The Bridge to a Better Life (28 page)

His tongue was like rock striking flint, stirring the smoldering sparks of desire inside her. His lips were the kindling fueling the blaze. Heat spread across her body, and all the years of missing him fanned the flames into an inferno.

She tugged off her sundress in a fit of near madness, desperate for him. “I need you. Right now.”

He released her and stepped back a few paces, all the better to see her, she knew. The sight of his muscular, broad chest was enough to make her damp in places that had gone dry since leaving him. Lust swept through her, destroying her fears. She unhooked her bra and let it drop to the floor.

“Touch me,” she said, padding forward, lifting his hands to her breasts.

His fingers caressed the undersides first, where he knew she was sensitive. Her head fell back as his touch curved around to the top. God, she had missed his hands on her breasts. It had been torture to keep their contact to kissing and light touching these last few weeks. Suddenly, she realized they were still in the doorway. Touchdown lay on the ground only a few feet away in the kitchen.

“Stop fooling around,” she said in a stern voice, pulling him inside and slamming the back door.

“You always were impatient,” he answered in a husky voice.

She leaned back against the door, wanting him to take her against it, hard and fast, before she could think of anything else.
“Blake.”

His thumbs rubbed her nipples with agonizing precision, and she cried out. If he would only kiss her there, she would come. She knew it. But he didn’t. Blake planned to savor their joining. She could feel it in his every movement, his every gesture. She clenched her eyes shut.

He swept her up into his arms. “Come on. There’s no way I’m taking you against the door.”

He’d carried her like this so many times before. Good memories flooded back to her as he swept her up the stairs, and she curved a hand around his strong, defined jaw. He’d shaved again for her, she could tell. So thoughtful.

When they reached her bedroom, he closed the door behind them. Touchdown was never allowed in this sanctuary of theirs. He set her down on the bed and looked his fill. She was more than ready, so she laid back and tugged off her underwear. His breath hissed out as she anchored herself with her elbows on the bed.

“You are still so beautiful you steal my breath away.”

She let her gaze travel over him—his sculpted chest, the worn jeans that hung loosely on his hips.

“And your body is still the most ridiculous work of art I have ever seen.”

His mouth tipped up at the corners. How many times had she called his body ridiculous in that playful tone, making him smile? Not enough and not for what seemed like eons.

When his mouth lowered to kiss her stomach, she opened her legs. One of his hands curved behind her back as he held her to him, taking his sweet time, savoring every inch of skin he touched as he kissed his way up her body.

“I need you,” she whispered as her aching breasts rubbed against his bare chest.

His mouth finally found hers, and he took the kiss deeper, wetter, wilder than any they had shared since reuniting. Her belly tightened with the dark strands of desire. She ran her nails gently down his back, knowing how much he loved it.

He groaned, the husky timbre reverberating throughout his chest. “Oh, Nat, Nat…I missed you so much.”

He lit a trail of fire across the length of her neck, tracing her sensitive skin with his tongue, his soft lips, and the delicate nip of his teeth. It was enough to warm her skin and make her body clench with need, but there was also a familiar tenderness.

Her skin and bones began to dissolve like a cloud in direct sunlight. With Blake she’d learned the scary truth that bodies weren’t boundaries. No, with him, making love had always led to a oneness, a merging undefined by time and space. Her heart was preparing to leave its numb sanctuary, to welcome him again to see the secret, most guarded parts of herself.

A wave of primal terror swept through her chest, and she struggled for air.
Would she have to talk about why she left him? Would she have to talk about Kim after they made love?
Surely he would broach those forbidden subjects.

“Let’s move along,” she told him, reaching for the waistband of his jeans and unzipping them.

The hard length of him told her he was more than ready, and she had her hand wrapped around him in seconds.

His breath hissed out. “God, your hands are cold.” He pressed his forehead to hers as she gave him the long strokes she knew made him wild. “Oh, God, Nat,” he whispered, his voice broken now.
“Stop.”

She froze, wondering what she’d done wrong. He’d always liked this before.

He took her hand away and brought it to his mouth for a kiss. “It’s not that I don’t love it…it’s just…been so long.”

With that, her heart ventured forth again, edging closer to his warmth. She’d wondered how many other women there had been in their time apart. She hadn’t been able to stop the jealousy from creeping into her mind when she couldn’t sleep.

“Has it?” she whispered.

His brown eyes burned into hers. “Yes.”

It was one simple word, yet it was somehow also an affirmation of his feelings for her. Her lips wobbled with emotion.

“You don’t have to wait.” She transferred her touch to his chest and kissed him, feeling out of control.

His laugh was more like an agonized sputter as he drew away from her. “If you think I’m going for speed after all this time, you’re crazy.”

She was afraid
she
was crazy…or that letting herself feel so much again, after spending so long living each day to get through it, would make her that way. “I
want
to touch you.”

She pushed him onto his back, or rather he let her, and tugged his jeans and briefs down his legs. Her mouth went dry, seeing all that bare skin, the utterly perfect musculature of a professional athlete. She ran her hands up the hard planes of his calves, the undersides of his knees. He flinched, and she smiled, knowing how ticklish he was there. But she had another target in mind. She curled her hands around his massive thighs, tracing the defined muscles straight to the heart of him.

“No, seriously,” he rasped. “I can’t take having your hands on me this time even if they aren’t freezing cold now.”

She leaned over and kissed his belly in response, and his hands jerked her up until she met his mouth. He kissed her again, a sweet slide of his tongue on hers.

