Page 42 of The Forbidden Trio

“Janie, wait. For. Me.” One more hard, burrowing thrust, then, “Now! Come for me, baby girl. Come! Coming… ah…”

Pleasure knifed through her, deep and hard and true, his pulsing cock driving her on, her body wracked with a fierce, trembling heat as he sank his teeth into her shoulder.

Cole’s hand kept working her clit, until she thought she couldn’t come anymore, and yet she did, the pleasure exquisite, nearly painful. Finally, they were squirming against each other as he softened inside her, his hand feathering over her clitoris and sending tiny shockwaves through her.

She was giddy. With coming. With him.

Cole.

How was this possible, after all they’d been through? After all these years?

They still fit together, hand in glove, as if their bodies had never forgotten each other, programmed by muscle memory. Knowing each other by heart.

He slipped out of her and turned her over, taking a moment to pull the condom off before he dragged her on top of him. She rested her cheek on his chest, over the koi he had tattooed there, and listened to the pounding of his heart.

Hers was hammering just as hard. From the sex, the exertion, the orgasm. The emotion she was barely able to hold at bay.

She would not think about the mixed feelings she still had about him. The unresolved shit between them. No, right now, she would enjoy what was happening—being with him again. His body and his scent and the man she had once loved with every part of her being, body and soul. And maybe still did.

It had always been Cole.

Didn’t something like this deserve a little time to see if it still might be? Because nothing that felt this good could be all bad. Could it?

Two nights later. they sat naked on her bed eating Vietnamese pho noodles—or was it three? The time had passed as if they were in a dream. Being with Janie again—hisJanie—was his dream. She had never looked more beautiful to him, her hair disheveled, her mouth swollen with kissing, her cheeks pink.

“I can’t believe you got them to deliver,” she said, lifting her chopsticks and winding them expertly around a long noodle.

“There are a few advantages to success,” he said. “Midnight noodles with you naked in bed being one of them. Eating naked suits you, baby.”

She smiled, and it lit him up inside.

“I have my painting that Iris did, you know,” he told her. “The one that matches this one over your bed? It’s hanging over the mantle in my living room.”

“You kept it?”

“Yeah, of course. You know I love her work. And it’s like… keeping a piece of you with me.”

She ducked her head, her lashes lowered, and he set his bowl down on the teak tray they’d brought in from the kitchen and reached out to grasp her small, warm fingers in his. “Hey. We need to be able to talk about our history. We don’t have to get into the hard stuff yet, unless you want to. I’m leaving that up to you. Because if that’s what you want, well, you deserve to have that choice in my book. But we’ve shared a lot of good times too. We don’t have to pretend it never happened, good or bad. Okay?”

She nodded, looked up at him, and he thought he saw a slight sheen of tears in her lovely sea-green eyes. She blinked hard a few times.

“Okay.”

He’d been sure she was going to say more. Janie had never been the type to hold her feelings in. It made his stomach knot up. Made him crave more of a reaction.

“This is another one of those good times, baby,” he said, maybe to reassure himself even more than her. “How amazing is this?This. Us being here together.”

Her green eyes were enormous, and he could see the doubt ricocheting through her brain and all he wanted to do was wipe it away.

“Can we just…” she stammered. “I mean, I thought we could do this without… God, I don’t know what I thought. Maybe I wasn’t thinking at all.”

He leaned in until he caught a whiff of her scent. She smelled like the lemon blossoms growing outside her apartment—that and the unique perfume of her skin and sex andthemall over her. He couldn’t help himself—he inhaled, breathing her in, trying to calm himself down so he could tell her everything that was on his mind, in his heart. “This isus, Janie girl. There is no easy way. No doing this without thinking. But I don’t want it to be easy. I want it to be us again.”

“Please, you don’t—”

He couldn’t let her finish. “I meant to take this a little more slowly, but you’re right here in front of me, too fucking beautiful to be believed and more confident, stronger than ever. Still the most amazing woman I’ve ever known, and I don’t want to waste any more time.” His fingers tightened around hers and his heart hammered in his chest. “Life really is too short and we are

too damn important. Give me the chance to show you how important.”

---