Finding Your Heart I
A Contemporary Romance Happily Ever After
by
Lex Valentine
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, places, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Finding Your Heart I, A Contemporary Romance Happily Ever After by Lex Valentine
Copyright December 2011 Lex Valentine, Smashwords Edition
Cover art Winterheart Design, http://winterheart.com Copyright December 2011
All rights reserved worldwide. This book may be distributed freely in its entirety courtesy of the author, Lex Valentine. This work may not be sold, manipulated, or reproduced in any format without the express written permission of the author.
This work contains graphic language and explicit sexual content between two consenting heterosexual adults. Intended for adult readers only. Not intended for readers under the age of 18.
For more information on the author’s other works, please visit http://lexvalentine.com or the author’s page at Smashwords: http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/lexvalentine.
Praise for Finding Your Heart I
“What a perfect story to start the new year! I loved this—sweet and sexy and so appealing to my hopelessly romantic side. I love a story that leaves me smiling, and this one’s got ‘happily ever after’ written all over it!” Kate Douglas, bestselling author of Wolf Tales.
"Lex Valentine offers a unique story of love that lasts through life's trials and tribulations. No one gives a better happy ending than she does." Jennifer Leeland, erotic romance author.
“No one writes characters with more emotional depth or who have hotter sex than Lex! This story will leave you with a smile on your face and a belief in a fresh new year and happily ever after.” Mary Winter, bestselling romance author.
“Lex Valentine is magic, and so is FINDING YOUR HEART. A penetrating look at love lost and love found, FINDING YOUR HEART stimulates and satisfies on many levels. Definitely recommended!” Janis Susan May, romance author.
Praise for Lex Valentine
“I love this author because she writes with such feeling and intensity and her characters come alive on the page. Her dialogue moves me.” Reviews by Jessewave
“I am impressed by Lex Valentine’s ability to create a vibrant world filled with realistic characters, giving them very real human emotions.” ParaNormal Romance Reviews
“Lex Valentine is an author that deserves more recognition than she gets…She is definitely someone that you should pick up and read.” Night Owl Reviews
“Lex Valentine is a wonderful storyteller…” Love Romances and More
“Lex Valentine is an amazing author who incorporates just the right amount of sex in her love stories…” Bitten By Books
“Lex Valentine is a great author. Whether it be her fantasy or her contemporary stories she always brings the reader into her world and keeps them entertained throughout the whole book.” Got Romance Reviews
“I love how Lex Valentine brings so much emotion and connection to her stories. I love feeling very invested in the characters. I really am looking forward to reading more from this author in the future.” Two Lips Reviews
After the worst Christmas Casey has had in years, the urge to go home overwhelms. Standing in front of the house she grew up in on a bleak New Year’s Eve, she acknowledges that what she once thought of as home is gone. Filled with despair, she sees that her life is a barren wasteland and she has no energy or hope left with which to change it.
When a man exits the rundown house, his long legged stride carries ghosts of the past right into Casey’s present. Never had she imagined that she’d run into the man she’d lost a lifetime before, let alone that he would own the house that had always been a symbol of home to her. But Paul is there and he’s never forgotten the love they shared so briefly. Casey’s New Year’s quest to find reasons for her existence becomes a homecoming she never expected when Paul opens his heart to her. It’s only then that she discovers the answers to life are as simple as finding your heart.
Dedication
To my fans. I couldn’t do this without you.
Casey stood on the deserted street and stared at the house. It had changed in eighteen years. Not that she had expected it to look as it had when she’d lived there. She knew full well that nothing ever remained the same. The first time she’d ever been in the house, she’d been two. Her parents were thinking of buying the new structure even though it lay at the end of the tract with no other houses to its left. Her oldest brother had held her up to the ceiling and she’d laughed and put her hands on it, leaving behind one slightly grubby palm print. The print had stayed on the ceiling for many years.
The cold wind whipped past her, blowing her inky hair into her face. She tucked the strands behind her ear and tried to ignore the rough white ones she could feel threaded through the silky ones. Tucking her leather gloved hands into her armpits, she hugged herself, keeping her jacket wrapped tightly around her torso.
The street lay in semi-darkness, the streetlights not yet on and twilight in full swing. Further down the street, a few houses blinked with Christmas lights. The one in front of her remained dark, the yard a mass of mud from the recent rains and an owner who seemed to be in the process of re-landscaping the sloping expanse of what had once been the lawn. The house itself didn’t welcome. It was run down, with chipped paint, at least one cracked window pane and a sagging garage door. However, a dumpster sat in the driveway so perhaps the new owner intended to renovate the place.
Casey didn’t really care if the house was being cared for or not. The people who had lived there had been who she cared for and they were all long gone. Her brother Tim. Her sister Jean. Her parents. Everyone was gone. Not just gone from the house and gone from her life, but gone from the wretched world that still held her in its unfeeling grasp.
She stared harder at the rundown house and the sensation that she stared at herself grew stronger by the second. The house was her. Once proud and beautiful. Now, worn down and broken. Once filled with laughter and love. Now, housing only bitter memories.
A shudder shook her and tears welled. She brushed them away almost angrily. What good did it do to cry or rail at fate for what had become of her? She couldn’t turn back the clock and change her path. She couldn’t go back and find the heart she’d lost along the way. All she could do was continue to put one foot in front of the other and endure until her time to leave this world arrived. At times, like this dark, forlorn night, she wished it would come sooner rather than later because she was tired, so very tired of living.
