Page 212

The most perfect, beautiful woman he had ever seen.

And all his. His wife.

His wife. His child.

He leaned down and kissed her mouth, as he put his hand on her thigh and lifted her leg up, positioning himself at the slick entrance of her body so that he could thrust deep inside of her.

She was tight and his.

Only his.

He had never been a man who thought that would matter to him. But with her it did.

There was something deeper there. Something bigger than them both.

A sense that her body had been made for his. And that his had been made for her. It was a quick and fleeting thought. But one he couldn’t release hold of all the same. As he began to thrust in and out of her body, claiming her over and over again. Making physical that what she felt in his soul.

His. His and only his.

Esme.

He might have said her name out loud, or it might have only been a prayer; he couldn’t be certain. But he heard her side, felt her gasp as her pleasure began to build again. And only then did he begin to release hold of his own control.

Of his restraint.

He began to give himself over to the building pleasure inside of him, to that need that was becoming larger than his every thought. His every feeling.

His breathing became ragged, his thrusts deep and unregulated. There was no rhythm. Nothing other than the tempo set by his own desire.

She cried out his name, arched her back, and he moved his hand to cup her breast, sliding his thumb over her nipple and making her scream at the end of that jagged cry.

Her response, the way that her internal muscles gripped him, pulsed around him, was the end of his control.

He lost himself. His mind blank of everything except the pleasure riding through his body. And then when he came back to himself, there was Esme. Holding him, moving her delicate hands over his shoulders as they lay there in the grass.

He rolled to the side, and pulled her against him. And just lay there. Underneath the moon and the stars.

There was nothing to say.

“I don’t camp,” she said. “As a rule. Given how much time we spent sleeping rough as kids. But this is different.”

“I fully intend to take us back to bed,” he said.

“Okay. But we can lay here for a while.”

He nodded, moving his fingertips along her wrist, the back of her hand. She rested her palm against his chest. Against his raging heart.

And suddenly he wanted to tell her things that she didn’t know. To open up the parts of himself that he felt were best left hidden. It was the strangest compulsion. The strangest need. Here they were in a moment of peace. Would she still want him if she knew?

No. He had to keep his feelings locked down tight. He had been her protector. He had shielded her from all of that back then.

But…there were secrets he could still keep. He could tell her… He could tell her at least why he had thought he needed to leave. Why he had thought it was best if she stay away from him.

“Growing up the way that we did, you have to have flexible morality,” he said.

“I know,” she said. “I’m pretty familiar with it. We definitely stole more things from the corner store than we ever bought.”

He nodded. “I don’t just mean that. When we started to have money sometimes it was because… I was doing work on the side. For one of the crime families. Running drugs, at first. But then those boys that harassed you, do you remember that?”