He swiped a tear from my cheek. “Do you know that you’re beautiful even when you’re crying?”

If he kept talking like this, I would be a sobbing mess with my heart bleeding through my chest. “Just, just kiss me, Jack.”

He smiled, and cupping my cheek, pulled my face toward his but stopped a breath away. “There was a time when you asked me not to.”

“Yes, well. You certainly corrupted that girl.”

He grinned.

Leaning forward, I ran my hand up his fabric covered thighs, feeling the hard tension under my fingers. Then I touched my lips to his.

I moved over his mouth gently, reveling in the feeling of his lips and responding with a jolt of arousal as his impatient tongue swept into me, his hand twisting into my hair, tugging the bun loose.

“You looked incredibly beautiful tonight, but I’m done with your hair being up,” he whispered against my mouth. A hand swept down my spine and lower until it reached the back of my bare thigh. Then it inched back up under my slip. “And I kept imagining you were naked under those beads.”

Heat sluiced through me in a wave, pooling into a heavy throb. My hands curled hard into his thighs.

“Is there any chance I corrupted you enough that you’d let me make love to you right now?” Jack rasped.

My heart pounded. “Now? Like right here?” I looked around at the dimly lit interior, my eyes wide.

He nodded then sat back.

“They’ll hear.”

“No, they won’t.”

His warm, rough hands slid my shift up, over my lace panties, to my waist. He hissed out a breath then pulled me up and astride his lap.

A nervous, prickly heat swept over my skin and chest. I felt bare and exposed against his fully clothed body.

My nerves fizzled as I watched his face, saw the flush on his cheek bones, the flare of his nostrils, the tight set to his mouth. He looked at me like I was his end and his beginning.

I traced a finger down his neck and over his rough Adam’s apple as it moved heavily. I undid a few more buttons of his white shirt and slid my hands against his hard chest, feeling his heart matching my own in powerful thuds.

Jack simply watched me. Waiting.

Then I went straight for his buckle, undoing it with jerky movements.

“My left pocket,” he whispered, his breathing labored as I touched him.

I nodded and my fingers shook as I felt around for the package. Jack stilled my hands and took over. Readying himself was far from a clinical reality to making love. It was the most erotic thing to watch. To know what we were about to do.

I shivered.

Then he sifted his hands through my hair, looking up at me. I held his gaze. “We don’t have to do this. I don’t want you to be nervous. Or feel self-conscious. We have forever, we don’t need to—”

I lifted up, moved my panties aside, and eased down on him.

Jack let out a guttural roar from deep in his chest and surged up, clutching me. Wrapping his arms around me, his head against my neck, he pulled me so firmly down upon him, that I felt like my whole body would explode from the depth of him.

I gasped.

“Oh, God,” he groaned against my skin, and his mouth opened on me.

Holding still, his body shuddered and trembled under my hands.

I rocked forward gently.

Then we moved. Both of us together. His fingers gripping my hips.

At one point he managed to work my slip up off over my head, and I tore the jacket back off his shoulders, spreading his shirt, needing to feel his skin against mine.

Looking up at me, he tilted his head as I clutched his shoulders then his hair, pulling it into disheveled tufts.

“I love you, Jack,” I whispered, brokenly, something within me unwinding with the admission I’d never made out loud.

He squeezed his eyes closed a moment.

“I love you, Keri Ann. I love you so fucking much it’s literally a physical ache in my chest.” He breathed out, roughly. “Whatever you want, I’ll do it. I’ll give you whatever you need. My life. Forever.”

“Jack.” My eyes stung.

His hands at my hips dug in, and he rocked harder beneath me. I bit down on my lip to keep my reactions in check, watching his eyes as they glazed, darkened, clouded with passion, pooled with emotion.

I was reading my future there.

I wanted to close my eyes and revel in the sensations that were racing through me, tightening in an ever increasing spiral, but I couldn’t look away.

The sensations, they became bigger than us. And suddenly the wave was crashing over me, pulling me under and spinning me, tumbling me head over feet, over and over. I gasped, trying to find air, and my eyes finally squeezed shut under the onslaught so I could only feel Jack go rigid beneath me. Feel him cling to me like he would never let me go.

I had no idea where we were going. Tonight or tomorrow, or any day for the rest of my life. Or how we would manage all of our hopes and dreams.

Mine.

His.

Ours.

But we’d do it together.

Four years later …

My heel is bouncing up and down nervously. I sit in my office next to the glass sliding doors that lead out to the patio and the ocean beyond, at a beautiful old desk Keri Ann found. The desk was hauled out of a boarding school refurbishment in England and is eerily similar to desks I’d sat at once, etched with names, dates, holes and fountain ink. Deep grooves probably carved with the sharp point of a school compass in a boring math glass, and some, I was sure, the result of an ink pen nib that probably didn’t make it past that moment of its highest sacrifice. My favorite part of the desk were the initials carved with a date of 1961. An arrow pointed up to it with the words “my dad,” and then whoever the boy was had crudely carved his own initials below with the date 1983.

We were in England three years ago meeting my mother when she found it.

I glance back up through the glass to where she is sitting on a lounger, soaking up some vitamin D from the winter sun and wrapped in a cream cashmere sweater I bought her and lied about how much it cost.

Keri Ann flips through each page. She hasn’t looked up in three hours. At some point I know she’ll need to move, stretch, eat, pee, I don’t know. Her face has rippled from anguish to anger to tears, nervous lip-biting, and a small smile here and there. I wish I could exactly calculate which words she’s reading that cause each of these emotions, but I can only guess by how far through the script she is. At one point she threw it down and lay her head back staring up into the sky. Now she’s nearing the end.

I nearly went out earlier and asked her which part she was on, and if she was just bored and tired, or reacting to what she read. Managing to stop myself, I settled with pretending to work on something at the desk that had inspired me to finally finish what she was reading but stayed where I could see her.

Her hand moves up to her mouth and her eyes are watery. I lay down the pen I’m holding, since I’ll probably break it if I don’t, and wait. Abruptly, she flings the pages down, her eyes finding mine, and gets up from the lounger coming to stand at the door. I realize her cheeks are wet.

“He was such a monster,” she whispers. “But you made me pity him.” Her eyes are confused.

Nodding, I reach out a hand and she accepts it. I pull her gently inside so she stands between my knees.

Sliding her hands through my hair, a light scrape that sends a shiver racing over my skin, she pulls my head against her.