“Take it easy,” he said. “You’re good. It’s all okay.”
“My face,” she said. Opening her eyes, unsurprised to see him there, she smiled. “I must look quite the sight.”
“You’re beautiful,” he said. “I remember that one of the mistakes I made with your sister early on was when I told her how beautiful you were. She didn’t appreciate it.”
She gave him a wry smile. “You should never tell a woman that another woman is beautiful; especially when it’s her sister.”
He smiled. “I made a lot of mistakes with her, and I’m hoping not to make the same ones with you.”
“You won’t,” she said. “I won’t let you.”
With a shout of laughter, he pulled her close into his arms. She rolled against him, feeling such a sense of rightness and balance in her life and joy at being in his arms. She snaked her arms around his neck and said, “Now what was that conversation we had last night?”
He leaned over and nuzzled her nose with his. “I think it had something to do with sharing some private time.”
“Now sounds like the perfect private time to me.”
“Well, Charles might call us to breakfast.”
“Nah, he’s a wise old bird,” she said. “He knows exactly what’s going on.”
He chuckled and said, “Will it bother you?”
“What? People knowing I’m having a relationship with my sister’s ex?”
“Yeah.”
“No,” she said. “It won’t bother me. Will it bother you?”
“Nope,” he said. “I’m truly past all that.”
“Well, I’m glad to hear that,” she said, reaching up to kiss him gently. “Because I’ve waited a long time for this.”
“You were serious?”
“Very,” she said. “It broke my heart when I realized the two of you were engaged. It just was so wrong, when I knew all along you were so right for me. And there was absolutely nothing I could do. My relationship with my sister was already on the tenuous side. How could I tell her that she couldn’t have you, when you two were already engaged? I cried myself to sleep many a night.”
He winced at that. “I wasn’t very smart apparently,” he said. “I couldn’t see what was right in front of me.”
“I don’t think you’re alone in that,” she said, with a smile. “That’s the complaint a lot of people have. You know—hindsight’s 20/20 and all.”
“I hear you there,” he said, with a gentle smile. He leaned over, kissed her, and said, “So we have a lot of time to make up for.”
“You think so, huh? But I’m not in any hurry, and I don’t want to rush through it. I want to savor every moment.”
“That sounds perfect for me,” he murmured. “It’s been a long time since I was happy.”
“Well, I suggest that joy becomes our new word of the year,” she said. “Let’s try to find joy somehow, in every day.”
“All this is still not over. You know that, right?”
“I know,” she said. “It’s not over. You guys still need to find out exactly what happened to the plane you were in. And who hated you so much that they would be waging war on your team. But, for the moment, you’ve done enough.”
“I’m not sure,” he said. “But we’ll find out from Kano what’s going on and what they’ve done since they’ve been out all night. He’ll need to pick up that conversation with Deedee too,” he murmured. “And then I should go, as backup.”
“Maybe you should,” she said agreeably. “Or maybe somebody else should.”
He frowned at that.
“Are there just the two of you now?”
He shook his head. “No,” he said, “a few others are on our team.”
“So maybe, instead of being the hero all the time,” she said, “you should let somebody else step in and do a leg of this nastiness too.”
“We’ll see,” he compromised.
She chuckled out loud. “I think that means, Hell no. Am I right?”
“No,” he said, “it doesn’t. But it does mean that I’m thinking about my life. You know? And what I need to do to make a little more joy happen.”
“Well then, how about we start here and now?” she whispered, reaching up to kiss him.
He lowered his head, giving her a deep drunken kiss that fired her senses all at once.
When he lifted his head, she murmured, “Wow, I didn’t realize just how potent your kiss would be.”
“I know. Yours too,” he said, his voice thick. “And, now that I have you in my arms, it’s all I can think about.” And he lowered his head again and again and again. Each time lifting his head and trying to control himself, before going back down, like a drunk man, wanting another drink.
This time she held him close and wouldn’t let him raise his head. Passion spiked between them, and their bodies twisted sinuously against each other, both of them only in underwear, she without even a bra.
She rolled over on top of him, dropping kisses on his lips and his nose, across his face. She clasped his head, so that she could stare down at his beloved features. “I’ve missed you,” she said.
He nodded and said, “And I missed you. I just didn’t even know how much or that you were even there for me. I wish we hadn’t wasted all that time.”
“It makes this time now seem all the sweeter,” she murmured. Again she lowered her head and kissed him gently.
“If you say so,” he murmured. “I’ll spend a lot of time making it up to you.”
She smiled. “I’ll never say no to that.”
He chuckled, then he flipped her over, under him, as he said, “You’re injured, so maybe you should just lie there and rest.”
“I’m not that injured,” she said drily.
Then he worked his way down her body, gently caressing and loving every inch of her. Almost as if he thought that having missed so much, he wouldn’t miss one inch more. By the time he reached her pelvic bone, she was twisting
