“Megan?”
She lay her thigh over his, and as they looked deeply into each other's eyes, he pressed into her to the very gate of her womb. Her hips climbed slowly onto his as he rolled to his back. Though this was a first for her, she seemed trained in the art as she moved above him. He encouraged and praised her with his hands encircling her waist, his thumbs skating over the auburn down and fondling her breasts lovingly.
When the tumult came, they were smiling at each other, celebrating each other, loving each other with spirit as much as with body.
“Josh?”
“Hmm?”
“Are you asleep?”
“Are you kidding? When you're doing what you're doing? Not a chance.” His chuckle was a rumble in her ear, as it lay on his chest. Her idle ringer was circling a puckering, hair-whorled nipple. Their legs were entwined, their bodies touching everywhere they possibly could. Her hair made a coppery cape over his throat.
She stopped her provocative caress and lay her fingers flat. “I'm serious.” His hand stopped its gentle stroking of her derriere and slid upward to cover her back protectively.
“Tell me,” he demanded softly.
Drawing a deep breath, she said shakily, “I'm sorry for being so unfair to you all these years. I was wrong about you. I blamed you for the night you kissed me.”
“I was to blame. Who did I think I was, to kiss another man's bride? At least the way I kissed you. It wasn't the most noble thing I've ever done.”
“But I let you kiss me. I wanted you to.”
He smoothed her hair. “That's the only reason I let myself do it. I thought that you couldn't help what happened between us any more than I could.”
“I haven't been able to admit it to myself until now. I lashed out at you, harbored anger, made you out the villain because I wouldn't admit my own guilt.”
“You were a faithful wife to James,” he said quietly. “If I had thought there was the slightest chance you might not be, I'd have come after you. I'd have said to hell with conscience and moral conviction and friendship.”
She shuddered and snuggled closer to him. “I wasn't always faithful in my heart. If you had made an overture, I'm… I'm not sure what I would have done.”
“You'd have sent me packing, just like you did t
he night before your wedding. That's why I loved you, Megan. If you had kissed me without feeling guilty, I'd have probably forgotten you within weeks. You'd have been no different from so many other women I'd met.
“But you were different,” he went on. “So wonderfully different, with your righteous indignation following the most sexually explicit kiss I'd ever experienced. The contrast bewildered and elated me. I knew you were the woman I wanted, the woman I'd always love, whether I could have you or not.”
She raised herself up to kiss him softly on the lips. He caught a strand of her hair and looped it through his fingers, toying with it even as she lay her head down again on his chest.
“I blamed you for James's death,” she confessed in a small voice.
“I know. That was the hardest thing to take, because I had no recourse. Anything I did you would have interpreted as arrogant selfishness. I bided my time as long as I could.”
“If anyone's to blame for James's death, it's me.”
“Only James is to blame.”
“I should have seen to it that he took better care of himself.”
“He was an adult. He should have seen to it.”
“If I'd loved him the way I should have, I'd have badgered him to slow down, to stop smoking for good, not to drink so much. I should have insisted.”
“If he had loved you the way he should have, you wouldn't have needed to.” Her head came up to look at him. “Didn't you ever think of that, Megan?” He framed her face with his hand. “He had a responsibility to you. He knew he was living too hard and too fast, because you, I, everyone told him he was. But he was too cocksure to believe it. He knew his blood pressure was dangerously high. I didn't send him out on martini lunches; he went. I didn't like his late evenings with clients because I knew that meant you were alone.”
A lone tear trickled down her cheek. He captured it with his thumb and spread the dewiness across her lips. “You're no more to blame for James's death than I am. His own compulsive drive to succeed at the expense and exclusion of everything else, even his own health, is what brought on that coronary.”
She sniffed back the remaining tears and smiled. “Thank you for that.”