I stuff the journal back into the bag. Looks like I won’t be able to give Anne the transcription when I visit her tomorrow as I had hoped. I still need a little longer. But soon. Soon I’ll find out how Angelique escaped the war.
Bailey walks alongside me to the front door.
I open it. Troy’s standing on the stoop, his wet T-shirt molding quite spectacularly to his chest and ab muscles, outlining their ridges and valleys. Water drips from his hair and down his face. In his arms is a bundle covered in a towel that resembles…
“Is that Eeyore?” I point to the blue-gray towel with the Winnie-the-Pooh character’s head for the hood. Amelia had one like it, but hers was Pooh. An ache grips my heart, squeezes the air from my lungs.
I don’t even know what happened to her towel. Lincoln probably threw it out—along with anything else that linked her to my past. My husband had willed the house and all its contents to him. He’d left me nothing. And I hadn’t been in the position to protest the will from prison.
Troy steps inside my house, and I shut the door. Bailey barks at the bundle in Troy’s arms. The bundle barks a reply.
I lift the hood, revealing the cute golden cavapoo. “Love the new jacket, Butterscotch.” Compared to Troy, he’s relatively dry. The rain had only started to soak through the towel in a few places.
Troy puts Butterscotch on the floor and pulls me to him. Water seeps through my shorts and T-shirt where we’re pressed together and plasters them to my skin. His clothes might be cold and wet, but the heat of his body causes mine to sizzle.
“We should probably get you out of these wet clothes. I wouldn’t want you to get a chill.” I take half a step back and scoot the hem of his T-shirt up his defined abs.
He grins wickedly at me, and I know without a doubt, dinner is going to be delayed.
He pulls the fabric over his head.
“Maybe we should go to my bedroom so I can warm you up.” The pitch of my voice drops.
“Good plan.” He takes my hand. “Sorry I’m so late,” he says on the way upstairs. “Nova was covered in sand, and I stayed to help give her a bath.”
Something cold twists inside me. I shove it aside. He stayed to help Olivia give her daughter a bath, but I’m the one he’s with now.
A sweet domestic image of a family flashes in my mind. A mother and a father and a child. The loving family I never really had with my late husband. The family Troy wants to have one day.
A family I’m not sure I can give him.
I push that all aside. Troy is here with me now, and I plan to make the most of it.
We go into my bedroom and kiss in the way that wasn’t possible at the lake. Our tongues glide and dance and taste. I slip my hand past the waistband of his shorts. His length is hard and ready for me, the skin warm and velvety.
I run my hand along it. Troy moans into my mouth. I swallow the delightful sound. I’m the one he’ll be making love to. That much I do know. I have no doubt that for now he loves me. Like I…
I push the rest of that thought from my mind and help him rid us of our clothes. We climb onto the bed.
He lightly strokes my body, sending need quivering through me. I stroke the ridges and valleys of his chest, playing with the splattering of dark hair there.
We don’t rush things. Our kisses and touches and moans are the orchestra, the emotional music scoring a movie. He plays my body like a well-tuned violin. Tears cloud my vision from the beauty of it.
His fingers trail down the front of my body,down, down, down. I watch them slip between us, slip between my bent legs. His gaze drops to his hand.
His fingers slide across the building wetness, spreading it over my mound and parted lips. He lowers his head to my breast, and his tongue toys with my nipple. Heat and blood and everythingness rush to my core, and I’m sent soaring skyward to the heavens and the stars.
“Oh, Gooooooood,” I cry out.Oh, God Almighty.
It takes a second or two to gather my senses, and I smile, the movement languid and easy. “I want to ride you,” I murmur, Troy’s breath kissing my lips. “Long and slow.” I tenderly press my mouth to his, a seductive dance, an unspoken promise.
A lazy smile full of heat curves across Troy’s face, and he sits up, pillows propped behind him. I position myself so his swollen tip is pressed against my entrance and slide down him, taking him all in.
I move my hips in slow, deliberate circles, my eyes locked on Troy’s. This moment—the achingly sweet communication between us without words—takes me further into uncharted territory.
And that…that thrills me and scares me.
* * *
