of this moment. What it was. What it could be.
What it could never be.
She drew him closer and his emotions choked him. He buried his face against her breast and tightened his embrace around her, holding her so tight that nothing could ever pry her away from him.
Kentucky stroked his brow, cradled his skull and then slipped down his back only to return again.
“Share your pain with me. Let it breathe, Sean. You’re not going to smother it. It’ll smother you.”
“How do you know?”
“I know. All the people I’ve lost? My parents, my aunt, Lynnie... It’ll drown you. But you’re not dead—they are. So don’t let it.” She continued her soothing caress. “I’ll miss them forever. I’ll love them forever. I’ll even hurt because of those things, but that’s not all there is to feel.”
He turned his face up into her neck, his lips close to her pulse. “What if I don’t deserve to feel anything else?”
“Of course you do. Lynnie loved you. She’d want to know you missed her, but she wouldn’t want you to stop living because she’s gone. Let yourself grieve, Sean.”
“What if I’m not ready to grieve? What if I want to feel something else?” Like the softness of Kentucky’s body under his while he buried himself inside her. The taste of her skin on his tongue. Her nails on his back while she screamed his name.
God, but he was a bastard.
The worst part of all this was he knew that if Lynnie could see him, she wouldn’t begrudge either of them whatever solace they could find together. She’d only want them to be good to each other after.
He wasn’t that noble.
“Do you want to feel, or do you want to forget?” Her touch was still soothing, but it made him burn hotter, too. “Because after the orgasm is over, you realize those things you were hiding from never left.”
“Wasn’t this what you wanted when you brought me out here?” He lifted his head and met her eyes. “If it’s not, tell me to stop and we’ll forget this ever happened.”
Her eyes were luminous and open. He could see all the way to her bones. She wanted him, but she wanted more than what he was offering her.
“I don’t want to forget it happened, and I especially don’t want you to forget I happened. As good as this feels—” she shook her head “—it’s not worth our friendship. I don’t want to do this and then you can never look at me again because I’ve become a single-use item.”
“I hope you’d know me better than that, Kentucky.”
“Sometimes when we’re hurting, we don’t know ourselves.”
He pushed her down in the sand and pressed her beneath him. Color was high in her cheeks and her eyes glittered in the firelight. Her arms twined around his neck. She obviously didn’t give a damn that they were out in the open, that her hair was fanned out in the sand or that their wet underwear clung to them.
She was singularly focused on him.
He gripped her hips and pulled her forward to meet him, grinding his hard cock against her cleft.
“Live a little.” He threw her words back at her and his mouth descended toward hers oh-so slowly, building the heat and tension between them so they had no choice but to see where the explosion took them.
THIS WAS HAPPENING, Kentucky thought.
The fulfillment of a fantasy.
If she wanted it.
She could say no, deny him and herself. Or she could take her own advice and “live a little.” Except she was starting to see the fallacy in that being a life philosophy. It wasn’t a one-size-fits-all solution to every problem.
If she did give in to this and then he left her, it would destroy their friendship.
But her wild heart answered the question for that part of her that was afraid. If these moments between them could shatter years of friendship, then it wasn’t a friendship worth having. If a simple merging of flesh was enough to lose him, she never had him to begin with.
That was the root of the problem. She wasn’t ready to face that possibility. Kentucky wanted to keep the illusion a little while longer. It was a fairy tale. A night-light in an unknown darkness.
Kentucky was too old to be afraid of the dark, and too old to need stories to lull her to sleep. No, she would rather burn in the fire every time.
Even this one.
So she met his hard mouth, colliding with him in an explosion of sensation. He tasted like Scotch and mint, and the heat from his body dispelled any other further chill. She could feel nothing but him. She’d always imagined if he kissed her, it would be like this. It wouldn’t be gentle touches. It would be primal, animal. Something he did by instinct, not choice.
Only he had chosen. He’d chosen to be with her here and now. He’d chosen to kiss her. He’d chosen to move his hand up her torso and beneath the damp cup of her bra.
Kentucky opened her eyes to watch him as he touched her, memorizing their joined topography, the way his tanned, callused hand looked on her breast, the shape of his thumb while he drew lazy circles around her taut pink nipple.
“Are you on any birth control? If not, I have a condom in my wallet,” he said.
She shook her head. “I haven’t been with anyone in a long time.”
“Me neither. Not since my last deployment and I was tested when I enlisted and tested again when I was brought back Stateside. Clean bill of health. You?”
“It’s been a year, but I haven’t been with anyone since I was tested either.”
She liked that he asked. She liked that he was mindful. Safety was incredibly sexy.
“A year? That’s a long time without touch.”
“But not long enough if it’s not with the right someone.”
“And this, right now, is it right enough?” His eyes searched hers. He wasn’t being glib; he was asking her again, giving her the chance to say no. Making sure she was going into this with both eyes open. It was such a far cry from what she’d imagined when she first began to consider that being alone with him now could lead to this.
Neither of them would be able to say this was some heated descent into madness. That it was some kind of accident where they’d been swept away by a tide of desire.
A tide of emotion maybe, but not mindless. They weren’t unthinking animals, but cognizant, aware complex creatures.
“Yes, Sean.”
He’d been waiting on tenterhooks,
