Chapter 15 #2
“Past tense, Kayla?”
I only hesitated a moment. “No.”
“Jesus. This isn’t easy for me. I planned to go quietly.”
“You would have done that to me?”
“I didn’t want to put you through this.” His sigh fanned across my mouth. “You chose him—”
“Ian, please…” A sob hitched in my throat. One more ding to my composure.
“Let me finish, sweetheart.” He nudged the bangs from my eyes with his nose.
“I don’t like that you chose him, but it was your decision to make.
I just…I needed to know you and Eve were okay.
” Tears rimmed his hazel eyes. “I can accept the cancer taking me. But leaving you…that’s really killing me. ”
“Don’t talk like that.”
“I have to be realistic.” He paused. “Is he still hurting you?”
I lowered my gaze.
“Tell me the truth, Kayla. No matter how ugly or hard to hear. Give it to me straight.”
“He’s sadistic, controlling, domineering, possessive, jealous—”
“Sounds like a great guy,” he interrupted, his mouth twisting in disdain.
“But he’s also passionate…” I softened my tone. “Caring, protective. He’s a disaster, but he’s my disaster. And he’s incredible to Eve.”
“You’re head over heels.”
“He loves me more than I deserve.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“It’s true.”
“That could never be true.”
“I can’t give him my whole heart.”
Ian closed his eyes. “If there’s anything I regret, it’s not being with you in Texas. Texas could have changed everything.” His chest shook with holding back what he didn’t want to express in words.
I didn’t think, didn’t analyze the right or wrong in my actions. I only knew that he needed me. As I brought my mouth to his, I forced Gage from my mind. Shattered the images of him as I brought my fingers to the first button of my blouse.
I’d hate myself later.
Ian deserved this. I deserved this, because in spite of everything, Gage had taken this from us. And God, I loved that cruel and fragile man, no matter what he put me through. I forgave him for every lash, every bruise, every time he forced his will on me.
I prayed he’d find the same capacity to forgive.
“What are you doing?” Ian gazed at me with bewildered eyes.
“Giving us Texas.” My fingers quaked as I unfastened a button, then another.
“Don’t do this for me.” He moved to push me away, but his arm was weak, ineffective in fighting me off…
in fighting off his own desires. He placed his right hand on my chest, and the instant his palm conformed to the softness of my breast, he lingered until the tips of his fingers brushed my aching nipple through the thin silk of my bra.
Thrusting my breast more firmly into his hand, I let my shirt slide off my shoulders, and the garment fluttered to the floor.
Desperation possessed me. Fear. The idea that the earth and everyone on it would lose him.
That I would lose him. I pressed my mouth to his, lips parting. Tongue questing for acceptance.
He opened to me, groaning deep in his throat, and sucked my tongue into his mouth. We kissed until neither of us could breathe. I reached between us and slid my hand down the elastic band of his sweatpants, and closed my fingers around his erection.
“Jesus…” He jutted his hips, bringing him deeper into my hand. “Jesus…fuck, Kayla. Stop.”
“Let me give you this.”
He swallowed hard. “I want this. Jesus, I want this. But only if you’re doing it for you, because I know it’ll rip into your conscience.”
“I don’t care.” I swirled my thumb through the moisture collecting at his tip. “You can’t give up yet.”
A hoarse groan rumbled from his throat. “This isn’t going to change anything. I’m still going to have cancer—”
“Shh. Come for me.” I wanted him to purge the sickness from his body, free his mind of death and doom. “Let it out.”
Live for me.
Sex was living. Loving was living. Giving in and letting go, embracing the free-fall…that was living.
Ian needed to fucking live.
I pushed to my knees, giving myself more room to work at coaxing him over the edge. As I pumped his cock with frantic strokes, illogical thoughts assaulted my sanity with trickery disguised as truth. As if I could keep him alive by making him fly.
The way Gage had made my fly while in the depths of despair over Eve’s illness. My heart blanched, and another sob squeezed from my throat, except I didn’t know who I was crying for now—Ian or Gage.
I was hurting both of them.
Giving one a taste of ecstasy as a bon voyage, and breaking into shards the iced-over heart of the man I’d married. The man I loved with such intensity and possessiveness and all-consuming passion that I couldn’t wrap my head around what my hand was doing.
It didn’t have permission, just as Ian didn’t have my fucking permission to die.
Every breath he drew was a laborious, wordless plea.
A plea for more. A plea for me to stop and let him go.
But there was no stopping this. The orgasm came over him in a violent assault, seizing his muscles, cutting off his vocal cords.
He came in a muted full-body spasm, his release spurting over my pumping fist in an unstoppable eruption.
As soon as he caught his breath, my name fell from his twisted mouth, almost as if it killed him to say it.
“Why did you do that?” His eyes shuttered as he rested his head against the back of the couch.
“I…needed to.”
His arms flopped like lifeless noodles at his sides. “I want to touch you. Taste you on my tongue.” A tear streaked down his cheek, and there was something especially heart-wrenching about a man crying. “I’m sorry, Kayla. I never wanted to hurt you like this.”
The disease had weakened him, stealing his energy reserves, the ravages of cancerous cells holding a strong man prisoner.
I folded my arms around him and sobbed, leaving tear stains on his T-shirt, and my guilt sucked the strength from me.
I’d done the unforgivable. I’d betrayed Gage, and in doing so…
it would change nothing. Ian would still have cancer when I walked out the door.
Now that the frenzy had abated, and rational thought took hold again, I felt close to vomiting.
“I can’t…” he began, his voice a mere whisper, “keep my eyes open.”
“Shh, just let me hold you.”
A sigh escaped him. “So tired.”
“Sleep. I’m here.”
“Don’t want you to see me this way.”
As he let sleep take him, I held on to him so tightly I thought I might never let go.