She’d driven many miles that day just to stand on the street she’d grown up on and stare at the house she’d called home until the day she’d been forced from it by death and debt. She’d been happy there and she still thought of the town as home, despite the fact that she hadn’t lived there in eighteen years and hadn’t stepped foot inside the city limits in ten years. She realized as she gazed upon the changed house and yard that all these years she’d not really yearned for home as in the town or the house, but the people. Her mother and father, sister and brother were what felt like home even though they were gone now. Home was also her best friend Kate and…Paul.
Oh, God. Paul.
Casey’s eyes closed on a wave of pain. Nearly twenty years had passed and still his loss affected her. Not in the same way it had when she’d first left her hometown. And not in the same way it had when she’d returned ten years ago and he’d asked her to come home. No, this pain had a dull, ragged edge of resignation to it.
You couldn’t go home again.
Casey had no idea who had coined that phrase, but its clear intent was true. She certainly couldn’t go home. It held nothing she needed and everything she didn’t want. She’d lost her heart here and over the years that loss had become the one thing that sucked the life from her bit by bit until now at forty, nothing but a dark, empty place resided within her. She didn’t even know why she stood there on the street she’d lived on for more than twenty years, in front of the house she’d grown up in, on a cold, windy New Year’s Eve when most people were someplace warm with friends and family.
All Casey knew was that her fight with Allie on the phone had drained what little hope she had left for some kind of peaceful holiday. Of course, Allie wouldn’t want to be with her mother on New Year’s any more than she’d wanted to be with her on Christmas. She’d rather be with her friends and boyfriend than with her mother. And of course, she put up a fight about it. Allie was contentious about most things that had to do with Casey. She called her mother selfish and whiny then proceeded to lecture Casey about getting a life of her own so she could butt out of Allie’s. Her parting shot was that she didn’t need her mother any longer.
A long sigh escaped Casey and she sank in on herself like a deflating balloon. She hadn’t whined, had she? She didn’t think she had, but these days, her perceptions of herself were so skewed she hardly knew the truth of the matter. And it all boiled down to the same thing in the end. Casey alone on a street four hundred plus miles from the place she resided, which wasn’t any more of a home than any other place she’d lived since she left the house she’d grown up in. The house she now stared at wistfully in the growing darkness.
A tear escaped and she angrily scrubbed it from her cheek. No crying! she scolded herself. She took a step back, deciding she had best get back in her car and head to the hotel. She had a long drive ahead of her on New Year’s Day after she visited the graves of her family. Hopefully, New Year’s travelers would be in the minority and she could have the road mostly to herself.
As she turned toward her silver Honda, a faint light came on in the house. Startled, she looked back and saw a bouncing light inside the structure, the light growing larger as it reached the front door. The battered wood creaked open and a man came out. He locked the door and turned to face the street. In his hand was a huge flashlight, the source of the light inside the house. With the flashlight casting a big, bright circle of light, Casey couldn’t make out anything more than the outline of the man behind it.
Tall and lean, his dark shadow came down the front steps with an arrogant, cock-first stride that made Casey’s breath catch in her throat. He skirted the mud pit of a yard and headed down the driveway toward the street. The swinging beam of the big flashlight spanned the narrow street and illuminated her for a moment. She gasped, blinded. Blinking away the spots before her eyes, she saw that the man had stopped walking and now stood staring at her. He reached up and tugged at the neck of his t-shirt as if looking for a chain at the base of his throat. Then he dropped his hand, squared his shoulders and crossed the street, coming directly toward her.
Casey trembled and took a step back on the sidewalk. She knew that walk. She knew the man. She decided she should pinch herself because she had to be dreaming. The man coming toward her had been every fantasy she’d ever had. She’d never imagined herself with movie stars or other celebrities as many women did. She only ever fantasized about this man. The man she’d lost.
He came to a halt on the asphalt, no more than three feet from where she stood on the sidewalk. He turned the flashlight off and shook his dark head slowly, almost wonderingly.
“Casey McLean.”
His voice sounded the same, deep and sexy and it had the same effect on her that it had twenty years before. Her panties became a sodden mess. He took a step closer and she could see a glint in his dark eyes.
She wanted to say his name aloud but her lips didn’t work. Neither did her tongue or her brain. She tried again.
Paul.
Nothing came out, but in her head, she’d screamed his name.
Paul Duncan wanted to shout for joy. The only person he’d ever wanted to spend a holiday with stood before him like a fantasy plucked from the most private portion of his mind. It had been years since he’d bothered with any of the trappings of Christmas. When he had the chance to be with his daughter for the holiday, he just took her to his parents’ house and let them do the whole spoil the granddaughter on Christmas thing. He bought presents. He even wrapped them himself, but he did it out of a sense of obligation really. It was something he was expected to do, not something he really wanted to do. He’d never been much on buying presents because he had to. He much preferred gifts to be spontaneous and from the heart.
As for New Year’s Eve and day, they had just been another day ever since he’d given up partying and drinking. He never did anything special. Never went out with friends or a date. Friends asked too many questions if he showed up without a date. And a date would be a total disaster because they tended to have expectations if he asked them out for a holiday as special as New Year’s Eve. Expectations of another date. Expectations of sex or more.
