Captured(64)

And I’m begging him for more. “Oh, please, oh, please, don’t stop, Derek, please don’t stop…oh, god.” I think I’m actually choking on my own bliss, caught up in the whirling maelstrom of my own exploding orgasm, forgetting to squeeze and then remembering, and now I don’t have to remember because my body is clamping down out of my control, my * squeezing his cock so tight it has to be painfully tight, barely able to move.

He falters, groaning a sigh. “Reagan, oh…f*ck….”

Pound,

Pound,

Pound,

POUND—

Is that me screaming wordlessly, deafening, crazed? Yes, it is.

His hands jerk me by the hips, his head falls back on his neck, and I’m twisting to watch, watching him come, watching him take his own pleasure in me, feel a raging thrill of pride that I can do this to him, give this to him. He slams home once more, and I’m hit without warning by yet another seizing tremoring orgasm, my vagina squeezing him yet again, and he’s growling and roaring as he comes in synch with me,

and I’m watching this happen, watching him,

loving him—

No, no, no, I didn’t just think that, didn’t just realize that. Nope.

But I did. Oh, god, I did. And now the thought is out there, I can’t push it away, and dammit, I can’t deny the veracity of it, because I’m a melting, soul-swelling, heart-soaring wreck watching him finish, watching his sex-god body sheen with sweat, thick muscles swelling and rippling.

He releases me, and I fall forward, hide the frenzied fearful mask of emotions in the blankets. But then he’s beside me, turning me, taking me against his chest, cradling me, our panting for breath synched, my head on his heartbeat so I can every thud of his heart—thumpthumpthumpthump—and it matches the tempo of my own so exactly I actually panic. I attempt again to ignore what I’m feeling, distract myself by reaching down and carefully stripping the condom off his still-hard penis, toss it onto the bedside table and stroke his length, watching a few last beads of come form on his tip, smear them away with my thumb, taste them.

“Holy—holy shit, Reagan. Holy f*cking shit.”

I can’t answer, because if I do, something entirely too much will tumble from my careless lips.

Maybe he senses something. He has to, because he’s rolling into me, over me, his mossy eyes searching mine, and oh, no, oh, god, no, I can’t hide it, can’t hide the sudden rush of emotions so suddenly and intensely emancipated within me. He has to see it in my gaze, in the wet waver of my eyes, the melted-into-liquid blue-hot passion I’m feeling for this man, for Derek.

It’s just the sex, though, right? It has to be just the sex. It’s really intense, really good. “Good” isn’t enough of a word. Rapturous. An agony of ecstasy. Nope, still not good enough. There are no words for what I’m feeling, for how he makes me feel, for how caught up and swept away I am when we join. It’s only been twice. We’ve been together twice. Fucked twice. And it was amazing, yeah. Word-stealingly incredible. He does things to me, draws reactions from me I didn’t know I was capable of.

But it’s not that.

I had the love of my life. I married him. He died a prisoner of war from wounds received during combat with the enemy. I buried him. Flinched at every deafening crack of the twenty-one-gun salute, dressed in a somber black satin-and-lace dress that was a family heirloom, passed down to me from four generations of women, all of whom wore it to bury the men they loved.

I had my love, and he was snatched away.

I’m not allowed another love, am I?

I’m not allowed to have my torn, battered, broken, and lonely heart sewn shut and repaired and filled by another man. I’m not. I’m just not.

And it’s not even that, really, which has me spinning. Allowed or not, I can’t deny, simply cannot manage a denial of the bare, raw facts of what I feel for Derek in this moment. No, love or not, I feel it. It’s there, and it’s real. It’s the fact that it’s somehow, impossibly, more. Bigger and deeper and more sudden than what I felt for—than what I felt before. And how is that possible? How does that happen? So suddenly, so shockingly fast? I mean, it’s not like it just appeared here between us, here in my heart and soul. Nothing in life is instant, nothing with humanity happens instantly and in a vacuum, without buildup.

I knew, from the moment Tom came jogging up to me and kissed me without warning, that I loved him. That I would love him, and that I would marry him. I waited for his arrival at my front door with gleeful anticipation. I was overjoyed. Swept away by him, by how handsome he was in his uniform. Each new exploratory touch had me over the moon. It was new and beautiful, and he was my whole life. And I knew it would be that way from the very beginning. Then time passed, and I only got to see him for a few weeks or months out of the year, if that much, but the way I felt for him never changed. Grew, yes. But it grew from absence. And it was tempered by a deeply hidden bitterness that he always had to leave, bitterness I never gave voice to, not once. Bitterness I never even thought about around him.

This, for Derek, is something wholly new, and totally different. It’s not gleeful. It’s not giddy or fun.

If loving Tom was flying with the earth spread out beneath us, then loving Derek is a terrifying suspension over a bottomless chasm. It’s feeling your desperate fingers clinging to a scrap of dirt, feeling the dirt crumble and give way, it’s the slow inexorable grip of gravity pulling you down, down, down. And then feeling something catch you, some silent winged creature the size of all the universe, invisible but present and carrying you across the chasm, up and up and out over the depthless beyond, into something very like infinity, but you cannot grasp infinity, not truly, so you can only focus on the sense of speed, on the ripple of galaxy-massive muscles, and you don’t know where you’re going or how long it will take or anything at all except him, beside you. Holding your hand. Clutching you close throughout the black nightmare-plagued nights and beyond the lonely endless fathoms of solitude that is the misery of widowhood. And he’s real. He, at least, is slippery flesh and sweaty muscle and breath and eyes and memory of sun-golden light on taut skin, pink-red lips wet with our mixed saliva, kiss-swollen lips. He’s the knowledge of what you want, what you need, and he’s the one who’s there, giving it to you, more and more, and such things you never knew were so integral to your continued existence.