He fell apart then, pushing one final deep stroke to her center and holding it as he came. Every muscle in his body was rigid as he spent his seed inside her body. He’d never in his life made love without protection, and he couldn’t imagine it any other way with her. He wanted her to feel his cum inside her, dripping from her body. He wanted her to be constantly reminded of where he belonged—not to mention how much he belonged to her too.
He stayed buried in her, not wanting to leave her, damn near terrified to. But eventually he did, pulling away from her, lying down beside her, and wrapping his arms around her. Her . . . her . . . her. His her.
She woke in a start, crying out into the darkness. He tightened his hold on her and she stilled. Her heart stilled, her nerves stilled, and her panic stilled in an instant. “Hush,” he whispered against her ear.
The clock said it was after two, and her body was aching and sore from him. She’d guessed it would be. It’d been over six years since she’d been with anyone, and her anyones had paled in comparison to Darren—never mind there had only been three of them. Did this actually happen? She didn’t think she’d lost her mind, but how did this happen? Oh yeah, he’d asked, and she was powerless to say no. Now she had to say good-bye. Fuck.
He rolled away from her, letting go of his hold on her body, and when she rolled to see what he was doing, he was sitting naked on the side of the bed. Her Darren. He was her Darren—at least at the moment. He was all the Darren he used to be. Calm, patient, seductive. But when he turned to her, her Darren was gone. His eyes were expressionless and distant. He shook it away quickly, forcing a smile to his lips. “I should probably go.” She felt her face falling, and his did too. The completely contrived smile he’d flashed her slipped away, and he stood.
“You don’t have to go yet.”
He took a deep breath, and his brow flinched. “We’re not making it any easier if I stay.”
“And here I assumed it would be hard no matter what.”
“More than hard.” His eyes shifted to the ground. He snatched his clothes from the floor, slipping on his jeans and zipping them quickly. He didn’t bother buttoning his pants; hell, he’d not even bothered putting his underwear on. Instead, he was fleeing, and he was wasting no time doing it. She stood as he left the room, and she followed him out. She didn’t have a clue how to do this. Say good-bye to him? What did that mean? She wasn’t ready. He paused at the door, holding his remaining clothes in his hand, and he shook his head.
“Bailey.” He whispered her name, and he let his head sink as his eyes closed. “Fuck, Bay.”
“Not yet.” She didn’t want to plead. She just wasn’t ready.
“When? How long do you want to put this off? Until I break your heart again? Until I hurt you in some way that not even you can forgive? I don’t think you understand how much it destroys me . . . and yet . . . how hard it is to just let it all go. I don’t have to want to hurt you to do it. It just happens.” He waited for her to say something. Argue with him, something. But she didn’t have anything to say. “I wouldn’t trade making love to you for anything in the world, but you made the choice to leave for a reason, and you made the right choice. You know that. You deserve better than my anger and hurt and mess. I want you to have better.”
She walked to him, leaning up on her tiptoes and kissing him. He held his lips closed for a moment, but then he groaned, and his lips parted. He kissed her harshly, pushing her to the wall, and then he fell apart. He slid his zipper down at nearly the same moment he lifted her, pinning her to the wall. She felt the large head of his cock nudging against her sex, and then it was over. He lowered her as he thrust hard up into her body, and she grunted as the pain stabbed her womb. She clutched his shoulders, begging her body to relax, and he buried his head against her neck, not moving, just holding her still.
He was gasping, and she was fighting back the tears. It wasn’t the pain. That was fading, but it was the real pain. The kind that didn’t go away just by breathing, relaxing. This pain wasn’t going anywhere. It was going to break her heart, and at the moment she couldn’t pretend it didn’t exist. She couldn’t focus on the pleasure buried deep inside her. He’d only moments ago been inches from walking out her door, and she could feel that hurt coursing through her. She wasn’t kidding herself. He could feel it too. The anguish in his voice, the desperation in his touch, there was no hiding it, and he wasn’t trying to.
