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And she didn’t know what she should do. If she should speak, or if they were past words.
They had talked last night when talking wasn’t what either of them had wanted, and she’d known it. They had talked today, when all she had wanted to do was look at his fine form.
Sure, there was a lot of talking that could be done. A lot of concern about consequences and fallout. Disclaimers and things like that. But she had a feeling they both knew them. That they both lived in the pocket of the same sorts of concerns and there was no reason to put voice to them. No reason to break the spell of the moment with language that could never capture what was happening inside her anyway.
The truth of the matter was she wanted Kit Carson.
She had wanted him when she was a middle school girl and he was in high school, standing across the field from her looking like everything she had never thought she’d ever see in real life. She had wanted him as a grown woman, her heart firmly engaged in her marriage, her vows happily and meaningfully spoken. She had looked at him and seen the promise of desire fulfilled in a way she had never imagined. And she had turned away from it, because she had promised she would. Because love outweighed desire.
She had wanted him amid all the dark lonely days since, and hadn’t even let herself fantasize about him because she was still testing herself. And why?
Suddenly, it was like she had let go of a burden that she’d been carrying all this time.
Why. Why was she still carrying it? What was she trying to prove? Why was she still trying to be... Strong? To be better? Why? What did it matter? What did it matter what she did? What did it matter whom she was with now? Her house was empty, her bed was empty. He was dead. Death had done them part. That was it, it was the end. And she wanted so badly in some ways for it to not be the end that she just couldn’t...
But Kit was here. And she was so tired of being better than this fire that had ignited itself in her veins all those years ago.
She wasn’t better than it. She was it. Entirely. Utterly. And tonight she wanted to burn.
She was the one who made the move. She knew that she would have to be. It was a fraction. A breath. But he saw it for what it was. And suddenly, she was in his arms. Strong and certain and hot. His chest was a wall of muscle, and she pressed her palms flat to it, felt his heartbeat raging there. He was tall, so tall, and she was disoriented by the height difference, but in the best way. She felt small and fragile, but it didn’t undermine her. She was so used to being strong because she had to be. And right this moment, it didn’t feel like she had to be. It didn’t feel like it at all.
It felt like he was holding her up, it felt like he was holding her in place. It felt like he might be holding all the world on those broad shoulders, just for a moment, just for her.
She smoothed her palms up and down, feeling the hard delineation of his pectoral muscles and reveling in the answering kick of need between her legs.
Yes. She was a grown woman. And she knew what the hell she wanted.
She wanted Kit Carson.
No explanation. No apologies.
No disclaimers.
And he seemed to be of the same mind.
And just when she thought she might die of the frenzy that was whipping up inside her, he lowered his head. And finally, finally that hard, uncompromising mouth was softening over hers.
It was demanding, and he parted her lips roughly, sliding his tongue against hers as if he was voracious, hungry. Starving.
She whimpered, wrapping her arms around his neck and pressing her breasts flush against his chest.
And then she felt herself being lifted off the ground, like she weighed nothing, and she supposed to him maybe she did. And all of her insecurities from earlier tonight just melted away. Because her body fit against his. Because the years had changed her into the sort of woman who could withstand this. Because the years had brought her to this moment. Stripped away everything that had ever prevented it whether she wanted it to or not.
She was here. And she was the woman whom she was. The woman who could have it.
So she had to honor it. The changes. The aging. The weight. The loss. She had to honor it, because it was why she was here. And she couldn’t hate herself, or second-guess, or warn herself off about consequences.
Because it was like this moment had been destined to unfold from the beginning.
And she refused to feel guilt over that thought either.
If the moment felt like fate, she was going to take that too. Because no one had asked her if this was what she wanted. If this was where she wanted to stand. If she had been able to pick her own life she would be back at home with her husband and the children they’d had years before, but she had been denied all of that, so she would have this. Unreservedly.
She would have it.
For the Shelby who stood here now. The Shelby with the thicker ass and thighs and rounded stomach. That Shelby. The Shelby who had loved and lost and felt so broken she didn’t think she could ever stand again.
The Shelby who had always done the right thing in the face of temptation because doing right and being right and loving right had mattered.
