Page 50 of No Second Chances

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.

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