me.”
“I did?”
“Yes, you said you needed my support.”
“Specifically, your emails. Your calls. Then I said I wanted you to leave.”
“But you don’t want me to leave.” She rubbed her knuckles over his heart. “There’s a part of you that wants me to stay and stand by you no matter what. Then there’s the part—the unselfish part that proves what a good man you are—that wants to protect me. I appreciate that, I really do. But there is no part of me that would feel right leaving you.”
“What about your job? That’s been your dream for years. They’re not going to be especially understanding about postponing your start date because your felon boyfriend is under arrest for murder.”
She found a smile despite his words. “So you consider yourself my boyfriend?”
“Mia, don’t get stuck on the details.”
“I told them a close friend was in trouble, and that I needed to help.”
“Told? As in past tense?”
She gestured toward her phone, sitting next to her purse. “A little while ago.” She wasn’t going to say that they couldn’t extend her start date. They were shorthanded, and if she couldn’t begin on their agreed-upon date they would contact another candidate. Sure, it had been hard to tell them to do that. “That dream was part of my safe, comfortable life plan. In familiar surroundings, not far from my parents. At the heart of it, I want to help others who are going through what I did, cancer or burns. My real dream is to embrace life. Love.”
“Dammit, Mia. You—”
She kissed him harder this time, just to shut him up. He surprised her by hungrily kissing her back. Desperately. “Love me, Raleigh.” She tugged at his shirt, and he tore it off. He pulled off her shirt, her bra, and kept kissing her as she wriggled out of her pants.
Their naked bodies came together, hot flesh to flesh, grinding together. Blindly, they touched and gripped and grasped, as though the force of a tornado were tearing them apart. If they didn’t hold on, didn’t connect deeply, they would be torn apart.
“Love me,” she pleaded, meaning the physical act and not the emotion this time.
He dug inside his duffel bag and shoved the condom over himself, then returned to her. He spread her legs, teased his fingers over her wet folds and then slid one inside her. She wrapped her hand over his cock and drew him close. Desperate to have him fill her. She gasped as he impaled her.
“I do need you,” he whispered, his words raw. “It’s not fair to you, but I do.”
“Life isn’t fair. Not all the time. So we grab each good moment that we can and hold on tight.”
He drove hard, and she felt his need, his fear that he wouldn’t see her again, in each desperate thrust. She met him, hip to hip, fingers digging into his back. Needing to hold on to him, to never let him go.
His mouth slammed down over hers, devouring her as though she were his last meal. She bit his lower lip, shocked to taste blood when they kissed again. They’d never made love like this, hard and rough. The ferocity clawed at her, wild and reckless, and shot crazy heat straight to her heart.
He cried out her name with his release, and she followed him. Unable to speak, but repeating his name mentally like a chant. She couldn’t lose him. Not again. She felt the same as she did before she went to the doctor for her follow-ups. Holding on to life in case the news wasn’t good. Knowing two words—”It’s back”—could spin her right into battle again. She was in a different battle this time, but it was every bit as important that she win. That they win.
It took a while to come down. To breathe normally.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered as he shifted so that they were side by side. “I shouldn’t have taken you like that.”
“Are you kidding me? That was incredibly…real. Wild and raw. I took you as hard as you took me.” She drew her fingers down his face, rubbing away the blood on his lip. “There are a lot of things in life that aren’t fair, Raleigh. But loving each other is one of the things that’s right and good. We aren’t losing that.”
Chapter 16
Mia and Raleigh found their way to the bed sometime during the night. Though in a sleepy frame of mind, they’d discussed going out to the deck again, but Raleigh had a good point: