Page 56 of Loving at 40

You aren’t worthy of love, Archer. Quickly, I shake my head.

Dammit, I want to be worthy. I want to be everything for the woman beneath me. I only need her . . . love?

My fingers play her like a fiddle at first, loving her little gasps. Then, I slip two at once into her heat. She’s so warm, so wet. Her lids lower, and the sound of her arousal sings as I stroke in and out of her.

“Hear that, babe. You want me. Me,” I enforce, dipping deeper.

“You, baby,” she says to me, and my head snaps up.

Her eyes are on me. Yeah, she sees me, and I read the apology for earlier in her lusty gaze. Whatever caused the slip, whatever the trigger, I’ll ask her later so I can prevent it from happening again. She can keep her memories of her late husband, but I want her to make new memories with me.

Of us.

“Want to kiss you everywhere, Jenna.” I’ll make out with her like a horny teen again tonight if that’s all she’ll give me, but I really want a taste of her. When her fingers clutch the sheet and her leg shifts offering me a better view of where she’s dripping with desire, I have my answer. I lower to suck at slick folds and tongue her slit until her essence coats my tongue. Her breath hitches again, and I take her until she’s breathlessly whimpering my name.

“That’s right, baby. Say my name ’cause you know it’s me making you feel this good. It’s me winding you up and wanting you to let go. Wanting you to spill on my tongue.”

My mouth returns to her, lapping and licking until her legs stiffen, and a long, strong hum fills the room. She comes, and I savor what she’s giving me. Her body. Her trust.

With a final scrape of my teeth to the underside of her thigh, I press upward and kneel back to slide down my boxer briefs. I’m so fucking hard, and my tip weeps, but I don’t need to fuck her. I don’t need to be inside her. Yet.

I flip her leg so she’s on her back and spread wide open for me. My fingers re-enter her, and she slowly smiles at the return. Our eyes hold a second as I work her in and out while stroking myself and tugging at my length. She’s looking at me like I could be her whole world along with her little girls, and damn, do I want to be everything to her.

“Gonna need to be closer, but I won’t enter.” I’m not opposed to coming in my briefs, as I’ve done two nights in a row, but tonight, I need more.

“Why?” The question catches in her throat, and her brows crease.

“Need a little extra tonight, but I don’t want your mind cloudy.”

“I’m not drunk,” she says, almost a little too adamant.

“Not saying you are, but it’s been a day. I want to do it right when we do, and we will be doing it, ’Locks. Just not tonight. Tonight is this.”

I work my fingers faster, mimicking what I’ll soon do to her with my dick. Her channel is begging to be full, but I fight the urge while enjoying this woman coming apart a second time under my attention. This woman letting me play her lush body and accepting my touch.

“Archer,” she whispers. “Baby.” She calls me sweet names, and I’m going to lose it sooner than expected, but I want her to go again. I want to feel her on my fingers. With a flick of my wrist, my thumb meets the right spot to push her over the edge. Her back arches. Her lids lower. Her mouth falls open. I want to hear her scream, but the girls are in the other bedroom. I better understand her need to be quiet and appreciate it a little more.

With her coming alive on my fingers, I wait out her release. Stroking myself, I’m damn near close to exploding. She’s soaked, and it’s just what I need once she’s come down from the high. I lean forward, lining up the tip and stroking through those seeping folds, coating myself in her essence. She’s watching me, but I’m watching how I glide through her heat, slicking up my length. I’m not going to last long. My lower back tightens. My legs stiffen.

“Gonna make me come,” I warn her. She’s taking away my breath, and I place a hand on her upper chest, feeling her heart racing in a way that matches my own. As I balance on my other hand, slipping through the wet heat of her, my lungs clog as an orgasm rips through me like a steam train at high speed. My balls swipe over her. My shaft gives out like the rocket it is, and I explode just over her entrance, coating her pubic bone. Her heart hammers under my palm. With a ragged breath of my own, I glance down at my seed on her lower belly, and it’s all I need to see to know I can’t walk away from her or her girls.

She’s mine, and I’ll do everything to make certain she accepts me as hers.

22

[Jenna]

While Monday seemed long, the days have caught up to me, and time speeds up. By Wednesday night, we’ve had more beach time, more dinners with Anna and company, and Archer has stuck close through all of it. We’ve had additional sexy times in his bed in new positions involving my mouth on him while his is on me, and I squirm whenever I think about it.

Whenever I think of him, warmth fills my insides.

Being with Archer, it’s hard to pretend my heart isn’t screaming for more when we promised to keep things only between us. Only we know what we’re doing under the darkness of night and the seclusion of his bedroom. We haven’t had sex, but the orgasms he’s giving me are enough to fog my brain and tease my ovaries. I’m thinking things I should not be thinking—like how sweet it would be to give this man a little boy.

After another night of drinking wine on Anna’s patio, watching the sunset, we each return to our respective places. I haven’t mentioned that Zack and Logan never did stay at the main house. Anna couldn’t have had an ulterior motive for keeping me in Archer’s apartment, but I’ve become grateful I stayed put.

The upcoming weekend entails a memorial to Ben with a fire on the beach. Anna says she isn’t part of the ritual the friends—Logan, Mason, and Zack—participate in, and she doesn’t expect to be a part of it this year either. Archer will join them instead.

“I’ll visit the cemetery alone, earlier in the day, and then spend some time by the fire before the guys do their thing,” Anna had explained during margaritas on Monday.