Page 47 of Cruel Summer

TWENTY-SEVEN

She hadn’t thought such a thing would be possible, but the intensity between them increased as the days went on. He touched her more during the day, and at night…

She’d had plenty of sex in her previous life.

This was something else. This was fire and intensity and a total lack of inhibition. When he wanted something, she wanted it more. Every demand he made, she had one of her own.

There wasn’t a boundary between them.

Every night they burned through that passion, and the next night it came right back. With breathless, sweaty intensity.

She wondered if it was so intense because he felt that deadline too.

But they saw a giant bison in North Dakota, and enjoyed the drive through Michigan, and then they got to break out their passports to head into Canada, going into Ottawa.

It was beautiful. More like a European city than any place she had ever been.

The architecture was stunning, the scenery was amazing.

It was something new. Something else new that she was doing with him.

They spent the day walking around the city, in no particular hurry, and then had dinner in a place that overlooked one of the rivers.

She looked at him across the table, and her heart suddenly felt too big for that space in her chest. “This is what it would be like,” she said. “If we went to Europe together.”

“Too bad I can’t drive a car over there.”

She felt edgy and restless. Afraid. “We could just go. We don’t need an excuse.”

He looked at her, but he didn’t say anything, and she didn’t feel quite brave enough to keep going.

She wanted to go to Europe with him. That was the thing. All of these years that she had left to do things…they would be even better if she could do them with him.

“Happy birthday,” he said.

She hadn’t realized he’d known, and for some reason it sounded more like goodbye than a celebration.

“Thank you.”

She was forty-one. She knew more what she wanted now than she had at the beginning of the summer. But it wasn’t certain.

Dinner came, and then dessert, and she was still sitting with the weight of that revelation.

She had thought she needed to be by herself for a while.

That she couldn’t afford to be in a relationship.

She couldn’t even think about marriage or anything like that.

Because she needed to be… Open-minded or something.

But the truth was, with Logan she was every bit herself as she was without him.

But with him, she was happy. He gave so much to her.

Then he took nothing at all. He was special. They might even be everything.

A partner in a way she’d never had before. But there was something sort of hard in his eyes and difficult to read, and it kept her from bringing that up. Kept her from saying it.

It made her feel like a coward.

Maybe she was one. But she loved him.

Now she knew she wanted more. Wanted all these years left to live to be with him. It felt so glorious and wonderful to know. It was like all the pieces of herself that hadn’t quite matched up for all of these years suddenly did. There was no tension. She wanted him. There was no reservation.

She would disappoint people. They wouldn’t understand.

People would believe the worst of them. They wouldn’t know that Will had asked for an open marriage.

They’d think that she and Logan had an affair in secret, because God knew they would’ve had the opportunity at any point over the years.

Maybe even Will would believe that. She could understand why he might since there had been attraction between her and Logan even then.

Her moral high ground would be shot. The truth of it didn’t matter.

She didn’t need the moral high ground. She just needed him.

In the disappointment, the complications, all seemed like a fair price to pay.

For this level of happiness. Once upon a time, she had loved Will.

She had chosen him forever because she was afraid.

Because it put her life back together. Because it made difficult things neat again.

Because it allowed them to have a perfect nuclear family without custody arrangements for half siblings, or any of those difficult things.

Because she cared for him, and she was attracted to him, and she had loved him the most that she had ever loved another person.

But this was different.

She was choosing Logan not because it would make life easier. But because it would make it better. Because he made her better. They didn’t have kids together. They didn’t have a mortgage. Nobody would think that by being together they were doing the right thing.

This wasn’t for anyone else. This was a love that was between just the two of them, and she could honestly say that was not something she’d experienced before. She had let the weight of other people’s expectations inform her decision-making back when she had been younger.

She wasn’t doing that now.

Right now, she wanted this revelation to be hers. Only hers. They stayed in a beautiful hotel downtown, up on the top floor that overlooked the water and the city lights.

She took her time undressing, watching his face as he looked at her.

She still sensed a hardness there. Like a barricade. Like he was trying to hold something back, or keep her from saying something.

He probably was.

But he didn’t need to worry about her talking. Tonight, she just wanted to show him.

She moved across the room and wrapped her arms around his neck, pressing her naked body to his fully clothed one. He was a revelation every time.

They were.

He moved his hand down to cup her ass, and she knew she would never get tired of that feeling. Him, rough and big and hot. He made her feel beautiful. He made her feel sexy in a way that lingered long after he had stopped touching her.

He had transformed the way she felt about herself from the inside out. No part of her was left untouched.

It was her body and her soul. And her heart.

She unbuttoned his shirt, moved her hands over his muscles, and she felt like it was the first time all of a sudden. So hyperaware of everything. Of the way her hand looked against his chest. The way his skin felt against hers.

Then suddenly, the control wasn’t hers anymore.

His kiss became hard, intense. He stripped his clothes off as he moved them back toward the bed, pressed her down into the mattress.

He kissed her neck, down to her breasts, moving his way down between her thighs.

He loved to do that. She arched up off the bed when his tongue met with the most sensitive part of her.

She had never been the biggest fan of this—it always felt like a lot of pressure to her—but there was something about the way he enjoyed it that made her own pleasure in the act feel that much more intense.

He brought her to the edge, over and over again, but he didn’t let her have release.

Usually he did, as many times as she could.

But not this time. He kept her there, poised on the edge, torturing her.

Until her skin was beaded with sweat, and she was panting, her version of begging because she couldn’t even speak.

She needed it to end, but she didn’t want it to.

She wanted to stay right there, where his mouth and hands were playing havoc on her sanity, and they were caught in the whirlwind forever.

Because release was wonderful, but that meant it was over.

Well, until next time. But still. She was caught in the glory of being suspended here.

When he pressed himself inside of her, she tried to stop herself from going over the edge. But she couldn’t. When he thrust in, hard and deep, she unraveled.

She clung to him, wrapping her legs around his waist as he thrust hard and without rhythm. Before she could catch her breath, another climax took hold of her, and she dug her fingernails into his shoulders, her whole body on fire.

He found his own release on a harsh, feral growl and she let out her own in response, feeling more animal than human in this beautifully sophisticated hotel room.

Then when it was over, she pressed herself against him, and put her hand over his raging heartbeat.

She wanted to sleep with him like this forever.

She had thought of a lot of different scenarios for her future. Going back to sleeping with Will. Sleeping alone.

But this was the one that felt right. This was the one that felt real.

She wanted him. Whether it was in a tent in Glacier or a roadside motel in Tahoe, she wanted him. She would have him back in their hometown. She wanted him. She fell asleep knowing that. Also knowing that she couldn’t say it. Because she could feel the hesitance in him, even if she didn’t know why.

She and Logan had had a whole lot of honesty.

But there were some stones left unturned.

She knew that if they were going to do this, she had to be ready.

Had to be absolutely ready to turn them over, and she would.

But not right now. Right now, she was just going to sleep.

Rest with him, and enjoy the certainty she felt in her own soul, because she had a feeling that when she got Logan’s soul tangled up in her certainty, it wasn’t going to be this simple.