Her hair was stuck to her lips, and as he pulled his face from her neck, he reached to brush the hair from her mouth, and then he attacked her lips. He latched on to them, thrusting his tongue within her mouth. He stumbled with her back to the bedroom, and she clung to him as he lowered her to the bed. His eyes were such a savage, sensuous thing to see. He’d made her weak in the knees for years, and having that dark depth watching her intently as he used his body to pleasure her was enough to make her fall apart.
He rolled his hips between her parted thighs, refusing to give her body even one ounce of space. He stirred the deep throbbing need in her groin, and then he stilled. He didn’t move a muscle, just inhaled and exhaled, studying her eyes.
“Over on your knees.” He sat up, pulling himself from her body, and she rolled away from him, pushing herself up to her knees. He was behind her then, and she waited for the touch. He gently parted her lips, and then she felt him again, pushing steadily in. He pulled her hips back to his groin with a jolt, and he started working her hips forward and backward. She was Jell-O by the time she came again, and when she collapsed, he pinned her hands to the bed and humped her. Her knees were spread like a frog as she lay nearly paralyzed under his weight. But nearly paralyzed wasn’t paralyzed, and what she needed to feel she could.
He pushed against her bottom, rolling his hips. It was seductive whether she could see him or not, and his hands held hers tight as he breathed in her ear. The arousal in that lurching and shuddering breath made her muscles quiver and contract around him, and when they did, he groaned, driving her building need for more just that much farther. She couldn’t possibly be aroused again, least of all when she wasn’t even sure her muscles could work, but when his breathy moans became coherent thoughts, her body started begging her to let go again.
“Fuck, Bay . . . You’re the only one I ever wanted.” He was speaking on a lurching and gasping breath, and his words were broken and guttural as he plunged into her body over and over again. He came as he ground his hips harshly against her bottom, and he was uttering her name, dropping his forehead to her shoulder.
He panted for a moment, and she turned her head, letting him nuzzle into her neck below her ear. She listened to his body calm and relax, and just when she thought he intended to say nothing more, he spoke quietly. “I’ve wanted you forever.” He let his lips touch her earlobe.
“Oh, God.” Her voice was practically whimpering as her non-response response tumbled out. There was just nothing better to say, nothing more, certainly nothing she could devise. He pulled on her earlobe with his teeth, gently tugging. He didn’t bother pulling from her body, and he was deep and still within her. He was bracing himself on his elbow, and she knew the second his weight left her, she’d feel empty and alone.
“Incredible.” His lips were tickling her earlobe again, and she thought it was nothing more than a blissful utterance until he spoke again. “Stunning. Intelligent. Sweet. Loving.” She was the one panting now. “Arousing. Consuming.” She started trembling around the length of him inside her again, and his voice caught in his throat as he felt her tighten. “Exceptional.” It came out on a whisper, and she had no idea if it was another word for the list or simply a reaction.
She assumed he was finishing the game they’d started forever ago. The words he’d denied her that fateful night that would destroy every chance they ever had of being something amazing together. “I wish you could feel that for me now.”
He paused. His chest stopped moving as he held his breath for a moment. “I was referring to now as much as then, though I left off my favorite one. It didn’t apply then, and now, it impresses me more than anything else about you.”
He finally moved from her body, and she felt a deep ache in her groin as she rolled over to look up at him. She was sore, but she was more sated than she’d ever felt. Her brow furrowed. He studied her eyes, and she waited. She wasn’t sure he was going to tell her, but then he reached to brush the hair from her forehead, and he leaned down and kissed her nose. “Forgiving.”
She didn’t need to say anything. She was stunned into silence at that, and he smiled gently, running his finger across her cheek. She shook her head in confusion.
“You’re still here, aren’t you? I certainly haven’t made it easy for you.” His voice was quiet, and his expression was sad. But he kept trailing his finger across her cheek. Then down to her chin. He stroked across her forehead, and he watched as he touched. “You would never be so cruel to me as I have been to you. You’re far too strong to let yourself decay and devolve like I have. I envy that in you.” His eyes were tearing though his voice was calm, and a small smile was on his lips. Bailey was mere seconds from sobbing, and she could feel a tear trickle down her cheek. He wiped it away, nodding in what appeared to be reassurance. “Jess would be so proud of you. You’ve had to be so strong.” He kissed her mouth. It was gentle. It was sweet, and her heart was breaking because she knew what was coming. “You’re going to be happy. I promise.” He kissed her again, and then he said the words she didn’t want to hear. “It’s time.”