Having sex would be okay, but afterward he’d want to leave and return to his own bed – he’d never take a date to his home – and women tended to become offended by a man who fucked and fled. Sometimes they became violent. He rubbed a faint scar on his biceps where flying glass from a shattered lamp had nicked him years before. Yeah, New Year’s Eve dates weren’t a good idea for him.
Yet, here he stood on New Year’s Eve in front of the house he’d bought for no other reason than that he had some vague notion of wanting to feel connected to the woman who had once lived there. Since his life was filled with disconnects, the expense of the house seemed like a monumental aberration in his life path. And it was, but the manual labor of renovating it made him feel good and made him feel closer to someone he’d lost so long ago that she’d become nothing but a fantasy.
Until now.
He stared at her, seeing the white streaks in her once night dark hair and the faint lines at the corners of her eyes, mouth and between her brows. She didn’t look happy. She looked beaten and lost with her arms wrapped around herself, her dark eyes bleak and weary.
His stomach clenched and his heart thumped painfully. This wasn’t the woman he remembered. That woman had spilled over with warmth and delight. The one before him seemed shrunken and curled in on herself, cool and distant.
Anger began to rise within him. Who the fuck had done this to her? Who had sucked the joy out of her and left behind nothing but a shell? Not for a moment did he believe she’d become this dark creature on her own, by her own choice. He’d once known her heart and that heart would never have gone dark unless someone had deliberately extinguished the light inside her.
Without thinking, he reached for the chain that no longer encircled his neck. The chain with half a heart hanging from it. The chain that lay buried in a small precious wooden chest with the other mementoes he had of her. He wondered what had become of her half of the heart.
Then Paul realized that her throat worked as if she wanted to speak but couldn’t. Her eyes held a nameless sentiment, a strong emotion that set her body to trembling visibly. His body responded with a surge of desire and an ache that burned behind his breastbone.
“Casey?” he spoke her name softly, her silence making him wonder if he’d just imagined her there.
She drew a shuddering breath and his name emerged from her mouth on a faint sigh. “Paul.”
The sound of her voice sent a frisson down his spine, like a ghost finger caressing his skin. The way she used to caress him. “You’re here,” he said, feeling stupid with shock that she actually stood before him.
She stared up at him, shaking, her eyes wide. “I – I…oh, God. Yes, I’m here and you’re here and…” Her hoarse whisper broke off and tears flooded her eyes, trickling down her cheeks. “Dammit! I promised myself I wouldn’t cry!”
Her angry rasp made him smile and it seemed like the most natural thing in the world to set the big flashlight down and close the two steps between them to take her in his arms. She trembled violently and he pressed her tightly against his body, burying his face in her mint scented hair. A huge sigh escaped him and for the first time in many years, he felt alive. He’d never acknowledged that part of his soul had gone missing when she’d left his life, but he knew with unequivocal truth that it had because now he felt whole.
Paul brushed his lips against her temple. “You came home.”
Another violent shudder wracked her slender frame. “No. I came here looking for home, but it’s not here. Home is not a place,” she told him, her hands tentatively sliding around his waist. “Home is people. All the people who made this place feel like home are gone now.”
Her pain reached out to him and he took it inside himself, holding it and her with reverent hands. “Except me.”
His t-shirt grew damp from her tears. “Except you. But I didn’t know you were here,” she admitted. She rubbed her face on his shirt, burrowing into him. “I thought you were lost.”
Paul smiled against her hair. “I’m not lost, but I’ve felt like it over the last eighteen years. Part of me was missing.”
Casey’s gloved fingers touched the neckline of his t-shirt as if looking for the gold chain he used to always wear. “Lost to me. We can’t get back what we had. It’s gone.”
The agony in her voice made his heart ache. “No, it’s not gone. And we don’t have to get back something that we never lost in the first place. It’s always been there inside us.”
Paul pressed a kiss to the top of her head, the sensation of having her in his arms feeling as natural as if the last time he’d held her had been only hours before. “Casey, I promised you that I would always love you, that we would always love each other no matter what happened in the future. I never stopped loving you. Can you honestly tell me that you stopped loving me?”
She pushed away from him, not free of the circle of his arms, but far enough that she could stare up at him with tear-wet eyes. “I thought I had. I was so cold, so numb, so unhappy,” she admitted. “I lost hope. I didn’t believe. It’s been so long. So very long.”
The anguish on her face made him want to join her in tears. “You were always here.” He touched his chest between his pecs. “In my heart.”
She swallowed hard, blinking back tears, her expression bewildered. “How could I not know that?”
Obviously, whoever had sucked the joy from her had taken her belief from her as well. She should have known that when he promised to always love her, that he would. He’d never broken a promise to her. They’d shared an odd metaphysical connection that seemed huge, inexplicable and scary and at the same time comforting and intimate. They finished each other’s sentences, sensed each other’s presence and thoughts and even knew when the phone rang if it was the other.
The last time they’d seen one another, ten years before, that connection had been off kilter and when he’d asked her to come home, she’d refused. When she left, he realized he’d used the wrong words. He should have asked her to come back to him. And he should have made her remember their promises to one another.
