Page 85 of Love Wells Kept

“You’re right, I did.” We will. I don’t know how, but we will. “I think I’d pick…on an airplane.”

“You’ve never even been on a plane.”

“Then it would be the perfect way to ease my nerves about flying for the first time.”

She giggles, flopping back onto the bed and blowing a breath up to the ceiling. I join her. Our heads nearly collide at the foot of the bed, and I snake my hand through the food mess to pinch the fabric of her shirt between my finger and thumb. I slip underneath it to stroke her lower stomach, circling around her hip bone and tickling up the side of her torso.

“Can I ask you a question?” Kate’s eyes meet mine. Molten. Warm. She slings an arm overhead, and her fingers wrap around the brass bed frame. “Do you want to have sex with me this weekend?”

Oh, God. Do I.

“Kate.” Her name leaves my lips in a breathless, wanton rasp. “If the only time we leave this bed is to go have sex in the hot springs, I’ll be perfectly happy with that.”

“No, no. I’m still getting my soak. I will not be missing that.” She jabs an index finger through the air at me. “I only asked because I want to make sure we’re on the same page.”

“We are.”

I don’t know how to transition from talking about sex to doing it. In my dreams, we’re always mid–sex scene. And in the kitchen, it was a heat-of-the-moment situation, versus this well-thought-out sex-having weekend. Now we’re here and we both know we want to be having sex, but surely I can’t just jump on top of her and get to it.

“I guess we better clean up this mess—don’t need pizza crumbs getting into unsavory places.” Kate takes the initiative I apparently can’t. “Let’s do that, then take a hot shower since we spent all afternoon sitting in a car, and we’ll go from there. No pressure.”

No pressure. It plays on repeat while I close up the pizza box, pass by her on the way to the tiny fridge, give her perfect ass a soft love tap that she reciprocates. It plays on repeat as I toss another chunk of timber into the fire. And it’s reverberating through my skull as I follow her into the bathroom.

There’s so much damn pressure my heart thrashes to fight against suffocating under the weight of it. I’ve lost my virginity before, I remind myself. Lost my virginity and made love to this beautiful woman at least three times in my life—got the kids to prove it. Doesn’t mean I’m any less nervous now than I imagine I was all those years ago.

Kate tucks her hair behind her ears and rummages through her toiletry bag for that body wash I love so damn much.

“Remember when—” She freezes, deer-in-the-headlights style.

Through a throaty laugh, I press, “No, no. Keep going. You have about a ten percent chance here.”

“I was going to bring up the time you tried to go down on me in the shower years ago, but you slipped trying to kneel and took out the shower curtain.”

“Shoot, that fell into the ninety percent. But maybe that explains why I haven’t been too adventurous? Less chance of an embarrassing sex injury if we stay in bed.”

“Maybe. You’ve always been surprisingly risk-averse for a cowboy and horse trainer.” She shrugs, plunking the nearly empty bottle onto the shower shelf. I’m sure she’s noticed how much faster she’s going through it since I came home, but she hasn’t said anything.

Kate turns the shower on. It’s plenty big enough for the two of us, but after hearing the story about my near-death shower sex experience, I’m a little worried about the glass door—not that my natural risk aversion is going to keep me from being under that hot water with her. Then Kate grabs my hands and slips them around her waist. I’ve never known desire the way I do with my hands on her waist.

She twists in my arms. Back pressed to my chest, her reflection finds mine in the small mirror above the sink. Kate grasps the hem of her shirt, pulling it up and overhead, tossing it to the bathroom floor. I drink in the sight of her in a pair of my old jeans and a thin black bra. I want to touch her. Lick every inch of her skin. But I remain paralyzed in place, hands trembling against her hips.

“It’s okay to want it, Jackson…it’s already yours. I’m yours.”

She tucks her hair in her hands, sweeping it over to one side, exposing the creamy skin on the back of her neck. Keeping my eyes locked on hers in the mirror, I gently kiss her there.

My heart stops so abruptly at the slow unbuttoning of her jeans I’m afraid it’ll never start again. And when they fall to the floor, so does my jaw. Muscular, lithe legs stretch all the way to squeezable hips. Thin white scars glitter across her stomach, and with fingertips light as a whisper, I trace each one. It’s unlocking a secret code; I’m overwhelmed with the feeling that I’ve done exactly this before…. The scars were a dark purple then, and Kate was poking and prodding at them, lamenting the changes in the mirror.

“Kit.” I love you, I say in my head. Aloud, it’s, “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

She lifts a brow. “You only remember the past couple months. How many other women do you have to compare me to?”

“None,” I say, leaning to kiss the tendon pulled taut along the side of her neck. “There’s no comparison.”

In a fleeting moment of confidence, I nudge her bra strap from her shoulder, pulling the thin fabric down to expose her. I palm her full breast, budded nipple pressing into my skin, and Kate arches into my touch, silently begging for more.

Her nipple glides between my fingers, and a gentle pinch has Kate frantically reaching behind her back to unclasp the bra. She spins around in my arms, and her mouth clashes with mine. It’s desperate and heated, and within seconds, she’s stripping me. Fumbling with the button on my jeans at the same time I’m grabbing the back of my shirt and pulling it off.

Hot anticipation churns in my belly, nixing the nervous tingles. Standing together in nothing but our underwear, her naked breasts pressed to my chest, I slide a hand between us and touch the soft fabric of her panties. They’re so delicate the slightest pressure has my fingertip slipping between her pussy lips.