Mitch trailed his fingers up the sides of Kimberly’s hips in a lazy S curve. He took in a sharp shot of air before he ran his flat palm against her belly—the place that had given him two beautiful children. She had more curves since giving birth and her skin was milky-soft perfection. She was perfection.
Kimberly’s hands went to the snap of his jeans. His hands joined hers and a few seconds later his jeans joined her towel on the floor. He shrugged out of his T-shirt next and then she helped him take off his boxers.
“I thought I’d lost you for good,” he said, hearing the huskiness in his own voice.
“I’m here, Mitch.” The sound of his name rolling off her tongue was the sweetest damn sound he’d heard. Hell, he should be angry right now. He couldn’t be if he tried. His feelings ran too deep. He’d missed her too much.
There she was, standing right in front of him.
Consequences be damned—he couldn’t let himself care about the fallout from doing one of the most basic human needs—making love to his wife.
Mitch took a step toward her. He took her hands in his and braided their fingers.
A beat later, she pressed her body to his. Their hands broke apart but made immediate contact with skin. Her flat palm went against his chest, her fingers running along the ridges of his pecs.
One of his hands found her chin and lifted it to better angle her mouth toward his. He took his sweet time kissing her even though his body cried out with urgency. He had no plans to rush this moment. He’d waited too long, wanted it too much. There were split seconds where he thought this couldn’t be real, she couldn’t be real.
Mitch wrapped his hands around her waist and pulled her body flush with his. Skin-to-skin contact caused his erection to strain. Urgency escalated but he was a disciplined man. Or so he thought until her hands tunneled through his hair and her sweet tongue darted inside his mouth.
He needed to think about something else besides the soft feel of her creamy skin and her quickening breath that matched his own. No way was he allowing this to be over before he could really get started.
An attempt to focus on the paperwork that needed to be done at the ranch when he returned lasted two seconds. Way to crush being in control, Mitch.
He trailed his fingers along her soft curves until he palmed her nipples. They pebbled with contact. He rolled them around between his thumb and forefinger and then swallowed her sounds of pleasure.
Kisses intensified. Hands searched. Pleasure mounted.
Kimberly opened her eyes, caught his stare and then said, “Make love to me, Mitch.”
He picked her up and she wrapped her legs around his midsection. He carried her the couple of steps to the bed before setting her down and dropping to his knees.
Before he could locate a condom, she’d wrapped her fingers around his shaft and was guiding him inside her. “We better hold on a second.”
He didn’t want to stop this but had to.
After fishing an old condom out of his wallet, he returned a few seconds later and she helped roll it down his shaft. She bucked her hips—she was ready for him—until he reached deep inside her. Her eyes were wild with passion when she looked up at him. He drove himself inside her, hard and fast, as he gripped both sides of her hips, digging his fingers into her sexy round bottom. She moaned and rocked harder on his erection, driving him to the brink.
His mouth found hers and his tongue slid inside her mouth, searching for the sweet honey there.
He tightened his arms around her beautiful body and bucked deeper inside her sex. She matched him stride for stride.
Urgency built, demanding release.
Mitch slowed his pacing for a second, trying to gain control, but it was useless with his wife in his arms, bodies melting together as her internal muscles quivered around his stiff erection.
Her breathing quickened and she bucked harder and faster until their bodies were a frenzy of electric impulses.
He detonated a few seconds after he was certain that her body was drained.
Instead of relaxing, she rode a second wave with him as his body exploded with sexual impulses.
She pulled him down on top of her as they caught their breath.
Quietly, in barely a whisper, he said into her ear, “I never stopped loving you, Kimberly.”
KIMBERLY JOLTED AWAKE out of deep sleep. It took a second to get her bearings. She realized that she was in a motel room an hour from the New Mexico border.
Rolling onto her side, she felt around the bed. The room was dark. No doubt the blackout curtains were still drawn but she had no idea what time it was.
Mitch was gone.
Reaching out, her hand landed on an object. It crinkled. Paper? She reached onto the nightstand next to the bed and located her phone.
Using the flashlight app, she picked up the note.
Be right back. M
The door burst open, causing her to jump.
Mitch hustled inside, locking the door behind him and flipping on the light. “Time to get up. We gotta go.”
“What is it?” she asked, already to her feet and gripping her phone so hard that she noticed her knuckles had gone white.
“Baxter’s creeps are here.”
She muttered a curse as she jumped into action, throwing on clothes and gathering what little supplies they had as she tossed them into the backpack.
“What are we going to do?” she asked.
“Get out of here alive.” He ate up the space between them in a couple of strides, took the backpack from her and shouldered it.
He took her hand—and this wasn’t the time to think about where they stood romantically, but it did flash across her mind—and gave a quick squeeze. Her heart practically danced from the look in his eye when he made eye contact with her. Things had changed. She didn’t know what that meant yet but it was a sign things were moving in the right direction between them.
“How do you plan to do that?” she whispered.
“They found our vehicle, but not us,” he stated.
“So they’re on the opposite side of the parking lot?”