Gradually, over the intervening ten years, his sense of the connection had weakened to a bare thread that held only his fantasies and memories. He hadn’t realized that the connection had become damaged because she no longer believed in it. Their connection faded when Casey stopped believing in the promise he’d made to always love her.
He cradled her face in his palms. Inside him, joy began to flow like warm honey. Brushing aside her tears with his thumbs, Paul let her presence strip away all the years that had passed. “I need you. Will you come with me?” he asked, his voice gentle and coaxing.
Casey stared at him wide-eyed, a mixture of fear, disbelief and wonder making her eyes shine in the dim light of the street. “I don’t understand, Paul. Why…? How can you…? After all this time…?” Her words stumbled over one another and she abruptly closed her mouth, shaking her head as the bleakness returned to her face.
Paul smiled at her. She needed to be handled gently. He understood that without really thinking about how he knew it. He had always known just how to handle her except for that time ten years ago when he’d let her get away.
“How can I not, Casey? Especially after all this time?” he whispered. “Don’t you see that us apart didn’t work? You’re not happy. I’m not happy. Don’t you think we owe it to ourselves to just forget about everything except the fact that we still love each other?”
She stared at him as if he’d grown a second head and a twinge of doubt pricked him for a moment, but he pushed it aside. He wasn’t wrong. He’d been wrong before. He’d been wrong for eighteen years, but this time, he wasn’t wrong and he wasn’t afraid to put her on the spot despite how carefully he needed to handle this new fragile version of the woman he loved.
“Are you going to tell me you don’t still love me the way I still love you?”
For a long, dark moment she didn’t move and her expression didn’t change. He willed her to find what he knew lay in the depths of her heart. Finally, a shuddering sigh escaped her and her words came out stronger than any since he’d first seen her standing on the sidewalk across from the house.
“No. I’m not going to say I don’t still love you. Because that would be a lie.”
They ended up at his hotel which was her hotel too, the town not having too many good places to stay overnight. They sat in the living room portion of his suite, nursing glasses of merlot. He told her he didn’t live in town any longer, but came down from the city to work on the house whenever he could. He’d taken off the week between Christmas and New Year’s which is why he had a suite. Had he only been there for a day or two he’d have just had an ordinary room like hers.
He told her about his daughter, who did live in town with her mother, a woman he’d never married. She had a step-father she adored and Paul tried to be a good father, but he’d never been allowed much of a place in her life. Casey told him about Allie, whom he remembered as a blonde haired termagant of nine who’d wanted to know why he was kissing her mother.
“I know you’re a good parent, Casey. Maybe her selfishness is just how she has to be to assert her independence,” he said, obviously trying to soothe her hurt feelings at Allie’s holiday brush off.
Casey appreciated his willingness to whitewash her daughter’s behavior to make her feel better, but she knew Allie. The kid had a mean streak probably inherited from her other parent even though she’d never met the man.
“You don’t have to try to make me feel better about the situation with Allie,” she told him.
He smiled, the charm she’d always loved shining through. “I know, but I like making you feel better. You looked so…broken when I first saw you tonight.”
Her gaze raked over the touches of gray at his temples and the deeper laugh lines on his chiseled face. Other than those things, he looked the same as she remembered right down to his lean hips, broad shoulders and the long fingered hands she’d always admired. He even treated her exactly as he always had. He hadn’t really changed, but she had. She looked at him, not letting her gaze fall away from his curious eyes.
“I was…I am. I’m…empty,” she admitted reluctantly. She didn’t want him to know the depths of the darkness and pain inside her.
He shook his shaggy brown head. “I don’t believe it.”
A rusty bark of laughter escaped her. “Yes, you do. It’s why you’re working so hard to overcome it.”
Casey set her untouched glass of wine on the coffee table. She looked up, her gaze catching his, and she felt all the old emotion rise within her. Eighteen years ago she had been unable to handle the outside pressures of being in a relationship with a barely legal man who was younger than her. Their home town didn’t handle “cougars” very well and unable to cope, Casey had walked away knowing full well she’d left her heart behind. Tonight, she’d come back to the place where she’d once been happy only to discover that it wasn’t the place but the people that had made it home. And she’d realized that she wouldn’t ever be free of the dark swirling despair within her unless she found her heart.
Its keeper now sat across from her, watching her with worried brown eyes. In that moment, it didn’t matter what had driven her away all those years ago. It didn’t matter why she hadn’t taken him up on his offer ten years ago. All that truly mattered was that she’d been wrong. It had never been about coming home. It had always been about finding her heart. And she’d been stupid to stop believing that it was exactly where she’d left it, in his care.
Paul put his wine glass down too. Leaning forward in his chair, elbows on jean clad knees, he challenged her quietly. “Why are we doing this? Why are we talking in circles?”
“Because there’s eighteen years to account for.” Even as she spoke the words, Casey knew they weren’t true, but she did know the real reason they were talking in circles. She was afraid of what came next.
“No, there isn’t,” he disagreed. “Although, there is some explaining to do. I want to know what happened to you, who sucked the joy from you, mistreated you and didn’t treasure what he had.”
She smiled at him, the movement of her lips feeling stiff, as if she barely remembered how to smile. “It wasn’t a single person, Paul. There’s no one for you to beat into a pulp for mistreating me. Life has done this to me. Every bad thing that happened to me, every struggle, every relationship that didn’t work out, every time there wasn’t enough money, every disappointment, every crisis…they all contributed to the woman you see before you. They all chipped away at my spirit and wore me down.”
