the seam of his fly and the hard flesh it hid. She nearly asked if he was ready, then caught herself. The time for assurances had passed. Perhaps action was best. Perhaps getting lost in the physical could help them find their way back to each other.
“You feel good,” she whispered against his lips. And he did. Rough and eager, and above all, controlled. The hands guiding her hips felt strong, showing her what he wanted. She gave it, rubbing their bodies together, her breasts brushing his chest, mouths losing grace until they broke apart completely. She pressed her lips to the spot where his jaw met his ear, let him hear how ragged her exhalations had grown.
“You want me?” he demanded, voice rumbling through both of their bodies and lighting her on fire.
“So bad.”
“What’ve you missed most?” His tone was a touch cold, a touch callous, but she welcomed it all the same.
“You, being bossy.”
He ground her hard against him. “What else?”
“Your cock.”