Chapter 16 #2
"I'm not going to kiss you because I forgive you," she said. "I haven't forgiven you. I don't know if I will. I'm going to kiss you because I want to, and I haven't wanted to in a very long time, and I'm done denying myself things."
She kissed him.
His mouth was warm and careful. He didn't reach for her — his hands stayed on his knees, letting her set the pace, letting her decide how much of this she wanted. The restraint in his shoulders.
She pulled away an inch. "You can touch me."
His hands came up to her waist. Slow. Like he was handling something he might break.
His fingers pressed into the linen of her jacket, then found the hem and settled against the cotton of her shirt underneath.
The heat of his palms through the fabric sent a shock through her that she felt in her teeth.
"Annabel," he said. Just her name. Not a question, not a plea. A fact.
She kissed him again. Harder this time. Eight years in it — the early years when they couldn't keep their hands off each other, the middle years when it became routine, the last year when she'd started turning away in bed without understanding why. All of it and the wreckage.
His hand moved up her back. She leaned into him. His knees parted and she stepped between them, close enough to feel the heat coming off his chest through the T-shirt. His other hand cupped the back of her neck, thumb tracing the line of her jaw, and the tenderness of it nearly undid her.
She pulled back. Breathing hard.
"Bedroom," she said.
"Are you sure?"
"If you ask me that again I will walk back out the service entrance."
He didn't ask again.
#
The hallway was dark. She walked ahead of him and he followed, which was right — she was leading this, all of it, every step from here on. The bedroom door was open. The bed was unmade, sheets tangled, pillows stacked on one side. His side. The other side was untouched.
She stopped at the foot of the bed and turned to face him.
He stood in the doorway, filling it. Six-two, broad-shouldered, the silver catching the dim light from the window. He was waiting. His hands hung at his sides. She could see the rise and fall of his chest, the effort it was taking him to stand there and not reach for her.
"Come here," she said.
He crossed the room in two strides. His hands framed her face and he kissed her — not careful this time, not restrained.
Everything he'd been holding back since East Hampton, since the gala, since the board dinner, all the want he'd buried under apologies and grand gestures and carefully worded confessions poured into her and she took it.
She pulled his T-shirt up. He broke the kiss long enough to drag it over his head and drop it on the floor.
His chest was bare in the low light — she knew this body, every plane and angle, the scar below his ribs from a sailing accident at twenty, the way his stomach tightened when she ran her nails across it.
She knew him. That was the terrible part.
That was also the part that made this possible.
She put her hand flat against his sternum. His heartbeat slammed into her palm.
"Take off my jacket," she said.
He eased the linen off her shoulders, slow, watching her face the whole time. It dropped to the floor. Then his hands were at the hem of her shirt, and he paused.
"Keep going," she said.
He lifted the shirt over her head. She stood in her bra — plain, black, nothing she'd chosen for this because she hadn't planned this. His eyes dropped and then came back to her face, and the hunger in them was so naked it made her breath catch.
She reached back and unhooked the bra herself. Let it fall.
He made a sound in his throat. Low, involuntary. His hands came up and stopped.
"Touch me."
His palms cupped her breasts and the heat of his skin against hers sent a jolt down through her core.
His thumbs moved across her nipples — light, testing — and she arched into it.
He bent his head and kissed the hollow of her throat, then lower, his mouth tracing the line of her collarbone where she knew the flush was rising.
"I missed you," he said against her skin. "Every day. I know I don't get to say that."
"Say it anyway."
"Every single day."
She pulled him back up and kissed him, hard, her hands in his hair. She could taste the want in him, the desperation he was trying to pace. She didn't want him paced. She wanted him undone.
She undid the drawstring of his sweatpants. Pushed them down. He stepped out of them and the full length of him pressed against her — warm skin, hard muscle, the unmistakable press of his arousal against her hip. She rocked against it and he groaned.
"Annabel — "
"On the bed."
He sat on the edge. She stood in front of him and undid her own jeans, slid them down with her underwear, stepped out of both.
Naked now, both of them, in the room where they'd slept together for seven years.
The same bed. The same city sounds through the window.
Everything the same except what had broken between them and what was growing in its place.
She climbed onto his lap, straddling him, and his hands gripped her hips like he was afraid she'd disappear. He pressed between her thighs — hard, hot — and she shifted her weight so that the length of him pressed against her center. The friction made her gasp.
"Look at me," she said.
He looked at her. His eyes were dark, blown wide, and in them she could see every version of the man she'd married — the one who'd charmed her at twenty-four, the one who'd broken her trust at thirty-three, the one who stood in front of a boardroom of people he respected and told the truth.
She held all of those men in her gaze and she did not look away.
She reached between them and took him in her hand. He was thick and familiar in her grip, and the sound he made when she squeezed was the same sound he'd always made — a sharp exhale through his teeth, almost pained. She stroked him once, twice, and he grabbed her wrist.
"If you keep doing that, this is going to be over before it starts."
"Then it starts now."
She rose up on her knees and guided him into her. Slow. Inch by inch. She stretched around him, the ache of it, the fullness she'd missed without admitting she'd missed it. His forehead dropped to her shoulder and his breath came hot and ragged against her skin.
She sank all the way down. Held still.
The room was quiet except for their breathing. He was inside her — not just physically but in every way that mattered. The intimacy of it was almost too much. Two people who knew each other's damage, sitting in the wreckage, choosing to stay.