Paul stared hard at her for long moments. Then he said, “I guess that answer never occurred to me.”
“You know the timing hasn’t been right for us all these years. Even the last time we saw each other, it didn’t matter how much I yearned to be with you. I was seeing someone and so were you. And I totally misunderstood what you asked me.” Casey pushed to her feet and walked over to the window, staring out at the night sky. “And now? I guess I just want to know why you bought my house, the one I grew up in. You don’t even live here anymore.”
His mobile lips curved up in a sexy smile. “That’s an easy question to answer. I bought it for you. I wanted you to come home. It’s the only thing I’ve ever wanted. And I needed to feel connected to you again. I’ve missed you.”
Casey’s heart began to thud painfully as Paul rose from his chair and came toward her. He stopped with only inches between his chest and her breasts.
“I’m here and you’re here. Neither of us is seeing anyone. Our children don’t even come into this equation,” he said quietly, lifting a hand to stroke her hair. “Do you remember how we used to finish each other’s sentences? Even as young as I was at the time, I knew that was not only significant but rare.”
“I’m still older than you.” Her whisper held the echoes of her old angst.
Paul shook his head disbelievingly at her. “You’re seriously not going to put that stupid old argument between us.”
He stared hard at her until she drew a shaky breath and said, “No. I guess not.”
“Good. Now, tell me where your heart is.” Paul drew his forefinger along the base of her neck, caressing the place where a gold chain once lay, half a heart nestled in the hollow of her throat.
A sob rose within her, unexpected, as emotion swelled between them. “In my purse,” she whispered.
Paul’s head dipped and as his hand slid into her hair to cup the back of her head, he murmured, “Mine’s at my house in a chest where it can’t be damaged or lost. I treasure your heart, my heart and the soul they’ve always shared. I knew the first time we finished each other’s sentences that you were made for me and I for you. I knew no one would ever love me as you do.”
One tear trickled down her cheek and he kissed it away, making her ache with an unprecedented mixture of joy and pain. This man had always drawn so much from her. She didn’t know how she’d survived so many years without him.
He smiled against the skin of her cheek, his lips caressing her as he held her face between his palms. “Do you know what the most exciting and fulfilling sex of my life has been? The night I took you from behind, still dressed, my leather jacket pressing into the naked skin of your back. I’ve never come so hard or so long since.”
She flushed hotly thinking about that night. The sex had been rough and spectacular. She’d never forgotten it because it had been the best sex of her life. Hearing that it had been the best sex of Paul’s life too helped ease her fears.
“That was almost twenty years ago. How sad that best sex of our lives was so long ago.”
Paul brushed his lips against hers and Casey felt an electric thrill go through her.
“Oh, I don’t believe it’s the best sex of our lives. I think it was the best to date, but I also think we can top it. As cliché as it sounds, I know the best is yet to come.” His lips smiled against hers and he teased the flesh with his tongue.
Casey moaned. Paul deepened the kiss, his arms coming around her and his long fingers slipping beneath the hem of her t-shirt to touch her bare skin. She leaned into his strength, admitting to herself that she needed him. What she didn’t want to admit was that she’d always needed him and that she’d wasted nearly two decades by not admitting it sooner.
She pulled back, breaking the kiss. Paul’s hands on her bare back attempted to tug her closer. She resisted for a moment.
“I think we need –“
“- a bed,” he murmured, finishing her thought.
She smiled. It hadn’t taken long for them to fall back into their old familiar habit of completing each other’s sentences. She remembered how it had freaked out their friends. It had made everyone think they were fated to be together, two halves of a whole. A few people, like Casey’s best friend Kate, still believed they belonged together.
“Casey?”
She blinked, pushing back the memories. “Kate still thinks we belong together,” she blurted out.
An amused smile quirked Paul’s lips. “Kate’s always been a very smart girl.” He pulled her against him, bending to lift her into his arms. He carried her toward the bedroom, moving easily despite their combined weight.
“You’re going to put your back out or something. You’re not twenty anymore,” Casey protested.
Paul laughed. “I’m in much better shape now than I was then. Back then my manly figure was a product of youth and good genes. Now, it’s the product of hard work and good genes. I don’t live on burgers and fries anymore. I take care of my body.”
“I noticed.” Casey’s admiring stare was cut short when Paul dropped her onto the mattress.
She bounced a little but then found herself caged by his body. On hands and knees above her, Paul began a campaign of short, fierce kisses between caresses designed to remove her clothes. By the time she lay on the sheets in nothing but her panties, her pussy throbbed painfully with arousal.
“You have too many clothes on,” she gasped as he stroked his palms up the outsides of her thighs, grasped her panties and pulled them off.
“I kinda like me dressed and you naked. It’s a lot like playing master and slave.” His brown eyes twinkled, their expression devilish.
“For that we’d need a collar and a safe word.”
Her low reply caused him to still and his brows rose questioningly. With a sigh she nodded. “Yeah, sure,” she admitted, answering his unspoken question. “I’ve done a lot of kinky things. Doesn’t mean I was into it. I mean, I’m a lousy sub. Too much of a control freak to be able to handle it well.”
