Captured(34)

Oh, there’ve been any number of times over the years when my fingers have eased the ache in the long nights alone, but that is so, so inadequate. Dreams and fantasies cannot begin to compare to the heat and strength of a man’s body against your flesh, of his mouth on yours, his chest hair tickling and scratching, his stubble scraping your upper lip and chin as you kiss and the way you can feel his muscles rippling and shifting as he begins his conquest to possess you.

When he arches his back and hovers over you, palm beside your ear, breath on your cheek, in that moment, all those sensations fade to background beauty, because the sole focus of your existence is the thick hard presence of his cock against your softest place, and you feel yourself wet and warm and ready for him, aching for him, needing him, needing to feel that perfect soul-swelling fullness, the completion of being joined.

A breath and the slightest shift of muscles are all that stand between us.

My hands are on his back, on his shoulders, caressing and smoothing in circles, pulling, sliding from shoulder blades to the broad expanse of his back. Balance shifts, and I fall backward to the grass, blades pricking my shoulders, and my hands find the hard swell of his taut ass. He’s above me, still kissing me, totally out of the water now, one knee between my thighs. One hand supports him, planted in the turf beside my face, the other sweeping up the curve of my waist to my breast, sagged to the side by gravity.

They were once high and firm, my tits. Pregnancy swelled them, milk stretched them, nursing changed them. There’s a moment of discomfort, embarrassment, self-consciousness. That moment is erased by his palm against the weighted side of my boob, lifting it, caressing it reverently.

His mouth leaves mine.

Descends. Lips touch my clavicle.

“You are…so beautiful.” His words float up to me, make me swallow hard against the sudden glut of emotions charging through me.

I haven’t felt beautiful or feminine in so, so long. Four words, a heartfelt compliment, the wonder rife in his tone making it clear he means it down to the depths of his desire. Four little words, and I’m wrecked.

The moment of rapturous forgetting is ruined.

Tears explode, sudden and furious. One moment I’m caught up in the sensuous slide of skin on skin, of Derek’s hands and mouth, and the next I’m sobbing uncontrollably.

“Shit, shit.” Derek rolls off me, lying on his back in the grass beside me, hands pressed to his face. “Shit, I’m such a selfish *. I’m sorry, Reagan. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have let that happen.”

He starts to rise, but I, incapable of speaking, can only shake my head and roll toward him, stop him with a hand to his chest. “Don’t—don’t.” I choke the words out. Suck in a deep, steadying breath and try again. “You didn’t—it’s not—”

He sinks back to the grass, staring at me in confusion. I’m rubbing at my face, trying to breathe, trying to stop, but now that I’ve opened the floodgates, it’s all coming out, years and years’ worth of pent-up misery and sorrow and loneliness and weakness. All I can do is wriggle toward him, rest my cheek against his chest and cry. Horrible, ugly tears. Endless, endless. Derek doesn’t speak, doesn’t ask questions. He just cradles me in the sheltering warmth of his arms and strokes my hair away from my face. He doesn’t shush me, or tell me not to cry, or act awkward or uncomfortable. He just holds me, and that, truly, just makes it so much worse. Because it’s exactly what I need, and I can’t take it, can’t handle him being so sweet and understanding when he doesn’t even comprehend the depths of what I’m feeling.

Hell, I don’t even fully comprehend my own emotions, so how could he?

We’re both still nude, but that somehow fades. The warm air is thick and humid and smells strongly of impending rain. The sky is dark, stars blotted out by rolling clouds. His hands brush back from my forehead, down my cheek, tucking flyaway wisps of hair behind my ear, and his thumb touches my cheek, slides across my cheekbone. I sob again, because that, unbeknownst to Derek, was Tom’s favorite gesture of affection.

Which thought only serves to remind me of what nearly happened just now. That I nearly had unprotected sex on the bank of my pond with my dead husband’s best friend.

I manage to quiet the flood, wipe my eyes with the heel of my palms. I suck in slow, steadying breaths and tilt my face up so I can see Derek’s. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I just—”

“Needed to cry. It’s okay. I get it.”

“Yeah, but that’s not it. Not totally. I just haven’t felt…I don’t even know how to put it. I haven’t felt beautiful in a very long time. I haven’t felt like a woman in years. I’m a mom. I’m a farmer. I’m a widow. I’m a lot of other things. But since Tom shipped out, and even…even before then, through all his deployments, I haven’t felt like a woman with desires and needs. I haven’t felt wanted or beautiful in so long, and when you told me you thought I was beautiful, I just…I guess I kind of lost it, because it felt so strange, so foreign. And…so incredible. But then I started crying, and I’ve been holding so much in for so long, you know?”

He nods. “I know about holding shit in, at least. And I know it doesn’t work. You gotta get shit out. I’ve told you things about what happened over there that I haven’t told anyone else. The shrinks and doctors and everyone else wanted me to just open up and tell ’em everything, but I just couldn’t. It was too new, too fresh. And they didn’t really give a shit — they were just doing their job.” He holds onto my shoulders, arm across my back, and the sensation of being held is so deliriously heady that I have to close my eyes and breathe through the wave of overwhelmed neediness. “As far as the other stuff? Not feeling like a woman? I think I get that too. I wasn’t a man, you know? I was a prisoner. A victim. Name, rank, and serial number. I was reduced to the drive to survive. Then I felt guilty that I did survive. That’s still there, in f*cking spades, but whatever. Now I’m still figuring out what I am, what I feel like. Who I am. And feeling like a man again? Like a real man? That someone wants around, that someone needs or feels desire for? That’s some powerful shit.”