Lost and Found

Chapter Twenty-Six

Krissa wondered if her silk dress had survived that. It thrilled her that he wanted her so much he went crazy with it, couldn’t wait to be inside her. It made her melt and tremble inside.

She smiled and stretched, turned her head to study Nate. “Wow,” she said. “That was hot.”

He opened one eye, but didn’t move. “Sorry.”

She laughed. “You’re apologizing? I just said it was hot.”

“You didn’t come. I always make you come first.”

He always did.

As his words seeped in, the intimation of a history, of a relationship, made her heart swell in her chest to the point of stinging her eyes.

“That’s okay,” she choked out.

He rolled towards her. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

He studied her, but said nothing. “I’ll make you come again. I’ll make you come so many times you won’t remember your own name.”

She smiled with trembling lips. “No worries.” She slid her hand down over her tummy and between her legs. She needed to come so bad. Nate’s eyes flew open and he made a low, rough sound.

Her fingers slid through the liquid overflowing between her legs, her cream combined with his semen. She was so wet. God. She closed her eyes, rubbed her cream over her clit, throbbing and swollen. She drew in a long breath, which pushed her breasts up, the tips aching, held the air in her lungs while she fingered herself. She felt the beginning of the orgasm, reached for it, let it build, higher and higher. Her thighs fell wider, she breathed in tiny pants, still holding her breath in expanded lungs. Sweetness coiled tighter inside her and then burst, a flare of heat, a shower of sparks through her body, leaving languor and weakness in their wake.

Drifting on a haze of pleasure, she became aware of Nate beside her. She turned her head toward him, opened her eyes and smiled. He watched her intently.

The orgasm relieved some of the tension she’d been feeling all day. Anticipation of the night they were about to spend together—alone—had kept her on edge, arousal and guilt colliding inside her.

But why should she feel guilty? Her husband knew she was here, knew who she was with and knew exactly what they were doing. He approved of it. Could it be considered cheating?

It was just the fact that she and Nate were on their own. This was the first time they’d ever had sex—intercourse—just the two of them. And then they’d both been so overcome by intense sexual need that he’d ripped her panties right off her and she’d had to give herself a fast, hard orgasm. Urgent hunger had temporarily obliterated any thoughts of anyone but the two of them, any emotions besides explosive lust and panting need.

They turned onto their sides and faced each other. Nate cupped the curve of her hip with his hand and she flattened her hand on his chest, felt his heart thudding slow and strong beneath her palm. They lay like that for a long time, just looking at each other.

Krissa reached for his face, stroked his whiskery cheek and jaw with the backs of her fingers, brushed her fingertips across his mouth. His eyes darkened, and his lips parted. She slipped her fingertips inside, stroked across his tongue.

Heat built inside her again, low in her belly. Nate’s hand stroked over her hip and thigh, up to her waist, up under her armpit. Shivery tingles swept out from his touch.

“Mmm. Ticklish.”

“No, I’m not.”

The corners of his mouth tipped up. Then his fingers darted up under her arm. She squealed and rolled away from him. Laughing, he rolled onto her, pinned her down, both hands delving into her underarms, then her waist. She gasped, laughed, twisted beneath him. “Stop! Stop!”

He stopped. He stared down at her, both of them giddy and breathless, then kissed her. His mouth covered hers, moved over hers, pushed her mouth open to take her in. His tongue stroked, teeth nipped her bottom lip. She kissed him back with everything she had, wrapped her arms around him and one leg, too. She moaned, arched against him, needed him again. “Nate, oh Nate.”

He hardened against her and she had to admire his recovery. They rolled together across the wide bed, mouths fused, bodies joined. Her pussy pulsed with need, thick, heavy, aching need, and she rubbed against him, seeking what she wanted. A groan rumbled from his throat. He fisted his hands in her hair, held her head for his long, drugging kisses. She rolled her hips against him in an instinctive, erotic rhythm until he shoved a hand between them to find his cock and pushed into her.

A long sigh of delight floated out of her mouth as he filled her. He rose up, pushed her knees up and back, opening her wide to him. She gazed down their bodies to where they joined, his thick dark pubic hair meeting her bare pussy. With every down stroke, he touched a tender place deep inside her that was exquisitely sensitive, then dragged out of her against the pull of her pussy on his hard length.

“Sweet, Krissa. So sweet.”

His hands held her beneath her knees, pushed them to her chest as he drove into her. His body gleamed in the lamplight, chiseled muscles, his face dark and tight with desire. She met his thrusts with her own, needing a deeper touch, but with each push sensation flared from her womb and she cried out. Her fingers twisted in the duvet. Her eyes wanted to close but she kept them focused on Nate, although his image glimmered through a haze of tears.

He released one knee and thumbed her clit, sensitized and swollen.

“I love making you come,” he breathed. His intense gaze pinned her to the bed, held her captive. “Love making you feel good, baby.”

She could only whimper a response as the magic of his thumb on her clit combined with the rapture his cock provoked in her womb, the two sensations melding into sublime bliss. Pleasure streaked through her body as heat coiled inside her, low, deep, scorching. It flared hotter, higher.

“Come for me, Krissa.” Nate’s tight jaw compressed the words. “Come with me.”

“Yes.” She let go, let herself fly, felt him pour himself inside her in hot, thick pulses. He groaned, held her pussy, pressed into her, and his eyes fell closed. She let her own drift shut, gave herself over to the enchantment torching her body. Her orgasm went on and on, his fingers on her clit drawing it out, her pussy clenching on his cock.

“You tried to distract me earlier, but I’m not going to let it go.”

“Mmm? Let what go?” His drowsy voice vibrated in his chest where her head lay. She played with the fine line of hair just below his navel.