“You’d make an awesome Domme,” he told her with a grin.
She shook her head. “The lifestyle isn’t for me. I prefer equality in my bed.”
His grin widened and the sheer wickedness of his expression made her smile. “I do you and you do me?” he asked.
“Something like that.” She turned her head and licked his bicep. Pure lust rocked her body. She couldn’t believe how awful she’d felt only an hour before and now she thrummed with energy. The weak, pain-ridden woman she’d been had fallen away in the face of emotions she hadn’t given free rein to in nearly two decades.
“It occurs to me that I’m really at no advantage by being dressed while you’re naked,” Paul told her. “My dick is so hard it hurts.”
She chuckled. “I imagine it would be confined in those tight jeans. Are you commando?”
“What do you think?” He waggled his brows at her suggestively.
Casey slipped her hands into the waistband of his jeans. “I think you’re about to show me.”
She popped the top button and dragged his zipper down. Her hands parted the denim, pushing it down to his muscular thighs. His thick erection sprang free, the uncut flesh as long and thick as she remembered it. She sighed.
“You’re still the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen. And you’re wearing way too many clothes.”
In a flurry of movement, Paul stripped off his t-shirt and rose from the bed to shuck out of his jeans and footwear. Moments later, his naked body held hers trapped beneath him. She wrapped her hand around his swollen shaft, stroking the velvety flesh.
“I want to suck you,” she murmured, remembering how much she’d loved the feel and taste of him in her mouth.
“No way. I’d lose it far too quickly and I’m not about to come in your mouth after all the years I’ve dreamed of coming inside you.”
Paul reached for his jeans and pulled out his wallet, extracting a condom. Casey watched in disappointment as he sheathed himself in latex. She loved the feel of his naked flesh. Stroking a rubber just wasn’t the same.
As he settled between her thighs, one brow rose questioningly. “How much foreplay do we need?” he asked gruffly.
She rolled her eyes at him, but really couldn’t hide her naked need. She was pretty sure he could see it in her eyes and on her face. “What’s foreplay? Just fuck me.”
He shook his head. “I need to make love to you.”
“Fuck first. Then make love,” she ordered, aching with the need to have him inside her.
Instantly, he thrust his cock into her wet pussy. She gasped loudly, her heart thundering. He watched her carefully for a moment as if assessing whether she’d withstood his onslaught or wanted to cry uncle. She wrapped her legs around his hips, heels in the small of his back. Clenching her muscles around his cock, she took the lobe of his ear into her mouth and sucked on it.
Paul hissed in a breath and began to stroke her pussy with his cock. The thrusts were slow. Then fast. Gentle and seductive, then powerful and breath stealing. They rocked together and when Casey came, she saw a shower of blue stars behind her eyelids.
After that, Paul shifted his focus. His cock owned her body as did his hands and tongue and lips. She writhed beneath his caresses and kisses. He’d surely fucked her into that first orgasm. Now, his body worshipped hers. He made love to her as no one else ever had. Their odd metaphysical connection shimmered between them and she could almost taste his emotion.
Their gazes caught and held. Casey’s hands stopped roaming his shoulders, arms and back. She raised them over her head, resting them on the pillows. He slid first one palm against hers, then another. Their fingers dovetailed. Love threatened to spill over inside her. Tears welled. His hips slowed, undulated, his body bowed to hers.
“Oh, God. Deeper. Like that,” she whispered when he snapped his hips, pressing his cock just that much deeper within her.
He battered her G-spot, sending rapture spiraling through her body. She clenched him tightly with her muscles, making him work for every thrust.
“You’re a witch,” he panted, his balls slapping against her ass.
“I’m going to come,” she replied, her fingers tightening on his.
His face lit up with fierce male satisfaction. “I’ve never been this deep inside you.”
“No one has. You’re in uncharted territory, mister.”
Her snappy reply coaxed a flash of a smile from him. He understood she’d just told him no one else had ever brought her to more than one orgasm. She could see the comprehension in his gaze. She’d missed how he got her. That connection meant everything to her.
Waves of heat rippled through her, centering in her groin. Her eyes closed to slits and she lifted her hips toward his, meeting each thrust. His dark eyes glittered with a fiercely primal light.
“You are mine!” His gritted words echoed with an emotion she’d never heard from him before. “Forever mine, mine, mine!”
He surged against her, his hands gripping hers, palm to palm in a way that held more intimacy than his cock plunging into the wet depths of her pussy. He hit her G-spot again and her breath hitched as rapture caught her. She convulsed with a cry and he took her mouth, swallowing her mewls of pleasure, tongues entwined.
Within her, she felt his cock surging and knew he filled the condom with his seed. He shuddered violently, his hard frame vibrating against her soft one. She quivered, his fierce words echoing inside her. His possessiveness finding a touchstone in her heart that fired her senses and emotions in way no one –including him – ever had before.
Their bodies cleaved together in an orgasmic dance of shudders, quakes and spasms. Energy flowed between them like an electrical charge. Casey had never felt so complete and she instinctively knew Paul felt the same. Every inch of his body owned every inch of hers and they both knew it.
When they finally separated and Paul turned away to dispose of the condom, Casey fell back against the pillows, her body humming. She could barely catch her breath and the smile on her face seemed to be permanent. Paul’s passionate lovemaking took her back to her youth but it was his possessiveness that made all the difference. All those years ago, he’d never been possessive. Or if he had been, he’d never shown it. That lack of possessiveness had undermined her belief in his love. Well, that and all the crap she’d had to deal with in her life.
