22. Kennedy
I’ve never liked watching porn. I can’t quite place my finger on the reason why, but I always think it has something to do with feeling like a voyeur. But watching Linc take a shower, while I sit on the toilet wrapped in a towel, drying my hair, I find myself wanting to record it and watch the tape over and over again. I don’t even think he knows that his shower curtain is transparent when it gets wet. He hasn’t been in the bathroom while I’ve showered, and I’m not about to ask him and ruin my show.
Water sluices off his muscles and hits the clear shower curtain, only to slide slowly down the plastic and back into the tub, while he washes his hair, his beard, everything. When he tilts his head back, I get to see every muscle in his neck dance and move to a beat of its own. I’m left shifting back and forth, trying not to implode with need as he finishes his shower. While the steam definitely fogs up the glass, there is enough sexual desire pouring out of my body to power a small city.
Just as I’m about to leave him to his own devices and go take care of my problem, maybe wrapped in his blankets and holding his pillow, Linc sighs deeply.
“I didn’t mean to scare you.” He sounds like he is talking more to himself than to me. “With what I did to Royal. Sometimes, I don’t have control of how I react to things.” The admission hurts him, I know it, but I don’t want to pressure him into saying anything else.
“You didn’t.” I lick my lips. “Scare me, that is. He deserved everything you said and more.”
The water hits his skin in a cadence that catches my attention and fills my veins with a need so powerful I almost can’t stand it.
Linc leans against the wall, resting his head on his arms, letting the water hit his back, almost despondent. “I don’t understand how you could end up with him.”
My heart races almost painfully as his words hit their mark. “You mean,” I say bitterly, “you don’t know why I wouldn’t wait for you, after you shut me out and refused to talk to me for years?” I unwrap the towel from my hair and hang it up while I rant. “Or did you think that I would wait for you forever, Linc? When you were telling me to move on, when you refused to even talk to me. Did you want me to waste away from lack of your love?”
I would have said more, but he shuts off the water and steps out of the shower so fast that I think he might slip on the porcelain and break his head open.
“No,” he says slowly, carefully. “I don’t know how you ended up with someone so clearly not your type. And I never wanted you to wait for me, Kennedy. I wanted you to be happy.”
My eyes don’t meet his. They are too busy staring at his body. His dripping wet body that is hard everywhere it should be.
The dog tag on his neck stands out, and I reach up before I can help myself, pushing it out of the way to get to the ring I saw sitting behind it.
“You kept it… the ring I sent you.”
His hand wraps around mine gently, and with the other, he lifts my face to meet his. “Of course I did. It’s only ever been you, Kennedy.”
“No,” I say while shaking my head. “I know you haven’t only been with me. I’m not stupid. I’m just glad that you’re here with me now.”
“No,” Linc mocks me, fire burning in his eyes.
Where I would have been afraid with anyone else, I trust Linc with everything. With every piece of my soul, my body, all of it.
“No?”
“It’s only been you, Kennedy. I had you. I’ve loved you since before I made you mine. And I’ve been yours since that night, whether you knew it or not. That’s why I left you my dog tag. So you’d know that when I came home, I’d claim you like you did me. But then my life fell apart and Danny died. You were the only thing that kept me sane, even if I couldn’t have you after that. I won’t say that you saved my life, but you were there with me, on my mind, every single day. When I was separated from my fire team and thought I was going to die, I held on to your ring.” He groans. “Fuck. I hate talking. You know that.”
I snort. “For someone who hates it, you’ve done a hell of a lot of it today.”
He rests his forehead against mine, breathing deeply. “I love you. I haven’t fucked anyone else since our first time. I never expected you to wait for me. I wanted you to find happiness. Then, during my last deployment, when I was already planning on coming home, they said you were thinking about marrying someone. I didn’t believe it. I came home, and you were engaged. I couldn’t very well step up and tell you not to do it. So I tried. I tried to fuck someone else, and I couldn’t. You’re it for me, and my dick didn’t want anyone if I couldn’t have you.”
