Chapter 34 #2
He drew back to study her nipples after his attention, now even redder and stiffer and he watched in fascination as tiny white droplets slowly formed on the tips. “Oh, God.” Krissa lifted her head to look at herself.
“That’s what I mean,” she murmured.
A fist squeezed his throat and his heart thumped hard. “Do you want to be on top?”
She gazed up at him. “I don’t know. I think it’s okay if you are.”
He moved over her and she reached for his cock, long, hard and throbbing. Her hands on him felt sublime, soft yet firm, stroking him in long pulls that sent pleasure licking over his skin.
“Inside me. Please.”
“Yeah.” He let her guide him into her, felt her wetness, then her heat surrounded the head of his cock.
Hot velvet, squeezing him. A low, rough sound tore from his throat.
He held his weight on his elbows and really, she wasn’t that big, he just straightened his arms a bit to hold his body higher.
She parted her legs wider, and he pushed into her in. The air ripped out of his lungs.
“Krissa, oh, God.”
“I know.” Her hands clutched his ass, pulled him deeper. “Fuck me, Nate.”
His groans mingled with her sighs as their bodies came together, perfect, easy and right.
He surged into her, their connection intimate, joining not just their bodies but their hearts and their souls.
Something touched him inside, a searing, exquisite sensation that he recognized as love.
Something he thought he’d never feel again.
And at that moment he knew he’d never felt this kind of love before.
An overwhelming desire to protect and take care of her and their child, to be with them forever, made his eyes sting.
It hurt. Love hurt. It hurt like hell to think he’d found that kind of love with her, and lost her.
He wasn’t even sure if she’d been his to lose, yet he’d known she had feelings for him, too, after that night in L.A.
It made him wonder why he was so grateful to her for ripping open those old wounds, for letting him feel the pain he’d managed to avoid for years. And now he knew why.
Because love was a tender torment, an irresistible anguish that made everything else worthwhile. There was nothing else that mattered.
His hands framed her face, and his gaze held hers. He saw a reflection of his own devotion, his own longing, his own hope in her eyes, drawing him in. “I love you, Krissa. I love you.”
Her hands stroked over his back and he felt the tenderness in her touch, heard her pleasure in her muffled whimpers, leaned in and felt her love in the brush of her breath against his mouth. “I love you, too, Nate.”
Her body tightened beneath him and around him as she climaxed, squeezing him inside and out.
She cried out and he watched her face, humbled by her beauty, by the ecstasy he saw there because of him, awed and gratified by her love.
Pressure built at the base of his spine and in his balls, building to his own exquisite peak of pleasure.
Her hands gripped his hips as he drove into her one…
more…time…and exploded. Lights flashed as his lids squeezed shut against the intensity of his orgasm, and when he poured himself into her in long, hard almost painful pulses, he felt truly joined to this woman.
They settled beneath the soft warmth of the duvet, curled into each other. The protrusion of her tummy still felt unfamiliar but he liked it. He pressed his cheek against the top of her head and smiled.
“You’re sure Peanut doesn’t know what we’re doing?”
She laughed. “Yes.”
He loved her arms around him, stroking his back, down over the curve of his ass, dragging her fingers up the crevice there. Jesus, he was going to be hard again in two minutes if she kept that up.
“Where did you go when you left?” She stroked up his back again.
“To my parents.”
“Good.” He heard the drowsy satisfaction in her voice and smiled.
“Yeah. Thanks to you.”
“Why me?”
“I owe you everything, Krissa.”
She tilted her head back to look at him.
“I was…dead. Inside. After Lauren died, and then I found out about her cheating, I just…shut down. I didn’t want to talk to anyone, didn’t want sympathy.
I didn’t want to talk to people who knew us, who would be all ‘poor Lauren, such a wonderful girl’ when I knew the truth, and yet, I didn’t want to tell people about it, either.
So I just avoided everyone who knew us. Ran away and took pictures. ”
“And did damn good at it.”
“Yeah. But I was feeling…nothing. And then when my eyes were screwed, I was just pissed off at everything and everyone. Until you.”
He held her gaze.
“You made me feel stuff again, Krissa. You made me feel good. God, you made me feel more than good. You ripped holes in me.” She blinked at him, her smile quivering.
“But when I started feeling good, all the bad stuff came, too. I didn’t want to feel it—I didn’t want to hurt.
I didn’t want to feel the pain of being betrayed or losing someone I loved, but I started to feel that too, two years later.
I didn’t want to fall in love again.” He shook his head, touched her cheek with gentle fingers.
“And when I realized what I’d felt for Lauren was nothing compared to what I felt for you…
Christ, it scared the hell out of me. Especially knowing you belonged to someone else. ”
He closed his eyes, heard her small murmur. “When we first slept together, it was supposed to be a donation. Nothing more. No feelings involved.”
“I knew that. It hurt me.”