What she’d told him had been the truth. She truly was tired. Her life had been one struggle after another from the age of ten when her mother had become ill. In her late teens, men had begun to notice her, but never any man who treated her as her heart needed to be treated. They never cared enough to want to take her worries away from her. In fact, she’d taken care of more than one of them in the past decade.
Paul had always been the one man in her life who’d been different. Yet, his lack of possessiveness had made her feel as if his declarations of love didn’t quite ring true. At least, she didn’t think his love was strong enough to have lasted all these years. Over the years, she imagined him married with a quartet of perfect children and a gorgeous supportive wife. The reality of his never having married had hit her with the force of a hurricane.
For the first time in forever, she felt alive and she looked at the man beside her with new eyes. His easy going attitude had never meant that he wasn’t possessive. It only meant that he wasn’t the type to show it, especially to the woman he loved and respected. But tonight, his touch told of his possessiveness. He wanted her fiercely and he didn’t want to take the chance that he’d lose her. She got the distinct impression that he would do anything not to lose her again.
Brushing a kiss to her lips, he settled beside her with a deep, heartfelt sigh of satisfaction. Casey smiled at him and reached out to rub a finger over the point of his shoulder, feeling the hard bone beneath his skin. “You didn’t have your leather jacket,” she murmured wickedly.
Paul’s grin held every bit of the bad boy attitude he’d cultivated so many years before. “Don’t need it. You think I can’t fuck you into tomorrow unless I’m wearing a hunk of cow hide? Think again, baby. I just did it and I’ll do it again in about twenty minutes.”
“Twenty!” she protested mockingly. “Used to be more like ten minutes.”
He snorted. “We were young then. I used to only last ten minutes. With age comes experience and control. I can last longer but the recovery is a tad longer too.”
“Tradeoffs,” she muttered, rolling her eyes.
Hard hands pulled her against an equally hard body. “You like it. Don’t tell me you don’t.”
“I’ve always liked everything you’ve ever done to me.” She leaned on his chest to look him in the eye. “Except let me go. I didn’t like that at all.”
His brown eyes darkened and his expression did as well. “I didn’t like it either so I’m not about to do it again.” He kissed her hard on the lips, his serious expression never changing. “And you’d better not forget it.”
She wouldn’t. When it came to Paul, she never forgot anything. It had cost her over the years to be so vested in someone she couldn’t have and it had contributed to her recent lack of interest in living. If she couldn’t be happy, couldn’t be with the only man she’d ever truly loved, why bother with life?
Paul kissed her forehead lightly and tightened his arms around her. “Next go round, we’ll pretend I have the leather jacket on,” Paul promised sleepily. “Some nights, that night eighteen years ago is all I dream about. I could die happy with my cock in your pussy, making you come. All these years, every time I jerked off, it was to thoughts of you. You’re my dream and you always have been.”
Casey closed her eyes. The sound of his breathing, the scent of his skin, the warmth of his body. All things that combined to give her a sense of having come home. She’d been right earlier when she determined that it was people not places that made up that place called home. And right now, in Paul’s arms, she was home.
She’d found her heart and a little massage had it thumping just as hard as it ever had, pumping joy throughout her bloodstream. Casey couldn’t remember ever feeling so right.
Dawn streaked the sky with pink and violet. Paul stared out the window and wondered if the night he’d just spent with Casey would translate to the “real world.” After all, it had been New Year’s Eve and God knew he’d had crappy luck with lovers on New Year’s Eve. He knew his own heart. He knew how much he wanted and needed her.
He’d always wanted and needed her and as strong a personality as she’d been when they were younger, he’d never thought he could challenge the decisions she’d made. When she decided the pressure of being together was too much and that she needed to leave, he hadn’t really tried to dissuade her although he had voiced a protest. A wussy protest. One he’d never backed up with action.
In retrospect, he had no idea what the hell he’d been thinking to let her go. He shouldn’t have. He should have turned all macho man on her and refused to let her walk. And he shouldn’t have accepted her “No” ten years ago when he’d asked her to stay. He shouldn’t have been hurt by it. He should have been angry. He’d kissed her for God’s sake and it had been so fucking hot it had scorched him and still, he’d stood back and let her leave. What the hell had he been thinking?
He snorted softly. Obviously, he hadn’t been thinking with the rational part of his brain or even the caveman part or he wouldn’t have let her leave either time. And if she thought she was leaving this time too, she had another thing coming. He wasn’t letting her out of his sight for the next fifty or so years. If her kid didn’t like it, too bad. If his kid didn’t like it, too bad. If any of their collective exes and friends and family didn’t like it, too fucking bad! This time it was for them and the rest of the world be damned.
They had been far too good together the night before. He couldn’t remember ever having such fulfilling sex. He couldn’t remember ever feeling quite so happy or content. And he damned well felt whole once more as if he was eighteen again, standing on the cusp of the rest of his life. Fuck anyone who tried to take this happiness from him, including Casey herself. He refused to let her martyr herself and make him unhappy for another twenty years. She owed him and he was all set to make her pay.