I climb that man like a fucking tree.
The towel wrapped around my body slips down in a puddle on the ground, and luckily, he catches on to what I’m doing in time to help because I do not have the upper body strength to get there all on my own.
“What are you doing?” His voice drops an octave as I settle my legs around his waist and feel his already erect cock pressing against my body.
I bite my bottom lip and wrap my arms around his neck, dropping a little lower. I watch his eyes gloss over for a moment before we move through the bathroom and back into his room. Instead of putting me down or laying us both down on the bed, Linc sits on the edge of his bed and lets me take control.
“I love you,” I tell him. “You didn’t ask me to wait for you, and I didn’t. I’m not sorry for that. What I’m sorry for is the fact that life kept us apart. For whatever reasons. I’m yours now, and you won’t be able to get rid of me… I won’t let you.” While I speak, I slide down, taking as much of him as I can, and I rock gently back and forth, needing everything he gives me.
Linc grabs my hips, holding and massaging them while he tries to force me to move, but I don’t budge. “Kennedy.” His voice caresses my skin with both a warning and a promise of what is coming. “I don’t think I’ll be able to walk away from you, even if I try. You’re in my blood. You’re everywhere. You’re in every decision I make. Every move I make through the day is so that I can have you in my arms. But if you don’t fucking move right now, I’m going to spank your ass.”
I’m smiling as I kiss him, pressing my lips to his and lifting up just enough to make me breathless. Then he’s taking back the little bit of control that he’s given me, so that he can give us both what we need.
Thrust after thrust, I think he’s already filled me completely but he hasn’t. When he leans forward and bites the top of one of my breasts, I scream with a mix of pleasure and pain. Just the right side of the line, I clench around him, bringing a groan from the depths of his body that match my own.
“Faster,” I gasp. “Please.”
He sucks on my skin for a second before letting go with a pop and then flipping us over so that he is positioned between my legs but doesn’t slip from my core.
With the new position, he lifts my legs up and puts them on either side of his neck and then leans forward.
“Damn it, Kennedy.” He closes his eyes for a moment. “Why do you have to be fucking perfect everywhere.”
I can’t help it. I’m too close to go back. I slide one hand down between us, but Linc swats my hand away with a ferocious growl.
“Mine.”
He presses his fingers down and thrusts deeper than he had before.
I shatter.
There isn’t a single piece of me left that is able to understand what is happening beyond Linc continuing to fuck me. Yes, he makes love to me, but it is more. He is more. Hard and deep and fast and everything I need and don’t know I want, Linc gives it to me.
“I love you,” he says on a broken whisper.
I open my eyes, barely able to function, let alone understand anything more profound than is currently happening.
“Say the words, Kennedy.” His growl brings my full attention back on him, and I smile hazily up at the man who makes my heart beat that little bit faster.
“I love you, Linc. You’re the only man I’ve ever loved.”
And when he brings a damp towel and cleans us both up, I think I can’t be happier than I am in that moment. Until he folds me into his arms and everything is even more perfect.
We lie there, wrapped in the warmth of his blankets and the love that I didn’t know was even possible, and Linc tells me about his dreams.
Not childish hopes or fantasies. But the dreams of a man who knows what he has and what he wants.
“I want everything, Kennedy. I want to put my ring on your finger. I want to build a life with you. I want you to grow old with me and to sit on my porch and watch you sitting there, reading a book in the afternoon sun. I want forever with you.” His dream, so easy to picture, fills every nook and cranny in my mind until I can feel the sun on my face. I can see the pages of my book turning. I can hear the laugh on his lips as we grow old together.
For one brief second, my heart aches at the lack of children that we’ll have. I feel the burning jealousy I suppressed as I sat with Parker while she found out not only that she is pregnant, but that she is about to meet her baby. I think about the things we’ll miss. The empty nest. The smiles and first steps and the little girl born with Linc’s eyes that I’ll never get to see.
