He stepped forward, countering River’s backward progress. “You what, doll?”
“I made a decision for us, too. That night. Or maybe it wasn’t a decision at all, because I barely remember anything past being so scared. I didn’t know how to reach you.” Her voice hitched on the last word, one hand coming to rest on her throat. “Maybe I hadn’t grown up while you were gone. Not as much as I thought. I was a grown woman, and I didn’t even consider the consequences…of sleeping together without…” She blew a breath up at the ceiling. “I wasn’t on the pill.”
Gravity pushed down on Vaughn’s shoulders, even as his insides seemed to elevate, straight up into his neck. “You…” He cleared the rust from his voice. “You weren’t on the pill.”
River spoke in a whisper. “No.” She fell back a few more steps toward the bed, and Vaughn stalked her, lifting his hands to clamp them on either side of her face. “It was wrong. Lying about something so damn important. I know it. But I never would have tried to trap you. It’s why I didn’t try to find you…I refused to even let myself look. It’s why I’ve given you as many outs as I could since you came back.”
Vaughn erupted forward, branding River’s mouth in a kiss that lacked all control. In an achingly familiar move, they fell back on the bed, River arching beneath him, wrapping her legs around his waist with a whimper. His hands couldn’t get satisfaction, roaming down her thighs, squeezing her knees, racing up into her hair. She slapped at his shoulders, writhing beneath him to signal she needed to breathe, and he barely managed to release her mouth. “Our first time without a condom.” His words emerged like shards of glass tearing through muslin. “Christ, I can still remember your hands on my ass, yanking me closer when I came, legs open so wide for it. Oh God, Riv—”
“I should be more sorry,” she breathed. “I know I should, but I can’t be.”
She was so damn beautiful, blonde hair fanned out behind her on the bed, it took Vaughn a moment to speak through the crowding of emotion. “I’m not sorry, either, River. You hear me?” He swallowed the growing lump in his throat. “I’ll thank God every day for the rest of my life you did what you did. It’s why we’re here together now.”
…
For long moments, they simply breathed into each other’s mouths, blue eyes searching brown, but those exhales turned to pants in short order. River’s relief had freed her, blowing exhilaration up her spine. He’d loved her. Vaughn had loved her, and he didn’t condemn her now for the reckless attempt to reach him she’d made in the heat of the moment, trying to connect with him some how, some way.
Laying on that crappy motel bed, they were survivors of a self-imposed disaster, and healing became River’s sole purpose, her hands raking down Vaughn’s back to grasp the tight curve of his buttocks, encouraging him to rock against her, to use her as shelter from the fallout from the truth bomb they’d just set off.
“Take me hard,” River husked, licking the rough skin of Vaughn’s neck as it vibrated with a starved growl. “Make me scream. Make me feel you in my stomach.”
Her last word ended on a moan when Vaughn pulled her wrists up, crossing them above her head, driving into the notch of her thighs at the same time. “You think after forty-nine months and six days without my woman’s *, I’m going to make love to her like some soppy fucking poet, Riv?” He craned his neck to hiss against the valley between her breasts. “Spread your thighs. The way you did that night for my bare cock.”
Wicked flashes of pleasure went off at the tips of her nerve endings, a reaction her body knew would only ever come from Vaughn. But something he’d said paused the progress of her knees falling open. “Forty-nine months and six days…”
She gasped when Vaughn caught her jaw, his fingers firm and unyielding. “No one else. You hear me? There’s been no one else.” Using both of his knees, he widened her thighs with a merciless push. “I’ve spent this whole time behaving as if we were married. It’s the only way I could stay sane. Making believe you were my wife and I’d see you when I got home at night. Maybe I’m a crazy man. I don’t know. I don’t—”
River freed one of her hands locked above her head, slapping it over Vaughn’s mouth. Her heart had reached its fill line and brimmed over. It couldn’t handle another jolt from the invisible electric paddles in Vaughn’s hands. Between them, their harsh breaths whirled, chests heaving as they stared across the scant inch separating their mouths. “You’re my crazy man.” She tilted her hips beneath him, sliding them back and forth against his huge, protruding erection. “Remind me how crazy, Vaughn.”