Page 75 of The Awakening of Nina Fontaine

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They didn’t sleep.Not really. The night was a haze of conversation and confession, of slow and sensual sex that made her feel like a blossoming rosebud in his gentle and passionatehands.

He told her he’d been engaged once, that it was his career that had ended it, the kind of life that didn’t lend itself to white picket fences and Saturday morning Little Leaguegames.

In the end it was a blessing, he’d said. He couldn’t change. He didn’t want to change. And he didn’t want to ask anyone else to change for himeither.

He asked about Peter and she tried to be honest, refusing to lay all the blame at Peter’s feet. She told him how devastated she’d been to learn she couldn’t have children, how she’d felt her heart wither in her chest as she watched other women pushing strollers and holding crying babies. How she’d envied them even their exhausted smiles, their lost tempers in the aisles of the grocerystore.

She’d realized that she’d quit trying with Peter after that. She’d forgotten there was a point beyond building a family with children, and while he hadn’t been perfect, she could have done more. She could have found other reasons to sustain theirmarriage.

She could have dressed nicer. She could have worked harder to maintain their sex life. She could have shown more interest in him, in hiswork.

Liam had stroked her hair as she watched the candlelight flicker on the walls. “Not everything is meant to lastforever.”

There was a time when she would have rebelled against the idea. She had loved Peter. It was a distant memory now, but she knew it was true, could see it in the way she looked at them in their wedding photos. She’d vowed to stick with him for better or worse, until death do theypart.

But Liam’s words resonated with a ring of truth. How could anyone make that promise? How did you know what would happen in the future, what you both wouldbecome?

Was it worth sacrificing your happiness on the alter ofinstitution?

And it wasn’t all selfishness either. Peter hadn’t been happy with her in the end. She’d seen it in the slope of his shoulders, the weariness in his eyes when he came home, the way he avoided touchingher.

Didn’t he deserve to be happytoo?

They made love again and Liam made her come with his mouth before flipping her on her stomach, torturing her with a slow massage that had awakened another orgasm in her body, that had her lifting her ass off the bed in her eagerness to have him fill heragain.

He pulled her up onto all fours and drove into her with a ferocity that took her by surprise after their initial slow lovemaking. She’d come hard and fast, her channel so tight as it clamped down on his shaft that it was almost painful to feel him drag out ofher.

After they recovered, they raided the kitchen for leftover garlic bread and ice cream, a combination that would have felt strange in any other circumstance but seemed just right in the context of the long and timelessnight.

She sat naked on the counter while he fed her spoonfuls of ice cream, then sat back when he spread her thighs to lick her again. After she came, she got on her knees, oblivious to the hard tile, and took him in her mouth, holding the base of his shaft in her hands while she licked and sucked until he pulled her to her feet and lifted her into his arms. She locked her legs around his waist while he carried her back to the bedroom, laying her out on the bed and fucking her all overagain.

The sun was just lightening the sky, the light faintly blue as it leaked into the room, the candles burning low when she finally drifted off in his arms. His breath had become slow and steady, his heartbeat under herear.

The last thing she remembered thinking before she fell asleep was that it sounded familiar, like a lullaby longforgotten.

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