“Why you haven’t seen your parents for two years.”

His body tensed beneath her. She flattened her palm over his lower abdomen, the wiry curls there tickling the edge of her hand. He drew in a slow breath, let it out even slower.

“There’s something I haven’t told you. About Lauren.”

She kept her head down, sensing it was better for him if she didn’t look at him while he talked. Her hand rubbed gently back and forth over his smooth firm skin, rough hair.

“Lauren was pregnant when she died.”

Now her head snapped up. “Pregnant?” She blinked at him.

“Yes.” His eyes closed against her searching gaze. “We’d just found out a couple of weeks before. We hadn’t told anybody. Wanted to wait a while make sure everything was okay.”

She gave a jerky nod. She felt seized by…fear. Anxiety. Jealousy? Emotions churned inside her.

“But…”

“Yeah. Big ‘but’.” He rubbed his eyes. “I already told you she’d been having an affair. Of course, I didn’t know that at the time. I was all happy and proud…excited to be a father, but also scared shitless.”

She nodded again.

“When I read her journal after the accident, she talked about her lover. About how—how she didn’t know who the father was. How she’d talked to him about that. What they were going to do.” His voiced deepened. “I’ll never know if that was my baby, Krissa.”

Pain stabbed through her heart. “Oh, Nate.” She stared at him in horror.

“I couldn’t deal with that. After the funeral, everyone was so sympathetic. They kept talking about how wonderful Lauren was, how much she loved me, blah blah blah. I couldn’t stand it. I just…couldn’t.” His voice cracked. “So I left. I just wanted to get away from anyone who knew about it, anyone who knew Lauren. I couldn’t tell anyone how goddamn pissed off I was at her…” The words came out rough and gritty. He squeezed his eyes shut. “How much I hated her for what she’d done. I couldn’t tell people that. I couldn’t tell people how guilty I felt for hating her—she was dead. It was so hard to keep it inside me every time they talked about what an angel she was.”

Krissa moved over him, laid her cheek against his rough one, put her hand on his neck. She pressed a gentle kiss to his cheek, wished with everything inside her she could make that pain go away for him, wished he’d never had to endure that.

What could she say to him? She, too, had thought Lauren perfect, faithful, in love with her husband. She, too, felt betrayed by Lauren’s infidelity, her shocking, sordid secret affair. And now, that she’d maybe even been pregnant by another man, while married to Nate. Dear God.

And if the baby had been his, how tragic. Well, it was tragic no matter whose baby it was…but she felt Nate’s despair as if it were her own, sharp and deep. And he would never know the truth now.

Her tears wet both their faces and she kissed his mouth, tasted salt, stroked the hot skin of his neck and jaw. Desire to comfort him swelled inside her, engulfing her, a wrenching helplessness dragged at her. Words of comfort and love rose to her lips.

But she couldn’t say them. She could only show him how she felt with her mouth, her hands and her welcoming body.

They made love again, this time slow, lush and impassioned. When Nate moved down her body to kiss her between her legs, she felt as though he were worshipping her. His small, suckling kisses over her sensitive folds held reverence and awe. His gentle licks and sighing breaths against her clit spoke of care and tenderness. Tears filled her eyes even as an agonizingly sweet tension tightened in her, a swelling heat. Everything inside her constricted, pulled up, up, up into a sharp peak of excitement and when she came, she came hard and long. Shudders wracked her body, and she held his head at her pussy while pleasure exploded through her veins. She cried out, bit her lip to keep words from spilling out of her.

When he moved over her, Krissa pushed him to his back and poured everything she felt into each stroke of his face, every caress, her clasp of his erection. She took her time to explore his body, every dip and hollow, every hard muscle and strong bone, with her mouth, her lips, her tongue. She inhaled his scent, warm and male, licked his balls, tasted his cock. She pressed kisses to his quivery belly, sucked and licked at his sharp nipples. When she moved over him and they came together, a shimmer of white heat surrounded them. Their eyes met and held, Krissa on top, riding him, hands on his chest, taking him deep.

The connection between them sparkled and flashed, a coalescence of intense emotions neither of them could—or would—name. Krissa swallowed the words that rose up in her throat, let them shine through her eyes instead.

She cried when she came, tears stinging her eyes, tracking down her face. She blinked through them, wanting to watch Nate, looking for a reflection of her feelings, and when she saw it, she lost her breath, lost her mind, lost her heart.

In the morning, when she awoke, she watched Nate sleep. He was so beautiful. She studied the slant of his thick eyebrows, the full curve of his lower lip, the perfect wedge of his nose. Something inside her soul was tearing in a long, painful rip, the pain almost making her gasp. Her eyes still gritty from last night’s tears, she refused to weep again.

He shifted in the bed, and his eyes fluttered open and found hers. They gazed at each other. She sensed him holding back, felt the emotion gripping him too. When his mouth opened to speak, she put her hand over it. Her eyes remonstrated him, begged him, stopped him.

When pain darkened his eyes and he closed them, she rolled away. She lay on her back, stared with burning eyes at the ceiling, then got up and went into the bathroom.

While Nate had breakfast with his family in the hotel restaurant, she left the hotel and walked the sidewalk sightlessly. After a couple of blocks, she realized she was in front of a small coffee shop, so she went in and ordered coffee and a muffin. She sat in the front window, the morning sun warming her chilled body. She didn’t taste the coffee as she sipped it, ignored the muffin.

Was it possible to love two men?

She crumbled the muffin as she pulled it in half, then stared out the window blindly. She was married. Her marriage wasn’t perfect, but she loved her husband. She had to love her husband. But now Nate had entered their lives—no, more than that. He’d entered her heart.

And her world had transfigured into a bewildering tangle she couldn’t begin to unsnarl.