“You didn’t.” I licked my lips. “Scare me, that is. He deserved everything you said, and more.”
The water hit his skin in a cadence that caught my attention and filled my veins with a need so powerful I almost couldn’t stand it.
Linc leaned against the wall, resting his head on his arms, letting the water hit his back, almost despondent. “I don’t understand how you could end up with him.”
My heart raced almost painfully as his words hit their mark. “You mean,” I said bitterly, “you don’t know why I wouldn’t wait for you, after you shut me out and refused to talk to me for years?” I unwrapped the towel from my hair and hung it up while I ranted. “Or did you think that I would wait for you forever, Linc? When you were telling me to move on, when you refused to even talk to me. Did you want me to waste away from lack of your love?”
I would have said more, but he shut off the water and stepped out of the shower so fast that I thought he might slip on the porcelain and break his head open.
“No,” he said slowly, carefully. “I don’t know how you ended up with someone so clearly not your type. And I never wanted you to wait for me, Kennedy. I wanted you to be happy.”
My eyes didn’t meet his, though. They were too busy staring at his body. His dripping wet body that was hard everywhere it should be.
The dog tag on his neck stood out, and I reached up before I could help myself, pushing it out of the way to get to the ring I’d seen sitting behind it.
“You kept it… the ring I sent you.”
His hand wrapped around mine gently, and with the other, he lifted my face to meet his. “Of course I did. It’s only ever been you, Kennedy.”
“No,” I said while shaking my head. “I know you haven’t only been with me. I’m not stupid. I’m just glad that you’re here with me now.”
“No,” Linc mocked me, fire burning in his eyes.
Where I would have been afraid with anyone else, I trusted Linc with everything. With every piece of my soul, my body, all of it.
“No?”
“It’s only been you, Kennedy. I had you. I’ve loved you since before I made you mine. And I’ve been yours since that night, whether you knew it or not. That’s why I left you my dog tag. So you’d know that when I came home, that I’d claim you like you did me. But then my life fell apart and Danny died. You were the only thing that kept me sane, even if I couldn’t have you after that. I won’t say that you saved my life, but you were there with me, on my mind, every single day. When I was separated from my fire team and thought I was going to die, I held on to your ring.” He groaned. “Fuck. I hate talking. You know that.”
I snorted. “For someone who hates it, you’ve done a hell of a lot of it today.”
He rested his forehead against mine, breathing deeply. “I love you. I haven’t fucked anyone else but you since the first time. I never expected you to wait for me. I wanted you to find happiness. Then, during my last deployment, when I was already planning on coming home, they said you were thinking about marrying someone. I didn’t believe it. I came home, and you were engaged. I couldn’t very well step up and tell you not to do it. So I tried. I tried to fuck someone else, and I couldn’t. You’re it for me, and my dick didn’t want anyone if I couldn’t have you.”
I climbed that man like a fucking tree.
The towel I’d wrapped around my body slipped down in a puddle on the ground, and luckily, he caught on to what I was doing in time to help because I did not have the upper body strength to get there all on my own.
“What are you doing?” His voice dropped an octave as I settled my legs around his waist and felt his already erect cock pressing against my body.
I bit my bottom lip and wrapped my arms around his neck, dropping a little lower. And I watched his eyes gloss over for a moment before we were moving through the bathroom and back into his room. Instead of putting me down or laying us both down on the bed, Linc sat on the edge of his bed and let me take control.
“I love you,” I told him. “You didn’t ask me to wait for you, and I didn’t. I’m not sorry for that. What I’m sorry for is the fact that life kept us apart. For whatever reasons. I’m yours now, and you won’t be able to get rid of me… I won’t let you.” While I spoke, I slid down, taking as much of him as I could, and I rocked gently back and forth, needing everything he gave me.
Linc grabbed my hips, holding and massaging them while he tried to force me to move, but I didn’t budge. “Kennedy.” His voice caressed my skin with both a warning and a promise of what was coming. “I don’t think I’ll be able to walk away from you, even if I tried. You’re in my blood. You’re everywhere. You’re in every decision I make. Every move I make through the day is so that I can have you in my arms. But if you don’t fucking move, right now, I’m going to spank your ass.”
I was smiling as I kissed him, pressing my lips to his and lifting up just enough to make me breathless. Then he was taking back the little bit of control that he’d given me, so that he could give us both what we needed.
Thrust after thrust, I thought he’d already filled me completely but he hadn’t. When he leaned forward and bit the top of one of my breasts, I screamed with a mix of pleasure and pain. Just the right side of the line, I clenched around him, bringing a groan from the depths of his body that matched my own.
“Faster,” I gasped. “Please.”
He sucked on my skin for a second before letting go with a pop and then flipping us over so that he was positioned between my legs but didn’t slip from my core as he did it.
With the new position, he lifted my legs up and put them on either side of his neck and then leaned forward.
“Damn it, Kennedy.” He closed his eyes for a moment. “Why do you have to be fucking perfect everywhere.”
I couldn’t help it. I was too close to go back. I slid one hand down between us, but Linc swatted my hand away with a ferocious growl.
“Mine.”
He pressed his fingers down and thrust deeper than he had before.
I shattered.
There wasn’t a single piece of me left that was able to understand what was happening beyond Linc continuing to fuck me. Yes, he made love to me, but it was more. He was more. Hard and deep and fast and everything I needed and didn’t know I wanted, Linc gave it to me.
“I love you,” he said on a broken whisper.
I opened my eyes, barely able to function let alone understand anything more profound than was currently happening.
“Say the words, Kennedy.” His growl brought my full attention back on him, and I smiled hazily up at the man who made my heart beat that little bit faster.
“I love you, Linc. You’re the only man I’ve ever loved.”
And when he brought a damp towel and cleaned us both up, I thought I couldn’t be happier than I was in that moment. Until he folded me into his arms and everything was even more perfect.
We lay there, wrapped in the warmth of his blankets and the love that I didn’t know was even possible, and Linc told me about his dreams.
Not childish hopes or fantasies. But the dreams of a man who knew what he had and what he wanted.