How to Save a Life(66)

Jesus, her words alone were sending me to the brink.

I lay back as she came crawling up, her knees on either side of me. She hovered there, an agonizing, savoring moment.

I gripped her hips, my heart bursting out of my chest. “Now, Jo. Please…”

She laid her forehead on mine, her hair falling down to curtain us. “Yes, now. Now…”

Her mouth settled on mine, lips parted and trembling. I tasted her air, then she sank down on me with a little cry of purest want.

A sound came through my throat I’d never made before. Sensations I’d never felt in my life: wet heat, tightness, hardness and softness. Then I was deep inside her, enveloped in her body, trembling at the power of a thousand unknown emotions sweeping through me.

“Evan,” she said against my mouth. “Are you ready?”

I nodded. She began to move and my body moved with her. It knew what to do. It was so easy. I fell in sync with her rhythm, clutching her thighs and driving up hard into her. Every one of my thrusts a question and every rolling grind of her hips the perfect answer.

“Does it feel good?” she breathed.

“No.” I wrapped my arm around her waist and rolled with her, got her under me without breaking our rhythm. “There’s no word for how this feels.”

Her head rose, craning for my kiss. I sank into her mouth, the wave of my body crashing on hers again and again. I braced my weight on one elbow, my other hand found hers and laced our fingers above her head. I breathed her breath, tasted her sweat, kissed away the tears seeping from the corners of her eyes. She wrapped her legs around my waist, holding me tight as my thrusts went deeper, harder. I could feel her coming and I struggled to hold on, to wait for her.

Her body tensed beneath mine and I broke our kiss to watch the beauty of her coming undone. Her green eyes widened with a sudden rush of pleasure. First a gasp then an uncontrolled cry tore from her. She’d hardly begun to subside when I felt my thundering release let go, spilling deep into her. She took it, took all I had to give, until I was drained and spent, lost in the pleasure of it. Lost in her, completely.

It seemed we sank deeper into the bed then, heavy and satiated—for now—and sighing over and over that we’d arrived here at last.

And I knew then, without any dream or hunch to tell me, that Jo was the first woman I’d ever sleep with, and also the last.





Evan collapsed over me, breathing heavily against my neck. I held him close as the pulsing ribbons of my orgasm tapered away, leaving me drained yet electrified, both spent and wanting more.

Even with his weight pressing me down and his sweat mingling with mine, it still felt unreal. He was here. With me. We were together.

He wants me.

It wasn’t only time and geography that had separated us. I had spent four years in a prison of my own. My time with Lee left me feeling worthless. I couldn’t even contemplate having Evan in my life again. Someone so clean and good… How could he want me?

Yet here he was. And here I was the first woman he’d made love to. He waited for this. Wanted this. As he’d pressed and pushed into my body and back into my life, my reflection in his eyes was one I could finally bear to look at. Even admire.

“I can’t move,” he said, his voice muffled.

I laughed, running my hands over the hard muscles in his back. “Don’t. Stay here forever.”

He raised his head to look at me.

I brushed back the hair falling in his face. “What is it?”

“We’re here. This happened. And you’re with me, Jo. More than anything else, you’re here with me.”

“I can’t believe you waited so long,” I said, nuzzling his neck. “For me.”

He moved off of me, carefully pulling out with a small groan. I missed him immediately.

“Of course I waited for you. I was locked up. Who was I going to f*ck in prison? Don’t answer that.”

I laughed, warm all over, and snuggled closer to him.

“Even had I been free, it wouldn’t have mattered. I couldn’t think about any other woman. All I cared about was finding you.”

“How did you find me? The dream…How does it work?”

He gazed at the ceiling, thinking. “I can’t remember all of it. Just bits and pieces. The best way to describe it…it’s like déjà vu. When I felt like I’d been on a road before, or had seen a sign for a certain town, I knew I was on the right track.”

I didn’t push him for more. On the road, I’d been unnerved by the doses of unreality and Evan only giving me information on a need-to-know basis. But now I trusted him. I loved him for who he was. I wanted to tell him, but the words stuck in my throat, trapped by fear of what lay ahead.

He kept saying I would be safe and he would be free. Free of what? Some shadow that trailed us, and not the police either. I couldn’t see it, but I felt it, and that night, I didn’t want to think about it. That night was just about us. I’d been scrambling for purchase on the edge of great cliff. Evan had reached down and pulled me up. Now I was in his arms.

Evan turned off the lamp. Wrapped tightly in him, I drifted into a satiated sleep. When I next woke it was some hours later, in the deepest part of the night. Evan was still wrapped around me. My back to his chest, his arms around me, our fingers laced together and our legs entwined. His breath warmed the nape of my neck. The motel room’s AC unit was humming, yet I felt the sweat where our skin touched. I wanted more of it. More sweat, more kisses, more shared breath. I wanted him inside me again. Wanted to take every bit of his male essence until he was spent and I was full.