Page 58 of Loving at 40

I purr in response but continue my stream of kisses until pausing to slip my hand under his arm and around his body to his upper left pec. His heart races beneath my hand, and I’m reminded of what he said when he does this same thing to me.

Reminds me I’m alive.

Between the gunshot wound and what I can only assume was a broken heart, Archer is still alive as am I. Still, who hurt him? How? Why?

What’s fake can feel real. It can get confusing.

Who did he have to pretend with? Did he fall for her? Or her for him?

I lay my head against his back and breathe him in. His heart still hammers under my palm, beneath his warm skin.

“Let me protect you, Archer,” I whisper behind him. Let me protect your heart. He’s so quiet I don’t think he hears me, and I clutch at his firm pec before lightly scraping my nails over him and leaning back, peeling myself off him.

He said his fear is he’s not worthy of love, but he’s so wrong. I see it in his attempts to connect with his nephews. His longing to right old wrongs with his sister. The laughter with Ben’s friends and the way he is with my girls. He’s desperate to be home again from wherever he’s been, whatever he’s had to endure.

I’ve barely righted myself when Archer spins and captures the back of my head, bringing his mouth to mine and crushing me with a kiss so fierce, so intense, I almost come just sitting behind him. Our tongues meet. Lips move. His hand skims up my arm and lands over my heart. We stay in this twisted position, kissing like tomorrow is our last day when we still have a few more nights.

Our kisses heat, and our bodies rock with more urgency.

“What are you doing to me, ’Locks?” His voice is strained, like a new fear fills his thoughts.

“Same thing you’re doing to me.” Scaring the crap out of me, making me want things I didn’t think I’d ever have again.

We return to kissing, mouths seeking, speaking without words. We both want more. I feel it in the racing of his heart angled near mine in our seated position. My hand slips back to his.

“Let me be the one to take care of you. At least for tonight.” I don’t want him thinking of someone else when he’s with me. I want to be the one to erase all those memories of whoever she was and replace them with us. “I don’t care where you’ve been, Archer, or who you were with. I don’t care about the hard topics. Just let me be the one tonight. Be with me.”

“Not going to pretend with you, Jenna.” My name is a plea, a prayer, a worship.

“Not pretending with you,” I admit because my heart is in this one-hundred-percent. I want him inside me. I want to feel myself surround him. I want us to lose ourselves in one another. “This is real.”

“Jenna.”

He’s already under my skin and burrowed into my heart. Now, I want him in my body as well.

Slowly, I climb up and over the back of the couch. Archer’s eyes never leave me, and I hold out my hand over the back of the sofa.

“Come to bed with me.” My voice cracks. Be with me. My body hums.

He looks up at me, surprise and something else written in his expression. He accepts my hand and stands, holding it over the back of the couch. He doesn’t even break our connection but climbs up and over the second one in his way. We enter his room, and he slowly closes the door behind him. I go still, continuing to hold his hand.

“You okay with this?” I ask of him like he’s asked of me. There’s no doubt what I mean and where I want tonight to lead.

“You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known, Jenna.”

That’s all it takes for me to leap for him, latching my arms around his neck and kissing him once more like I never want him to leave me. His hands race up my sides until one settles in the middle of my back and the other rests on the back of my head. Our bodies line up, and we move toward the bed. He twists, and we fall back onto the mattress, my body landing on his. He doesn’t make a sound at my weight, buffering it as my legs spread and straddle his lap.

“Want you so badly, babe.”

I feel the same, and it’s a rush to sit up and remove my shirt and then slip off his legs to shimmy out of my shorts.

“Everything,” he says, and I slow my movements to release my bra, letting the material drag forward and down my arms. Archer sits up, enjoying the striptease until he can’t take it. Gripping my hips and tugging me forward, his mouth surrounds a breast. The attention he gives the achy swell is the same as how he kisses me. Everything is in that mouth, tongue teasing my nipple, lips sucking my skin. He releases me with a pop, and I step back again, taking my time once more to shed my underwear.

“Dammit,” he hisses, tugging me back to him before I’m even upright and latching onto my other breast, kissing it, loving it the same as he’d done to the first.

“You’re a fucking goddess, Jenna.” Despite the profanity, there’s so much reverence in his voice when he says my name the way he does. His hand skims up my belly, and he watches as he outlines my body, coasting over one breast and down to my stomach. Back up again and over the other one. If I didn’t know better, I swear he just drew a giant heart over my midsection.

He returns to massaging my breasts, testing the weight, squeezing the fullness, and pinching the nipples in tandem. He’s paying me the homage he’d give to a fictional goddess, and everything in me believes him. He is not pretending with me. This is real.