Page 27 of Forever and Always

We both sighed happily.

Lifting my legs, I wrapped them around his hips, crossing my feet at the small of his back, and tugged him closer.

“Impatient, huh?” His voice was teasing, but he continued sliding inside of me, not stopping again until he was fully seated.

It had been a while since I had sex – since before I met Andrew the first time in fact – and I felt deliciously full. My muscles stung a bit, then relaxed around his thickness. As soon as my tight hold on him released, Andrew began to move. He pulled almost all the way out, then slowly pushed back in. Despite the insistent press of my heels at his back urging him on, he continued the slow pace even though I could see that it was killing him as much as it was killing me.

Reaching up, I cupped his face between my palms.

“Look, I’m just going to say it. If you want to be on top, you’re going to need to move much, much faster. I’m dying here.”

Andrew burst out laughing. “I had no idea you were going to be so demanding in bed.”

“Didn’t you?” I shot back.

“Well, I guess I did.” He gave me a quick kiss on the lips then pulled my hands over my head. “You’d better hold on. I don’t want you to get a concussion.”

I braced one of my hands against the headboard, taking care to avoid putting pressure on the injured hand, as Andrew began pounding in and out of me at a fast pace. My body shifted with every hard thrust.

“Yes,” I sighed happily. “Keep going.”

His expression was determined, and I softened at his obvious desire to make it good for me. With every stroke I rocked my hips up to meet him, which had the fortunate side effect of increasing the friction on my clit.

My inner muscles began to flutter as little waves of electricity arced through me.

“I’m close.”

Usually it took a lot longer, but with almost two weeks of foreplay, I was more than ready.

Andrew lowered his head, kissing me deeply, mimicking the movement of his hips with his tongue. Then I ripped my face away and gasped for breath as wave after wave of pleasure coursed through me.

Andrew rocked inside me half a dozen more times before his movements turned erratic. I lowered my hands and squeezed his ass tightly, spurring him on. He paused, gasping my name before he let himself go, releasing his seed into the condom. I could feel the warmth of it even through the latex.

He collapsed on top of me, burying his head in my neck as I stroked his back.

“Fuck.”

That one word from him said it all. I’d had my fair share of sexual encounters over the years, but never had one left me this shattered. I felt like all the cells in my body had broken apart and reformed into something new. Or maybe it was the sensation of something broken inside me finally healing. This sense of euphoria was new to me, but somehow it felt right.

“Let me get rid of the condom,” Andrew whispered.

He rolled away and I shamelessly watched him as he walked across the room naked, the muscled globes of his backside flexing in a way that made me ready for another go.

Neither of us were exactly decrepit, but we were close enough to our fifties to be firmly middle aged. One thing Andrew and I had in common was our commitment to staying in shape. It was a requirement for my job, but for the man who’d just rocked my world, it was more like a way of life.

You have more than that one thing in common, my conscience reminded me.

It was true. Staying with Andrew the last two weeks had made it blatantly obvious that we were a good match for each other. We were compatible, both personally and sexually. We got along well. And we seemed to have the perfect ratio of things in common and outside interests to make sure that we always had something to talk about. We even liked a lot of the same TV shows.

I was starting to fall in love with him, there was no denying it. It was the first time I’d felt anything even close to love since my college heartbreak. I was freaked out, but not as much as I would have expected to be.

When I was talking to Steph earlier she’d encouraged me to not judge Andrew by what happened in the past. She’d spoken very eloquently about how Christopher had seen all the broken parts of her and still loved her exactly the way she was. He didn’t try to fix her, but he was there to support her in any way she needed.

Her relationship with Christopher was something I could learn from, I realized. But even if Andrew and I could have a relationship, we still had distance working against us. It wasn’t feasible to date a man who lived an hour away from me, not when both of us needed to be present in our offices most of the time.

“That’s a pretty big sigh,” Andrew observed.

I hadn’t even heard him come back into the room.

I looked over and met his eyes. “I need to be totally honest here.”

He braced himself, his entire body stiffening. “Okay. What?”

“I know we agreed to date, and I think we could be good together. As a couple, I mean. But I just don’t see any way to make it work long term, not with our jobs being what they are.”

He rushed to the bed, gathering me into his arms and pulling me close. “If you see the possibility, we will figure out how to make it work. I promise.”

And as I fell asleep in his arms, I couldn’t help but feel hopeful that it was true, even though I knew in my heart that it was probably impossible.