Pain. Blinding anguish. So much so, the breath left her lungs, and she felt an imaginary fist twisting her guts into knots. He crawled from the bed, pulled his pants back on, and she followed him to the door. Her ears were buzzing, and though the pain should mean tears, there was nothing to cry. She stood there, waiting for it to be over, dreading it, and at the same time, just wanting it done. And then it was.
There was a point. A point where seeing his face, his beautiful features, his intense stare, simply ended, and he became a haunting memory. Just like that. He’d kissed her; he’d touched her chin. “You will always be my world.” His lips trembled as he said the words, and her tears fell. Then he’d kissed her again and turned away. Gone.
The first week was a nightmare. It was a maddening hell that felt endless. He woke up aroused from the most erotic and intense dream he’d ever had of her. But there was no having her anymore, and the moment that understanding set in, hell took over.
Every day was a routine. He got up, he got ready, he sat at the dining room table looking at the picture of them from her graduation as he drank his coffee, he read her letter, he went to the hospital, he came home, he stared at his ceiling, he finally fell asleep, he woke to either a nightmare about her or an amazing dream about her that turned sour fast when he realized she was gone, he got up, and he did it all over again. Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out.
He stopped taking days off and threw himself into his work even on his days off. People were starting to stare at him when he showed up at the hospital when he wasn’t scheduled, but he didn’t care. Anything to cope. There was part of him that was happy, though. Or perhaps not happy but relieved. Not that she was gone, but that he was—at least for the most part. The he that had turned into a venomous monster who hated her over the past six years. He didn’t hate her. It was hard to imagine how he ever had. But he wasn’t sure he could forgive her, and if he could, there was no chance he could ever forget the pain, and that’s what had ended them. But at least he wasn’t a monster. She’d given him his humanity back. She had refused to walk away until he’d truly given her no reason to stay, and he’d made it so emotionally painful for her. Such an amazing, quiet strength.
One day, nearly two weeks after she’d left, he broke his routine for the first time. He didn’t go to the hospital. He intended to. He was dressed, driving toward the hospital when he passed Taylor’s Furnishings. And at just that time, Michelle Taylor, heir to the Taylor enterprise herself, stepped out of her car. He pulled in beside her before he even knew what he was doing, but he didn’t get out. He lowered his window as Michelle regarded him curiously, if not a bit wearily.
“Coffee?”
She said nothing for a moment. She was deciding. She looked toward the building and then back to him, and her eyes narrowed. “I s’pose I have time.”
“Well, aren’t I the lucky man. Hop in.”
The moment she was in his SUV, he relaxed. It was as if being close to Michelle was like being close to Bailey. He felt close to Bailey for the first time in two weeks, and it was calming. Not in the attraction sort of way. He wasn’t at all attracted to Michelle, never had been. She was just Michelle, and if anything, she reminded him of Jess, but she was as close to Bailey as anyone, and frankly, she was his only link to her.
Michelle’s uncertainty stuck with her until she was seated across from him at a small picnic table outside a little coffee shop on Main Street. “How are you, Darren?”
He nodded for a moment. It answered nothing, but it seemed like the thing to do. “Okay, I guess. You?”
She smiled. “Well, personally, I miss my good friend, Bailey, but otherwise I’m just grand. I assume that’s why we’re here? To talk about her?”
He didn’t answer. He just stared at her for a moment. She’d always been a cheeky brat, and he liked her just fine for it, but she wasn’t going to make this easy on him. “Okay, yes. How is she?”
“Why are you doing this to yourself?”
“What? Wanting to know how a woman I care about is doing now that she’s moved away? Seems like a legitimate question to ask.” He could be as cheeky as she was.
“She told me something.” Now she was taunting him.
“Such as?”
“Such as you slept with her on her last night here.” Now chastising.