“I know. I tried to make it better for you after that, but I didn’t realize my own feelings were going to get all mixed up in it. Like you ripped something open and it all came spilling out.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, it was good. I needed that. I don’t know what would have happened to me if I’d never dealt with all that stuff—the grief, the anger I felt toward Lauren. I’m afraid of what might’ve happened to me.”
He stroked her hair off her forehead, rested his hand there. “I won’t make the same mistakes with you. I won’t leave you, Krissa. Any longer than I have to. I know I was partially responsible for what happened with Lauren.”
“No.” She looked at him. “No, don’t do what I do. Don’t blame yourself for things that aren’t your fault.”
“I’m not taking all the blame. Believe me, I know Lauren was responsible for her own decisions.
But…I have to accept some responsibility for things I did wrong.
I know I neglected her. My career was just taking off.
I was so excited, it was all I could think about.
” He shook his head. “I was an idiot. But…I didn’t feel the way I do now.
Sad to say. The truth is…I couldn’t leave you like I did Lauren.
” He wouldn’t be taking off for months at a time to travel, like he did with Lauren.
If he had to go for more than a couple of weeks, Krissa—and the baby—would come with him.
He wouldn’t put his career over his family.
“You are so different from Derek.”
“I watched you keep your anger all bottled up inside you and I knew you couldn’t keep doing that either. Some day it was going to come exploding out of you.”
“Oh, yeah. It came out.” She giggled. “You should have seen my parents’ faces when I told them about us.”
“Oh, Jesus. What did you say?”
“My mom figured we’d been screwing around on Derek after that morning she showed up.” She related her conversation with her parents, designed to shock them. And she told him about Cameron.
“Wow. When you let it out, you let it out.”
“I never would have if it weren’t for you. You made me fight.”
“Ah, bunny.” He gathered her close.
“I’m not responsible for everyone’s problems.”
“Uh…no.”
“I’ve always felt that way,” she confessed into his chest. He stroked her hair.
“With my mom, and with Derek. He did blame me for our problems. Even when we realized it wasn’t me that couldn’t get pregnant, he still made me feel like it was all my fault.
And he tried to make me feel it was my fault that he had to go screw other women. ”
“Jesus. I’ll kill the fucking bastard.”
She moved her head against him. “No. Don’t kill him. He’ll figure it out. Maybe he already has. And I…I was okay. I didn’t blame myself.” She paused. “I could have. I could have felt that I wasn’t enough for him.”
“Fuck.”
“But I didn’t. I don’t…condone what he did, not at all, but I sort of get it. He needed something to build himself back up. He was looking for something…something that was missing inside him. And that’s not on me.”
“No.” He tightened his arms around her. “No, it’s not.”
“I want us to be together, Krissa,” he said. “I want to be a father to this baby.”
She rolled toward him, pushed him onto his back and moved over him. “I want that too.” Eyes glistening, she bent and kissed him. “I love you. And I’m so sorry for how this started.”
“Don’t be sorry. Things happen for a reason. It was whacked, but in the end—maybe we all get what we deserve. I don’t know why I deserve you, but I’m just going to count myself lucky. I’m just sorry I lost my best friend.”
“Maybe you can forgive him some day.”
And maybe one day Derek would forgive him, too. A sad and hopeful anticipation filled him.
“He just wasn’t a strong enough man to accept responsibility for his mistakes. And then he tried to make them right by using us to make him feel better. I was so determined to get what I wanted, I let him do it.”
“We all have our weaknesses.” And clearly, Krissa was his.
He, too, had been drawn into Derek’s manipulations and he had to admit he hadn’t resisted all that hard.
He’d known the kinds of problems they could face doing what they’d done, but he’d done it anyway because he’d been unable to resist Krissa’s sweet temptation.
Logic and the knowledge of consequences, right versus wrong, had nothing to do with decisions made with the heart.
“Does he know…you’re pregnant?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t told him. I haven’t seen him other than just after I left. I wasn’t showing then. He may have heard from other people, though.” She sighed. “When he blamed me for him screwing around, that was it. I couldn’t take any more.”
“I wish you’d called me. I hate thinking about you being alone, finding out you were pregnant when you were alone.”
“I think it was good.” She stroked a hand through his hair, then over his cheek. “I had to be alone. I was so confused. I thought I loved Derek, and I thought I loved you. Then I felt like I hated him. I didn’t know how I felt. I was a mess.”
He covered her hand with his, pressed a kiss to her palm.
“I needed to figure myself out before I could figure us out.” Her eyes pleaded with him for understanding.
And he did.
“I know.” He paused. “Me, too. Christ, Krissa, I didn’t know how lost I was. Until I found you.”
They’d done things that many would consider unforgivable.
Nate wasn’t sure why he and Krissa were lucky enough to have found a second chance; a chance at happiness together.
But he wasn’t going to risk losing it again.
Facing the loss of his eyesight and his photography had been painful, but losing Krissa had been the worst agony of all.
She leaned in and kissed him. “We found ourselves. And we found each other.”