want is a quiet night with my family before…” He can’t even complete the sentence.
And I give him some of the most honest words I’ve said in the last few days as I’ve held up a front for our son. “It hurts,” I whimper softly.
He growls behind me, before spinning me around. I gasp softly as he hauls me up against him so closely our bodies are aligned as perfectly as they are when he’s thrusting inside of me. One arm is banded around my hips while the other is threaded through my hair, pulling it back slightly. “Look me in the eye and say that again,” he demands.
Helpless, I comply. “Of course it hurts, Jennings. It’s slipping away again, and the wounds are starting to open. But I’d rather have had this time with you than nothing at all. I…” I don’t get a chance to tell him how much I’ll always love him because he slams his mouth down on mine.
Voraciously, he kisses me in front of the people that matter to both of us across a continent of living. It isn’t until a moan starts to build in the back of my throat he pulls back.
Words almost don’t seem necessary, but Jennings gives them to me anyway. And when he does, they’re perfect and painful because they give me hope. Damn him.
“Understand me, Kara. We’re going to be together in the end. I just have to deal with the how.”
My hand lifts from where it rests lightly on his shoulder to drag down the plane of his cheek until I can smooth it over the scruff of his beard. “I want you to know I’ll never be sorry.” At his questioning look, I expand, “For either summer I spent loving you.”
A slow smile spreads across his handsome face. “That’s good to know because I’ll never be sorry for falling in love with you.” Before I can respond, he loosens the grip on my hair. “Let’s see what we can do to end this party before dawn. I need to have tonight to hold you.”
Woodenly, I nod, incapable of speaking. I always wondered what it would feel like to have all of John Jennings. Now that I do, I’m sorry I don’t know what to do or what to say.
And I’m more sorry I have no time to find out.
Slipping an arm around his waist, we head in the direction where our son is laughing with Brad and Rainey’s kids. We stand there absorbing the sound since it might be the last time either of us hears it for a while.
The house is finally quiet. Jennings’s hands are running up and down my back after I’ve collapsed on top of him a limp mess. The words start to form before I know they’re coming. “I could talk to…”
“Shh, Kara. Not tonight. Let tonight be about just us.” His vivid green eyes meet mine. “Right now, I need to just memorize everything before the air shifts and drags you away from me. We’ll figure out our tomorrows then. Tonight, until the sun comes up, I want to put us first.”
“How can I possibly refuse that?” Even though my words are the same ones I teased him with when I said yes to our first date over sixteen years ago, there is nothing joking about them now.
“I thank God every day you can’t.” Unlike the first time, there’s no arrogant smile accompanying his words. And the next ones would have melted me if he hadn’t already performed that feat with his lovemaking earlier. “Did I ever say thank you? For Kevin, for staying, for being so courageous when you were young, and even more perfect now that we’re older?” Jennings’s eyes burn into mine.
I shake my head. “You gave me the greatest gift of my life. It’s me who should be thanking you,” I counter.
“I’ve spent so much of my life in the air because there was nothing I wanted on the ground. Now that I found you and Kevin, well, I know what he meant.”
“What who meant?” I lean down and press a brief kiss to his lips.
“Love and family. They’re the secrets that give you a shot at the stars. Funny, Jed told me that on the flight we took when he told me about your brother.”
Tears slip from my eyes and fall heedlessly to his chest as I lean down and press my lips to his. Over and over, our lips slide over one another. Our tongues