“I thought last night was good. Better than good even. And here you are scowling at the window like you want to break it, like last night wasn’t as good as I thought it was.”
Casey’s quiet teasing had Paul turning his head on the pillow to look at her. She smiled at him and despite the humor in her voice, he saw a flare of apprehension in her honey brown eyes. That was his cue.
Slipping his hands beneath the sheet, he cupped her breasts, feeling the nipples peak instantly. Lust flushed her face and he grinned. No other woman had ever responded to him so readily. He bet if he touched her pussy right now, he’d find it already wet and swollen. With a brief internal eye roll at how ridiculous he was to think about something instead of doing it, he stroked one hand down her torso to her thighs. He slipped his fingers between them, pressing them open until he had easy access to the apex.
Paul smiled at her startled face. She might be shocked at how fast he moved, but she was excited too. He stroked his forefinger over her wet slit and she sucked in a breath, then bit down on her lower lip. When he pressed two fingers inside her, her eyes grew wide.
Hot, wet, succulent flesh. Waiting only for him. Paul’s smile turned to a grin that he knew had to be slightly predatory. No way was she walking. He’d cuff her to the bed before he let that happen.
Rolling onto her, he let his knees push her thighs wide. Braced on his elbows above her, his cock rubbed her wet pussy. His hips undulated as he pushed himself against her. Her eyes glazed over, passion taking over her expression.
“I could push into you right now,” he threatened, letting his bare cock head bump against her opening. “No condom. No anything to stop me from marking you with my seed.”
“Shit!” she hissed, her expression slightly alarmed.
Satisfaction speared through Paul. Her alarm was nothing. He could see how much the thought excited her. He let his cock lead. It pushed forward, the head spreading her lips. Casey’s breathing took on a harsh tenor.
Paul stopped, the blunt tip of his cock wedged just inside her. He knew he was playing with fire. His cock leaked a steady stream of pre-cum already and she wasn’t so old she couldn’t get pregnant. Still, it wasn’t like they were being all that irresponsible. He could easily afford to support Casey and a child. It wouldn’t be any kind of hardship financially or emotionally and damned if his heart didn’t think it was a great idea.
“We did this once before,” he reminded her. “The night I had my leather jacket on.”
She nodded, her breath coming in pants. “I remember.”
“Then, it was a stupid risk. We were young and not ready for that kind of responsibility.”
She nodded again, her gaze never leaving his. Deliberately, he thrust deep inside her. She gasped and her fingers dug into his biceps. He stilled.
“This is no risk, Casey. This is me telling you that we belong together. I am committed to you, to us and to any child we might be lucky enough to have. We’ve been apart too long and I’m not willing to let you go again. If I have to knock you up to make you stay with me, I will.”
She stared at him, her mouth open in shock and Paul realized maybe he’d been a little too caveman. He was just about to apologize when her mouth closed and her lips turned up in a smile.
“You’re serious.”
She didn’t phrase the words as a question but he nodded anyway.
“Well, I guess that’s that then.”
She stared up at him with that quirky little smile still on her lips and confused, Paul just stared back at her not sure what had just happened. When he didn’t move or speak, she shifted beneath him, tilting her hips up and wrapping her legs around his hips. His cock slipped a little deeper into her.
“Are you gonna stay like that all morning? ‘Cause I gotta tell you, I’m hungry. I didn’t get any dinner last night,” Casey murmured, her voice low and seductive. “I could definitely go for fast and furious right now so I can get caffeinated as soon as possible.”
Happiness splintered through him and he lowered his mouth to hers, stopping when they were a breath away from touching. “You bitch,” he whispered on a chuckle. “I’ll show you fast and furious!”
She laughed, the sound filled with joy. She threw her arms around him and held him tightly. “I know we have a lot to work out. We’ve both changed over the years. I know that fundamentally we’re the same people we were before and what’s between us is obviously alive and well despite the passage of eighteen years. It’s a miracle to me that on the night I felt the lowest I have in my entire life, I’ve been given back the greatest love of my life. I love you, Paul. Whatever the future brings, we can work it out together. I await your marking.”
He nuzzled her throat, visions of their future playing out in his head. “I love you too, Casey and I’m so glad you came home. But I have a question for you, a question I should have asked ten years ago.” He smiled against her skin. “Will you come home to me? Will you finally give us the chance you walked away from eighteen years ago?”
Happiness suffused Casey’s face. “After all this time, I’ve found my heart and I’m never letting go of it again,” she vowed. “Yes, I’ll come home to you. Happy New Year, Paul.”
He kissed her then and showed her his caveman side as the sun broke over the horizon, lighting a new day, a new year and the start of their lives together.
About the Author
Lex Valentine is a bestselling, award winning author who writes across genres from contemporary to urban fantasy in both M/M and M/F. A native of Monterey County, California, Lex now lives in a canyon in Orange County, California with Rott, her long haired tattooed husband, and bunch of cats she calls “babies.” She loves loud rock and alternative music, builds her own computers, and works full-time at a cemetery as the network administrator. She also enjoys creating cover art with her daughter Nikki, a graphic arts student, as the award winning team of Winterheart Design. Lex is a member of Romance Writers of America and the PASIC, Fantasy, Futuristic & Paranormal, and Orange County California chapters of RWA. You’ll find her door always open to readers at lex@lexvalentine.com.