But what life would be worth living, if I don’t have Linc in it? He told me he doesn’t want children, and I’ll do anything to respect those wishes. I would rather have Linc, a thousand times over, than a child born when both parents aren’t ready.
“I love you, Linc,” I tell him again in the quiet of the night. “I guess that means I should start leaving shampoo and conditioner and maybe a change of clothes here.” I’ll already be wearing one of Linc’s shirts with my leggings to go home the next morning, and I hate having to wash my hair with men’s body wash, because apparently his body wash doubled as shampoo.
Linc doesn’t say anything, not for almost a minute. He slowly runs his hand up and down my spine, collecting his thoughts. “I think you should move everything here.”
I freeze. My heart races with a mix of fear and anticipation. I must have misheard him. Misunderstood what he is saying.
“I want you to move in with me, Kennedy.” He kisses the side of my head gently, still rubbing my back, like he hasn’t just pushed a button I don’t even know I have. “I want you to stay. Forever.”
Just like that, I begin to panic in a way that I haven’t since Royal forced me to give up my belongings. The day he burned every piece of clothing that was mine. Just mine.
Never again.
I scramble out of his bed, away from his touch, and get dressed faster than I even think possible. It isn’t until I’m struggling to find my shoes that he catches up to what is happening.
“Kennedy?” Linc sits up, his face a distorted mix of confusion, amusement, and misunderstanding. “Is everything okay?”
“No.”
I walk out, not even bothering to hold my tears back. I think I’ll get away, too. I think he’ll let me go. That he’ll give me space. That Linc will stay away.
I don’t even make it to the stairs.
“No.” He catches me by the waist and hauls me back against his body, careful not to hurt me, but refusing to let me go. “You’re not running from me. We’re done with that.”
I try to pull away, to hide from him. From the truth.
“Not gonna happen,” Linc whispers against my head. “You don’t have to tell me everything, Kennedy. But I’m here. I’m not going anywhere, and neither are you. I promised you tacos and sex to fix everything that’s broken, and I mean it. Tacos and sex, for the rest of our lives. Together.”
He holds me through the panic. Through the fear. Through all of it. And I let him. He doesn’t hurt me. Doesn’t push. Doesn’t do anything but love me.
“Royal tried to kill me.” I slump in his arms, and Linc picks me up. He carries me to his room silently and then strips me out of my shoes and pants, leaving me in his shirt.
“I know.” Those two words are all he gives me, and then he pulls me into his arms and lets me cry. For the life I had, the one I should have had. The one I lost. All of it.
“He held my head under the water of the bath, because almost drowning me didn’t leave bruises. Over and over again.” Opening up, telling Linc why I’m broken and damaged, is the most freeing thing in the entire world. “He burned my clothes, Linc. He destroyed the only pictures I had of Cassie. He took everything. Everything. And when I refused to give him your dog tag, he tried to kill me with it.”
Linc doesn’t say a single word. But I feel his body tighten around mine.
“I can’t. I just can’t give up my things.” I swallow and wipe the tears from my eyes. “I can’t give it up.”
“Sometimes I talk to Danny. Not his ghost or anything. But him. Like he’s living inside me. My twin, ya know?” He pauses, then rubs his cheek against the top of my head. “You don’t have to get rid of anything that’s yours that you don’t want to. You can keep it all. Hell, we can move into your place if you want. But you’re the only thing in the world that gives me peace, Kennedy. I don’t want to lose you. I don’t want to sleep without you at night. You’re the only thing keeping the nightmares at bay.”
He is echoing the thoughts that I have, but about him. And he is giving me everything I’ve ever wanted, and more than I’ve ever hoped for.
“Tacos and sex, you say?”
He chuckles, bringing his lips down to mine. “Every day if that’s what you want.”
“Maybe. If you buy me a new machete so I have two that match.”