His hand landed in my hair, playing with the strands as his deep, provocative voice filled the forest. “Once upon a time, there was a boy whose mother didn’t want him…”
CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX
REN
* * * * * *
2032
MAKING LOVE TO Della was still my favourite thing to do.
It didn’t matter that I had to stay sitting upright so I didn’t have a coughing fit.
It didn’t matter that my breath came short and my heart went wild.
Nothing else mattered when I slid into my wife and felt that epic sensation of connection. Her heat, her body, her welcome.
She was better than any painkiller and more potent than any cure.
Sex with Della always reminded me to keep fighting, no matter how bad some days became.
With our lips locked, we stayed as quiet as we could.
The tent was large enough to give us privacy from Jacob—with us zipped behind our partition and Jacob zipped behind his—but we had to be careful.
Had to be secret.
We touched in the dark, hands trailing over naked skin that was as familiar to each other as our own. Her fingers found me, squeezing hard. My fingers found her, sinking deep.
We kissed slow and passionate and hungry.
Our bodies quickened for more, thirsty.
I wanted her, but I also wanted to delay and enjoy every moment because there was no denying now, no pretending that we’d have forever.
I was tired.
Exhausted.
It wasn’t just about the constant pain or struggle to breathe; it was the agony in my wife’s and son’s eyes. The hidden tears and smothered flinches as they saw me skinny and coughing.
I didn’t want them to remember me like that.
I wanted them to remember me as a man who could protect them from everything, including death itself.
Clutching my last few bursts of energy, I dragged Della up my lap until she straddled me.
She gasped into our kiss as I knocked her hand from my erection, and my fingers slid from her. She positioned herself over me, and I groaned as she slid ever so slowly down.
She took me, claimed me, made me hers all over again until her thighs touched mine and my body fully seated within hers.
Once sheathed, we didn’t move.
The darkness was absolute and I couldn’t see her face, but we stared at each other as if we could. Because, really, we could see every glitter and glimmer of emotion. We could read each other’s breaths, feel each other’s souls, understand how bittersweet every day had been.
And when we moved, we did it together. Della arching on my lap before sinking back down. Me rocking upward and filling her.
I held her close with one hand on her hip and one arm around her back.
Her breasts warmed my aching chest as we clutched each other so damn hard.
There was no space between us.
No air.
No crack for sadness to wriggle in.
We were plastered together, concreted, mortared, riding slowly, sensually, ignoring everything but this.
There was no her or me, just us.
An us who rode faster, deeper, stronger.
An us who would never be separated because nothing could ever wedge us apart.
As we moved quicker, chasing pleasure and satisfaction, we didn’t speak a word.
We kissed, we licked, we bit and groaned, but we didn’t speak.
Speaking would ruin this.
Would ruin the rawness between us.
Because in that tent, we forgot we were human. We didn’t communicate in letters and sentences, we communicated in the forgotten tongue amongst soulmates.
We sat in nothingness and made promises webbed from everything.
We re-married in the power of so much more than this world. We pledged and vowed in the eyes of the cosmos that recognised we weren’t whole unless we were together.
It accepted our promise that we would wait.
We would be patient.
We would find each other again and be given the gift of ever after once we’d shed mortal shells and accepted that holding onto physical creation was never the answer.
That letting go was.
That threading yourself together with a cord that transcended time and space was the only way to be happy.
To be free.
Goosebumps scattered down my arms as our kisses and thrusts became tangled with the strings we’d just knotted, growing tighter and tighter, never to break apart.
And when we came together, our bliss was also silent. A mere echo of heartbeats as we shared mirroring, quaking pleasure.
It would forever be a regret that I wasn’t able to have a daughter with Della. That no matter how many times we went to bed together, we never got pregnant again.
I would never know if it was the drugs that made me infertile or if the universe decided I’d had my happily ever after with my son.
Either way, I would be leaving soon, and Della would have to lean on Jacob.
A ten-year-old boy.
A twisted full circle of life.
I hadn’t meant to hold on until Jacob’s tenth birthday.
I’d meant to hold on until his twentieth, thirtieth, but ten?