Page 35 of Ebbing Tides
I laughed again, then cleared my throat. “I guess I'm just trying not to want you so much right now.”
The mirth left her eyes, the smile dropping from her face. “Max.”
I met her gaze. “Yeah?”
“I wouldn't be here if I didn't …” She let her words fade, and her tongue swiped over her flushed and swollen bottom lip.
Lord, my heart was frantic, wildly beating an irregular rhythm. I'd been with my share of women. I was no strangerto lust and the ways of sex. But this woman … I had set her so high on a pedestal, put her in a league so far outside of my own that the thought that she could want me as much seemed inconceivable. It was unimaginable, outside any realm of possibility. I needed to hear the words. Something more than just wanting my hands on her body and my lips on hers.
So, I waited, my eyes moving in an erratic dance over her rosy cheeks and full, wanton lips.
She closed her mouth and swallowed, a resolve falling over her features as she dragged her gaze back to mine. One small, lithe hand left the side of my neck to trail painstakingly over my chest, heading south.
“I thought about this for years,” she admitted, her words tentative and nearly unsure. “I regretted it.”
I shook my head. “No, don't say—”
“I wouldn't change a fucking thing,” she hurried to continue. “But if this is my only shot at a second chance, I want to take it.”
And she did, moving her hand lower, lower, lower until her fingers grazed my strained erection with a touch so tentative that I could've cried. For me, for her … for a past and future we didn't have with each other or our dead spouses. So simultaneously wrong and right that I didn't know which side to lean toward.
So, I pressed forward, capturing another kiss and another as one of my hands grasped the back of her neck and the other lowered to cup her heaving breast, caressing as her hand stroked and the height of our desire reached levels I’d thought impossible.
The night outside called in billowing winds and the scraping of outstretched branches against the office roof. Sounds I would've normally ignored on any other night in the dead of February, but only listened now to memorize the symphony playing out around me, before me, above me. Melanie's sighs and tiny moans. Our mouths, wet and needy, joined in a never-ending kiss. The friction of her palm against my jeans. Then the pause as she pulled away to tug her sweatshirt off, leaving her bare and braless and me staring and stunned, like an adolescent boy who'd just seen breasts for the first time in his life.
Melanie didn't have any patience for it.
“Take this off,” she demanded, already reaching for the buttons of my shirt.
“What's the rush?” I asked, even as I complied. “It's only midnight.”
I regretted the words immediately when she looked up at me, unamused and stern.
“Some of us have kids who wake up in the morning.”
A harsh, bitter sting accompanied the comment, one she couldn't have been aware of. No, she was good and wouldn't have hurt me intentionally, but, oh fuck, did it ever. Just days before the decade-long anniversary of when I'd lost every member of the family I'd built.
I dropped my eyes to the buttons, fumbling as I undid one, then another. My throat working around a boulder that was immediately big enough to choke the life out of me.
Melanie noticed my sudden lack of confidence, or maybe it was the tightness in my jaw or the reluctance of my fingers.Whatever it was, she took my hands in hers and asked, “Wait, do you have kids?”
“I told you I didn't,” I replied, aware now that sex was far from the forefront of my mind, even as I continued to remove my button-down shirt.
“Didyou have kids?”
Winner, winner chicken dinner.
I bit back a reply in the time it took to pull in a deep breath, then exhaled. But as I undid the last button and both sides of the shirt fell open, I allowed myself to nod.
“You had …” She swallowed, then asked, “How many?”
Jesus Christ, what she must've been thinking. I shook my head, hurrying to downplay and cover up my silliness.
“They were my stepdaughters. Two of them,” I said. “And Laura …” I closed my eyes and inhaled. “She was pregnant when she died.”
“Oh my God,” Melanie whispered. “I'm so sorry.”
I sucked in a deep, cleansing breath and opened my eyes to the breathtaking sight before me. This woman, who'd once invaded my dreams, half naked beside the nearly broken coffeepot. Her lips the color of fresh strawberries, her cheeks the color of roses. Her eyes, shimmering in pools of tears for me and all I'd lost when she and her boys had lost enough themselves to deserve a lifetime of tears.
