I get an extra toothbrush and a T-shirt for Dee to sleep in. Upon my return, she’s still rooted to the same spot, looking lost and fragile, listless. I resist the urge to haul her into my arms. I’m not sure I have the right. “I’ll be out here if you need anything.”
After I close the door behind me, I pace the bedroom. I thought I was prepared to hear the truth. To handle whatever secret Dee was hiding. But nothing…absolutely nothing could have prepared me for a baby that never was or for the blood staining my hands.
I scrape them through my hair in ruthless strokes, badly craving a stiff drink. Only two things stop me from calling down for bar service. The first is Dee. She needs me to be sober and strong for her. The second is, as much as I want to anesthetize the pain, I deserve to feel this. It’s penance for all my wrongs.
At the sound of the bathroom door opening, I stop pacing. Dee emerges. “How are you feeling?”
“I’m okay,” she says in a toneless voice and tugs on the hem of the borrowed T-shirt.
I move back, allowing her room to pass. With a somnolent gait, Dee drags past the dresser. Aware that I’m still staring after her, I grab a pair of nylon jogging shorts; the closest thing I have to pajamas, and take my turn in the bathroom.
I stand at the sink, head bowed, unable to face my reflection. Operating on autopilot, I change into my shorts and brush my teeth. When I quietly reenter the bedroom, she has turned off the light, but I can still see the outline of her sable curls against my white pillow and the curve of her shoulder, the indentation of her waist, and the swell of her hip beneath the sheet. She’s facing away, lying so still I think she might already be asleep. Careful not to disturb her, I creep to the window and close the blinds against the pelting rain and city lights. The room is engulfed in darkness.
“You kept my ring.” Her quiet voice drifts to me through the gloomy shadows. “The blue velvet box was there…I recognized it…opened it…why?”
I roll my shoulders, relieving their tightness. “It was all I had left of you.”
“I’m s-sorry,” she chokes out, sounding anguished. “I was trying to do the right thing. But everything I did was wrong.”
I rush over to the bed and kneel next to her. Our tormented gazes fuse. “Shh…it’s all my fault.”
“No.” She sits up and the sheet falls, forming a milky pool at her waist. “I should have told you as soon as I found out. But I was so scared.”
“Tell me everything now.”
“I just want to forget.” She throws her arms around my neck, clinging to me. “Just for a little while, please make me forget.”
“Dee,” I say and rub her back, “you’re upset…you don’t know what you’re asking.”
“I do. Please, Mick.”
Then her fingers are clutching my hair, and her soft lips are frantically covering mine.No.I battle my conscience. It doesn’t matter how desperate her need. Or mine.
But she’s kissing me wildly, her tongue a savage temptation plunging into my mouth in between incoherent whispers and pleas. It’s too much. Desire twists inside me like a vicious storm. I’m lost. My willpower shot to hell. I can’t stop myself from meeting her frenzied pace, from devouring her steamy mouth or sliding my hands over her, under her, touching her everywhere at once.
The warning bells clanging in my head are drowned out by the urgent moans issuing from our throats. More…craving more, I break our kiss only long enough to yank my shirt over my head and free Dee of hers. My eyes rake over her luscious silhouette before she falls back onto the bed and pulls me along with her. I make contact with her skin to skin; all those soft curves pressed against my hardness. No woman has ever felt this good, this soft, this sensual.
I gather her under me possessively, gripping her round ass and feeding her lusty kisses that are all tongue and greed. She digs her short nails into my back and arches her hips, sliding her wet heat along me, up and down, dampening the front of my shorts, burning me alive.
Breaths ragged, we grapple with the drawstring, our fingers colliding in a clumsy hurry to get it undone. So hard I’m hurting, I shove my shorts down and kick them the rest of the way off even as I thrust into her.
She feels so damn good. Just as I remember. Slick and snug, like a tight, moist fist.
Burying my face against her neck, my breath gusting against her throat, my chest crushing her full breasts, without a modicum of control, my hands grasp her hips and I plunge harder and deeper, making up for the thousands of nights we’ve been apart.
She wraps her legs around my lower back and meets my thrusts with a fury of her own. I pound. Her inner muscles pull. Our moans, raw and frayed, fill the room. A thin sheen of sweat coats our skin. I angle to connect with that hard little kernel of flesh, and moments later we’re both coming in a rush of heat and violent shudders.
I clench my teeth, hissing her name, and somehow manage to pull out in the nick of time and shoot across her belly. Drained, I fall into a post orgasmic haze, hugging her tightly and panting. I’m dimly aware of the incessant thrash of the rain.
When her legs slide off my hips and I finally recover my strength, I lift my head and look down into her face.
I flinch.
Tears cling to her lashes and seep from the corners of her eyes. The impact of my behavior floods my conscience. I began the evening with a promise to keep my hands to myself, and just moments ago I’d been going at her like a starving man at an all-you-can-eat buffet. There’d been no finesse, no tenderness. Just pure, raw hunger. After everything she’d been through…after everything I’d put her through, Dee deserved a hell of lot better than a quick, graceless fuck.
I open my mouth, but the words of apology get stuck in my throat. Rolling off her, I swing my feet to the floor and pick up my shorts. In the bathroom, I stand at the sink, turn on the water, and wash the sticky residue off with a washcloth.Shit.I got her pregnant. I left her when she needed me. I wasn’t there when she suffered a miscarriage. Yes, I did those things out of passion or ignorance, not malice. But is that any excuse? And after all the serious mistakes I made with Dee, how could I have taken advantage of her vulnerability and let this happen? Without protection again, no less.
I yank on my shorts and run another washcloth under the water before returning to bed. She’s sitting up. The sheet is covering her lower half, and her arms are crossed over her breasts. I meet her eyes in apology and sit on the edge of the mattress, using the warm washcloth to wipe my semen off her sweetly rounded belly—where our baby had once been.
