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"I'll get fat, Kova."
"Not possible."
"I currently have a fat roll on my stomach you can’t see right now." He stared at me like he didn't believe me. I grinned. "I do!"
"That is the most ridiculous thing you have ever said." He pushed the brownie toward me and raised a brow. "Finish this with me. It will not break you. Take two more bites and I will take two more, then we will be done. I cannot eat all of it, and I know you want it. It is my birthday. Do you not want it to be the best one of my thirties?"
I looked at him, smiling, but wondered if what he’d said was true. If it was the best birthday he'd had in a long time, I couldn’t help but think about how many he’d spent alone.
* * *
I took the plate from his hand, planning to eat the rest of the brownie.
"Peer pressure, man. You make me do bad things."
His eyes sparked with dark humor. "And you love them all."
"Maybe."
I tried to hide the smirk tugging at my lips with a shrug that was neither here nor there, then took a huge bite. Then another bite, and another, until the it was gone. I handed him the empty plate, our grins matching.
Licking my lips, I joked, "You're over the hill now. You can't afford to indulge like this."
An energetic laugh erupted from Kova's chest. "Thirty-three is not over the hill."
"You're practically ancient." I purposely bumped into his shoulder. Kova laughed again. "I'm going to have to trade you in for someone who can keep up with me and all the bad things I apparently love to do."
Turning toward him, I poked his arm, his waist, his leg, his stomach. He flinched each time, then grabbed my wrist to stop me and I shook my head like it was unacceptable.
"Look at you. You're turning to mush already. That's it. I'm definitely trading you in for someone else. How are you going to take control of me when you've lost control of yourself? You probably can't even hold yourself up now."
In the blink of an eye, Kova spun us around until my back was flat on the lounge and he was laying on top of me. I giggled and poked him with my free hand. Seeing Kova laugh did funny things to me, and I wanted to see what else I could do to make him laugh again. Grabbing my wrists, he placed them on the sides of my head.
Our eyes met and a breath of submission softly rolled off my lips. Kova noticed immediately. My heart battered against my chest in anticipation and I could see his pulse thumping in his neck. The laughter died down and the teasing vanished. His eyes roamed over my face and inspired a different story. I realized I missed the weight of him on me and shifted so he was forced to give me more. Kova pushed one knee between my thighs until we were almost connected, my other leg on top of his. I drew in a shaky breath, and pulled him closer. His lips were a breath away and his body was so warm on mine.
He looked at me, his Adam's apple bobbed up and down, and fireworks danced around us. "Adrianna," he said quietly, intimately. "I wish I could make you understand how much I miss you. I miss being near you, being with you, being inside of you," he whispered in a sexy, raspy voice, moving his mouth to my ear. "I miss the way you smell, the way you taste. I miss every single thing about you. I try not to, and I fight it so hard, but you are always on my mind, and I do not ever see that changing."
Kova was healing my heart and breaking it all at once. These little moments were what locked me to him, because they were real, and they were what mattered. It was also these little moments that made me question so much, because knowing he was the one who threw away what we had was more devastating than anything. It didn't make sense that someone could do that.
"How can you say those things to me?" I asked softly. "You're the one who stripped it from us with two little words, Kova."
I do.
"I know," he said, his voice full of remorse. The intensity of his gaze moved me deeply. "Do you think we will ever have it back?"
I answered with the truth. "Honestly, I don't know. I don't see how it's possible to ever go back to that."
"But you are with me now," he said.
My face fell. "It's not the same. You’re married, Kova. You went behind my back and got married. It's hard to forget that."
Kova agreed. "Sometimes I fear I will miss you for the rest of my life, to the point I ache with sickness just thinking about it."
"Like I'm that one person you can't walk away from, even though you know it will eventually come to that." He nodded subtly in agreement. "I feel the same way."
"I never realized how deeply entwined I was in you…how I still am."
Shifting my hands, I threaded my fingers through his. I wanted to tell him I missed him too, that I missed us, and that I felt the exact same way. My heart was racing, screaming with feelings I thought I’d closed the door on. Our connection was too strong and too rare to be denied. We both knew that. We were a sea of reckless abandon with endless possibilities. My attraction to him hadn't diminished, and being alone with him while his wife was away was an invitation on its own that laid out everything we should never be tempted to do.
