“As a show of support. In case your cancer had returned,” he said. He touched her short hair. Regret flickered across his handsome face. “I was so clueless. I thought you’d cut it short for a fashion statement.” He lightly caressed the port scar on her chest, the reminder of her chemotherapy. He met her stunned gaze. “Please forgive me for being so clueless.”
“Everett,” she finally managed to say. “I can’t believe you did that.” She would have sworn it was impossible for her eyes to manufacture more tears, but that was before she’d seen Everett’s smooth, bald head.
He flashed his grin at her. “It’s just hair, Joy. It’s not a big deal.”
She shook her head disbelievingly, a bark of laughter erupting from her throat. “No. No, it’s the stupidest . . . sweetest, most incredible thing . . .” she said brokenly.
She halted, once again overwhelmed. This time, it was she who squeezed the daylights out of him. She kissed his neck feverishly, transferred to his jaw and finally settled on his mouth. She parted his lips with her tongue, so desperate, so eager to celebrate his existence. He made a gruff, appreciative sound in his throat and ran his hands along her sides, pausing to cradle the sides of her breasts in his palms. Joy hugged him to her, kissing him like she thought his lungs held the last oxygen on earth. She felt his body respond to their embrace and made a sound of confused protest when he broke their kiss. He looked down at her, his nostrils flaring slightly. She read the question and concern in his blue-green eyes.
“It’s just the flu,” she reminded him hoarsely. “But even if the cancer were back, I’d want you inside of me right now. I want to assure myself that you’re real, because from where I’m sitting, you look like the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen.”
“Remind me never to let you switch positions, then,” he said wryly as he grabbed the bottom of her tank top and peeled it off her.
She loved the small smile that flickered across his lips. She loved the blazing heat in his eyes as he touched her breast. She loved the fact that he’d cut off all his glorious hair to remind her of what she should have known.
Everett was the real deal.
“I love you,” she gasped when he pushed his cock into her a moment later. “I need you.”
His face tightened with emotion. He touched his lips to hers and then lifted his head, watching her face as he thrust.
He paused with his cock high inside of her.
“Put your legs together,” he muttered.
“What?” she murmured, her hands moving anxiously over his hips and buttocks.
“I want to feel every nuance of you. I want to feel as close to you as I can.”
She moaned as she tried to do what he’d suggested. The pressure in her sex grew intense.
“Touch your feet together,” he encouraged. She heard the hard edge to his voice and knew he, too, was being affected as she squeezed his cock tighter within her body. “Now cross your ankles,” he demanded.
It wasn’t easy. Everett was not small, and nor was the thick, throbbing flesh embedded inside her. But the position definitely had its advantages. She had never felt his cock so clearly while it was harbored in her body—the shape, the heat, the throb of his heartbeat along the shaft.
She gritted her teeth, sweat gathering on her upper lip, and crossed her ankles. They groaned in unison. The pressure bordered on pain.
Everett slid out several inches and sank back into her, and Joy realized it also bordered on pure, intense pleasure. She saw a spark ignite in his eyes. Excitement zipped through her, because she knew what that feral gleam in his eyes signified.
He began to plunge into her again and again, their skin smacking together rhythmically. She could feel the thick rim beneath the head perfectly as he pulled his cock out of her. She’d never felt so inundated by a man, so possessed . . . so cherished.
“When I come, I’m going to leave a part of myself in you,” Everett said solemnly as he fucked her.
“Yes,” she moaned, for what else was he doing right now but pounding himself so entirely into her being that she would never—could never—let fear rule her again? That was what he was showing her, that love was the master of fear.
Emoti
on and sensation blended until the pleasure was too much to bear. She exploded with it. Everett was there with her, though, mixing with her, sharing with her, helping her to endure the sweet, shattering bliss.
Epilogue
FOUR MONTHS LATER
“Joy?” Everett called as he closed the front door.
“I’m here—in the studio,” he heard her call in the distance. He smiled and set the mail, a small box and the overnight bag he’d been carrying on the bench in the foyer so he could take off his jacket. He slipped his hand into his back pocket, his grin widening when he felt what he was searching for.
He was still celebrating his good fortune at finally having Joy in his house. She’d decided late last summer to become partners with Seth at Hightower Special Effects, but had insisted that she had to teach the fall term at the Steadman School. The administration wouldn’t have had the time or opportunity to hire a new art teacher, and she hadn’t wanted to leave her students hanging. As such, Everett and she had endured a long-distance romance for much longer than he preferred. He’d grown so impatient for her to join him in Los Angeles that Rill had hollowly threatened on a few occasions to ban him from the production studio for Razor Pass because of his surly mood.