Then he rolled her onto her back and proceeded to show her how he put the E into endurance. He kissed her breasts with increasing pressure, going from gentle laves to hard suction. Her back arched against his mouth, but before she could peak, he released her and kissed his way down her stomach.

She wasn’t sure she wanted to simply receive pleasure at his hands. To do so would be to make herself too vulnerable. “Don’t make me wait.”

Intensity flashed through his eyes, but when he lowered his head again, she stopped him with the touch of her hand.

“Not…that way.”

His jaw locked, but he nodded, and the shift was so great, she felt the first crack in the earth that had been connecting them. She’d just set a boundary—here—in a space where there never had been any.

“Okay. Are we going to need a condom?” he asked.

There was hesitation in his voice, and she knew why. They both heard the distant cry of an earlier battle. Her demand for a child after Kim’s death. His refusal to give in to her. Her horrible excuse for leaving. Oh, how her lies had hurt them both.

“I’m not on anything,” she said quietly and gestured to her nightstand. She’d been too afraid to go on the Pill, which would have been akin to making a decision about him, about them before she was ready. It had been easier to buy the condoms—all she’d needed to do was pretend like they were the box of chocolate salted caramels she hid from herself.

After pulling out her drawer, he opened the box. She could practically hear his brain working, trying to figure out when she’d bought it. Buying condoms in Dare Valley would have set the gossips’ tongues wagging about her and Blake being back together, so she’d picked them up in Aspen.

Instead of taking out only one of them, Blake shook them all into his hand, like he was counting to see if they matched the product total listed on the box. A noise rose from his throat as he finally grabbed one and shoved the rest back into the drawer, satisfied there were none missing.

She knew he wondered if there had been anyone else. She hoped they’d never talk about that.

His brow was furrowed with tension now, and she realized it wasn’t just her arousal which was waning…his was too.

They’d never used a condom. She’d gone on the Pill after deciding she was ready to take that next step with him. It gave her a strange sense of sorrow to think about adding this new barrier between them.

“It’s only temporary,” he said, reading her mind in that keen way of his.

She glanced up at him. His brown eyes were troubled. It took her a moment to swallow the lump in her throat, but then she grabbed the package from him and tore it open with trembling hands. He reached out and took it from her.

“Here. Let me.”

When he was finished, he cupped her face, looking right into her soul. He didn’t blink. A pressure rose in her chest, and she clenched her teeth as a wave of powerful grief overwhelmed her.

No, don’t say it. Please don’t say it now.

“I love you,” he whispered. “I’ve never stopped.”

All her defenses came tumbling down. He was forcing her to face it now…the hurt that lay thick between them, the desolation that had bloomed inside her after she left. Squeezing her eyes shut so she couldn’t see the longing in his gaze, she pushed away and lay on her back.

“I love you,” he repeated, his voice stronger. “Look at me, Nat.”

Don’t ask me that. Don’t make me look.

Her eyelids trembled as she squeezed them shut even tighter. “Make love to me, Blake.”

There. I said make love,
she wanted to say.

An audible sigh filled the room, and then he was gathering her body up, fitting it over him as he sat in the center of the bed. Her muscles tensed. During their marriage, making love sitting up, wrapped around each other, had been their favorite position.

And it was the most intimate one too.

She couldn’t do that with him again. Not this first time.

“I don’t want to do it this way,” she said, pushing against his strength, her eyes still closed.

His hands caressed her back in comfort. “But it’s our favorite, Nat.”

“I said
not this way,”
she pleaded, resisting harder now.

The hands holding her left her body. His body shifted, and she fell from his lap in a sprawl. When she opened her eyes, she saw him fling the condom aside.

“You don’t want to
make love
with me,” he accused with an alarming sheen in his narrowed eyes. “Why did you start this?”

Part of her wanted to cover herself. Without him touching her, she felt too exposed, devoid of all desire. “I want to,” she lied. “I just don’t want to do it that way.”

“Bull.” He shook his head. “Why did you even initiate this?”

“Because I want you!” she shouted, the emotional tidal wave too strong to harness now. “It’s just…you’re making too big a deal of this.”

“I’m
making too big a deal of us making love for the first time in two years?” He stood, all six foot four inches of him towering over her. “I thought you were ready to give us a second chance. And you let me think it. Dammit, Nat.”

“You’re what…going to leave me now?” she shouted at him as he picked up his clothes and stalked to the door. “You’re a tease, Blake.”

He swung around, and she wished she could call the words back. His face had turned the dark red of anger.

“So…you just want to get off, huh? Well, that won’t take long.”

Before she could blink, he threw his clothes aside and was back beside the bed. His hands tugged her ankles until her bottom was at the edge of the mattress. Then his mouth was on her. He knew exactly where to touch and stroke, and within moments she was helpless to stop the orgasm that exploded through her body, pulsing in waves, making her feel like she was a glacier that had melted too fast and crashed into the ocean, causing endless ripples to radiate out from her.

The hands cupping her hips tightened, and he let his head hang heavy on her stomach. She waited for him to simply take her, to take his pleasure. But he kissed her belly for an achingly long moment, and then she felt him shift away. When she finally opened her eyes, he was gone. His clothes with him.

She rolled onto her side, fighting the pressure in her chest. All pleasure disappeared, replaced by a pain so sharp and bitter it brought tears to her eyes. The cold returned, and with it, an icy sleet to cover her skin.

Stumbling, she ran to the shower. Hot water would bring her back to herself. Stepping under the jets, she dialed up the strongest setting and let the pressure rake over the skin he’d kissed, let it pound away the sweetness of his touch.