How she’d missed his kisses! The truth she’d learned all those years ago was still there in his kiss.
He didn’t start slow. He pried at the seam of her lips with his tongue, and she opened for him without hesitation. Their tongues twirled and danced together, dueled, and then danced again.
His groan vibrated against her cheeks and lips, and she answered it with a groan of her own. They kissed with fervor, with passion, with an unyielding desire of three decades lost.
He nipped at her lips, bit at her, and then thrust his tongue into her mouth again and took. Yet gave at the same time, gave her something she’d never forgotten but had yearned for.
The truth of true love.
“Oh, Jeff,” she moaned into his lips.
“Kiss me, Mia,” he said against her skin. “Kiss me.”
“Always.”
He cupped her cheeks as he kissed her again. She let her hands wander to his broad shoulders, still hard and firm as she remembered. She trailed downward. His nipples were hard against the soft fabric of his work shirt. She flicked over one with her fingernail. He groaned in her mouth.
Yes, yes, he used to love that. She remembered every inch of his body. Every inch she had discovered that wonderful night in her bedroom. Not once had she forgotten him. Not one day had she gone without thinking of him during all those years they’d spent apart.
She poured thirty years of passion into that kiss. Thirty years of love.
Yet still he broke away, panting.
His eyes were misty, troubled, filled with sorrow and regret.
“I’m sorry, Mia. I can’t.”
* * *
Thirty-Three Years Earlier
Maria clicked the lock on her door, sat down on her bed, and motioned for Jeff to join her.
“I don’t really know what I’m doing,” she said, shivering. She rubbed her arms to warm them. “I’ve never…”
“Shh.” He traced her lips with his finger. “It’s okay. I don’t care about any of that. I just want you.”
“I want you too.”
He kissed her mouth gently, sweetly. “If you want to stop, you just tell me. I’ll never do anything you don’t want me to do.”
She nodded. Right now she wanted everything, and she wanted it with him. If she only had this one night, she could live on it the rest of her life, she was sure. He was that special, that important.
Clarity dawned as though the truth had always existed. This was why she’d never slept with Greg, even those few nights when she was so turned on from making out she’d had to squeeze her legs shut. Even then, it had never felt right.
This felt right.
“I want this,” she said. “Show me what to do, Jeff.”
He kissed her again, an innocent kiss. He slowly inched the T-shirt up, exposing her bare skin and leaving blazes in his wake. He left her lips for a moment to pull the shirt over her head.
“Oh, God, Mia, you’re so beautiful.”
He bent down and kissed one taut nipple. She shuddered. How could anything feel as good as his mouth on her breast? The act of sex itself couldn’t possibly be any better than this one moment.
She savored it, froze it in her memory, the sensation of his lips on her nipple. He found the other with his fingers and lightly flicked them over it. More sparks flew to her belly and landed between her legs. Oh, the sensation, the sweet surrender to his lips. When he darted his tongue out and touched the nipple, she flew. Then he closed his lips around the hard peak and sucked.
Her clit throbbed. Each movement he made, each sensation he uncovered in her, took her to a higher place. She never wanted to come down again.