He nodded as he opened the door and led her outside. The sun was breaking against the horizon and during this time of year that meant it had to be around 7:00 a.m.
There was a Denny’s restaurant next door to the motel and a crossroad to the highway.
“We get out of sight long enough for the area to clear and we get the vehicle back. Or we make a new plan.” He nodded toward a cluster of warehouse-looking buildings across the road. “For now our best chance is to find a place to get out of sight before they figure out which room we’ve been in.”
The sound of a window breaking crashed through the quiet morning, save for the occasional car on the highway whooshing by. They could hear the noise but could not see the road.
With the creeps closing in Kimberly was grateful the babies were safe with Zach and Amy and nowhere near the motel. A thought struck that if anything went down, both of their parents could be dead. She crouched down low—trying to squash any such possibility—as Mitch did and followed him across the road toward the row of buildings, unsure what frightened her more—the thought of dying or living without her family.
Nothing could happen to either one of them. The twins deserved to grow up with both parents.
“Mitch,” Kimberly said as they cleared the road and got closer to the cluster of buildings. “I’m truly sorry for everything I’ve put you through. Loving you was the most selfish thing I’ve ever done.”
“Loving someone else isn’t selfish,” he countered, and she was surprised at how quickly he’d responded.
“It is for me. I’ve done nothing but hurt you and I must’ve known on some level that I would,” she said.
He didn’t answer right away as they rounded the corner of a building and he stood upright.
Mitch spun around, looped his hands around her waist and tugged her toward him. He captured her lips with his. When he’d kissed her so thoroughly that her knees almost buckled he pulled back and said, “You tried to warn me. I didn’t want to hear you. You brought me back to life, made me feel something deeper than I’ve ever felt before. If anyone’s to blame, it’s me. You told me there was no room in your life for me, and I took advantage of the fact that you wanted this as much as I did.”
“You couldn’t have known about...this.” She waved her arm toward the motel.
“No. But I’ve never felt more alive than when I’m with you. I just don’t know what that means when all this is over. I’m questioning how I could let my feelings run out of control with someone I never really knew in the first place.” Mitch had grown up in Jacobstown and lived on the family ranch his whole life. She could see where falling for a stranger would throw him off. But those last words were daggers to her heart because she felt like she knew him. It was odd, really, but she felt like they’d had this deep connection from day one. The kind that made her feel like she knew him at the most intimate level even though he was right that they didn’t know basic facts about each other, like family medical history. But then again she didn’t know her parents’ medical history, either. Mitch would know his. His parents had been the bedrock of the community. From everything she knew they had been decent, upstanding people who’d loved their children.
“We should find a place to hunker down until the coast is clear,” Mitch finally said.
He managed to find an unlocked vehicle and they slipped into the cab of the pickup. He closed and locked the door behind them before opening a small box underneath the dashboard.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Checking to see if I can hot-wire this thing if there’s no other option,” he admitted. He played around with something she couldn’t quite see before he repositioned himself to cover her.
It was light outside. If anyone came near the truck they’d see one or both of them. But this was the best they had to work with at the moment. There were steel doors on the warehouses with similar-looking loading docks. None would be easy to break in to.
“I’m sorry that I lied to you about my parents,” she said in a low voice. “I was embarrassed to admit that I don’t really know who they are. All I was ever told was that I was left in that parking lot and when no one claimed me and my sister, we were dumped into the system. I was seven years old. Now, I have no idea where they are or what they’re doing. I don’t even know if they’re alive. I don’t want to care either way but I guess I’m curious about my past. Where I come from. My caseworker tried to keep my sister and I together for as long as possible, or so she said. But when one of my foster dads knocked my little sister into the wall for chewing her food too loudly I lost it.”
“That couldn’t have gone well for you,” he said and his voice was steady, unreadable.
“He said I was violent and they believed him over me. His wife lied to my caseworker, saying that I’d become too hard to handle but that Rose was still okay. She never cried. Not when one of them was listening. I heard her at night when the lights were turned out. She’d sniffle for hours. Sometimes I’d crawl into her bed but that was dangerous because I got in trouble if I didn’t stick to my own. And some nights, I’d be so tired that I’d fall asleep. Those lead to bad days,” she said. All those memories bearing down on her like heavy weights pressing against her chest made it hard to breathe.
“No child should be treated that way,” he said. His voice was low but there was palpable anger in it. “Did you ever ask about your parents?”
“No. What would be the use? They didn’t want me.” She heard the hurt in her own voice even though she’d spent years building up walls that made it impossible to feel when she thought about her past.
“History, for one,” he said. “The truth, for another.”
“I know everything I need to about them. They rejected me.” A few tears welled in her eyes but she refused to let them fall.
“How can you be certain?” he asked.
“Because they left me behind at a strip mall with my sister. They took off and didn’t look back. They just left me and my sister and that was it.” She heard the defensiveness in her tone.
Mitch got quiet, like he did when he was angry. “I’m sorry you went through that, Kimberly. You deserved better.”
She kept her voice low so he wouldn’t hear.
“That’s where you’re wrong. You deserved better.”