“It was right after the crash in Sedona,” he begins, as if to explain.
She shakes her head, unwilling to hear the details. “He never would have let you leave alive. Once you stopped being useful, he’d have shot you on the spot. All that matters to me is that you’re here. You did what you had to.”
She doesn’t mourn her husband. She has long since divorced herself from him physically and mentally. Wishing things could have been different doesn’t mean that she can’t accept why they never would be.
He closes the distance between them, reaching out to rest a warm palm against her cheek, thumb feathering across her skin. “There were a few times I thought that was the end of the road for me. And then I thought of you, and somehow I kept going every time.”
Her lower lip wobbles along with her words. “It was a really long two weeks.”
Gently, he pulls her into his arms. “I know. Come here.”
“You can’t ever do that again, okay? You can’t leave again.”
“Never.”
Her face presses against his chest as his hold tightens. “Promise me. I need to hear you say it.”
It’s needy and silly, and she damn well knows it, but if anyone left on this planet has a severe case of abandonment issues, it’s Addison. He had been planning to leave them early on, and while she can’t blame him for that now, they hardly knew each other back then; some hard-wired neuron in her brain craves an explicit promise to soothe her battered and bruised heart.
“I will never do it again. I promise. I promise.” He leans back to cup her face in both hands, his gaze so much gentler than he’s allowed her to see before. “It’s you and me now, okay? Raising fainting goats and picking apples. If there’s any happiness left to be found for me in the rubble of this world, I know it’s here, with you.”
He captures her lips in a slow, melting press while she leans up onto her tiptoes to meet him. They come together again and again, each time more eager than the last, until her smile blooms between the contact. Two strong hands grip her ass and lift, slowly bringing her up until she wraps her legs around his waist. It’s an impressive display of bicep strength that sends a tingle of desire down between her thighs as he carries her toward the bedroom.
The last time she asked him to get naked with her, she was trying to diffuse a tense situation, the only way she knew how.
Now, she craves him so deeply that she’s discovered a whole new level of arousal.
When he lowers her carefully onto the mattress, her legs part for him automatically, even though she still has all her clothes on.
The grin she gets in return as he removes her shoes and then traces a finger along the waistband of her pants makes her shiver in anticipation. Then a terrifying thought enters her mind, and she sits up on her elbows, eyes wide. “Wait! We don’t have any condoms. I’m very fertile right now. You’ll knock me up without even trying, and I don’t think that’s a good idea. I mean, not that I wouldn’t want that…someday…maybe. You know, or maybe not, it is still the apocalypse. I really don’t think—”
Wyatt raises an amused brow while she rambles until she forces herself to be quiet, her teeth snagging on her lower lip.
Then he reaches over to grab his coat off the dresser and pulls out a box of condoms. “Safety first.”
“Where did you get those?” She gasps.
“Grabbed ‘em in Sedona in between life-threatening situations. Just in case.”
Her smile is as quick as her hand that wraps around his shirt to pull him down against her. “Just in case, huh?”
“Mhmm.”
“Well, we’d better put them to good use then. Can’t allow your efforts to go to waste.”
‘I’m not gentle like your husband,’is what he said to her the night they met. She believed him then. Expected he would fuck her hard and fast and leave her a bruised mess if he took her up on that offer.
Maybe that is the final lie between them, though, because the way he touches her is so careful and soft as they peel each other’s clothes off, that she has no doubt in his ability to offer her safety, even now.
The thing is, this has never been about her. He is still a man. She expects he’ll be inside her in less than a few seconds, and that’s more than okay because this time she wants it.
It’s not an issue if it’s fast or if she doesn’t come at all. That’s barely a thought as she prepares herself for what’s coming, but all she feels is his touch where she’s warm and wet. His weight covers her as he braces on one arm, the heat of his cock pressing to her inner thigh as his fingers stroke along her seam. Her strangled, half-gasp of pleasure when he gathers her arousal and drags it up to where she’s throbbing doesn’t sound like her at all. She’s so overcome by sensation that any control over her reactions is already gone, and she begins to grind against his touch.
There’s no rhyme or reason to his pattern, but then he whispers a question against her mouth, coupled with a thick finger at her entrance. “You want me here?”
She nods, her forehead resting against his, and her lips parting as he presses in.
Her legs open and bend to give him more room, and then she swallows his smug smile with a kiss, nipping at his bottom lip, sucking it into her mouth while he fills her with a second finger that she struggles to stretch around.
