Cupping Kinley’s face in both of my palms now, she still hasn’t responded to my pleas. I lift her face, so she has to look at me again. “I will stay here all summer, if that’s what it takes to get you to realize that you’re it for me. You’re the last woman I’ve touched, kissed, made love to, Kinley. I haven’t so much as thought about another woman since I met you last summer. I want to marry you and have babies with you. I didn’t think I was ready for kids until you told me you were pregnant, and then I knew I wanted them with my whole heart. Then the call that you had lost the baby killed me inside. That’s why I dropped everything and came up here to see you when it happened.”

I take a deep breath in, before blowing it out. “I knew you would push me away, but I just had to hold you. I needed you to feel my love, as I needed yours just as much. So please, Kin, don’t push me away again. I love you, Kinley. When I’m around you, I breathe easier, everything feels right. You’re the one who does that to me. I need you in my life like I need air to breathe and food to eat. Can you please give us another fighting chance? Please, baby, I just need you,” I tell her, as I lower my lips and gently seal them over hers. I can taste the salty tears that are streaming down her cheeks.

She doesn’t pull away from my kiss, so I swipe my tongue along her lips to see if she’ll open for me. It takes a few seconds, but she finally does. When that happens, I drop one hand to her back and pull her flush against me. No way am I not taking advantage of this. As I deepen the kiss, I can feel her melting into me.

I break the kiss and bring our foreheads together. “I love you.”

She’s still dazed, still unable to form words, but I can see a small change in her eyes. I can see the acceptance, the walls she’s built up around her heart starting to crumble, so I give her time.

“I love you, too,” she whispers to me, and I know, with those words, we will fix this.

“How about I take you home?”

“Okay,” she finally says softly. “Let me just go say goodbye to Becca and Scott.”

Before she can walk away, I grab her hand and link our fingers. “I’ll go with you,” and she smiles up at me.

After saying goodbye to everyone, I lead Kinley out to the parking lot, to my rental, and help her in before shutting the door behind her. As she said goodbye to Becca, Scott pulled me aside and told me he was happy to see the two of us back together, and wished me luck in fixing things. As confident as I am that we will be able to, I’ll still take all the luck I can get.

After getting in the car and starting it, I sit back and look at Kinley. She’s a knockout in her maid of honor dress. It hugs her curves, showing off the perfect amount of cleavage to be tasteful and not trashy. I want to do nothing more than strip her out of it, but that will have to wait. We can’t just skip straight to sex; we need to talk first. We need to figure out where we stand and where we can go from here.

I reach over to grab her hand, bringing it up so I can place a kiss on it. I drop our hands to my lap, keeping our fingers laced together.

“Do you want to go to your place, or back to my hotel room?” I ask her, putting the car in reverse.

“I would prefer my place. That way, I can change out of this dress. If you want to stop at your hotel first to change, that’s fine with me.”

“No need. I’ve got a bag in the back seat with the clothes I wore here, since we got dressed at the church. I can just change back into them.”

We fall into a comfortable silence for the remainder of the drive to her place. I’m not sure either of us knows where to start this conversation, so I let the silence continue. It’s not going to be a short one, so I guess it’s better we start it once we’re out of the car.

At Kinley’s place, she heads straight for her room to change, while I change in the guest room, not wanting to push my luck yet. I strip out of my suit and pull on a t-shirt and pair of shorts. I stop in the bathroom before making my way out to the living room.

I take a seat on the couch to wait for Kinley to finish. Moments later, she emerges wearing some shorts and a t-shirt herself. She’s also scrubbed all the makeup from her face and piled her hair into a messy bun on the top of her head. She takes a seat at the end of the couch, her back against the armrest, so she’s facing me. Her feet are tucked up under her, and she’s covered herself with the blanket that was hanging over the back of the couch.

I shift slightly so I can face her better, moving a few inches closer. I’ll keep my hands to myself for now, but after the amount of time I’ve missed, I know I won’t be able to hold off for much longer.

The silence is lingering between us, neither of us sure who should say something first. I break the silence after a few more moments.

“Did you enjoy yourself at the wedding?” I figure starting with small talk might help.

“I did. I’m so happy for them. They deserved it to be as special and amazing as it was.” She smiles. “Did you enjoy it?”

“As much as a guy can enjoy a wedding.” I smirk. “The food was great.”

“That it was,” she laughs, and my heart skips a beat. I’ve needed to hear her laugh for weeks, and hearing it for the first time in way too long does something to me.

Needing to get us talking about more, I take the plunge.

“How are you really doing, Kin?” I ask quietly.

She’s quiet for a few moments, but I can tell she’s thinking. Figuring out what she’s going to tell me.

“I’m better. I started seeing a counselor, Dr. Emmerson, at the advice of my OB/GYN. She’s helped me work through a lot of the pain and depression that I fell into. The meds they put me on have also helped a great deal, and I hope that I can stop them sometime soon. I took a few weeks off from work, and when I finally was able to go back, that helped, as it got me back into my normal routine. I still have moments where I break down for no apparent reason, and don’t get me started about damn commercials. I still feel the pain and heartache, and guilt. Brian, I don’t know how to even ask for your forgiveness, or how to ask you to trust me to not push you away again when something else happens in the future.”

“I’m so glad that you got help from the counselor. It sounds like she really helped you process everything.”

I close the space between us, cupping her face.

“Baby, like I told you earlier tonight, I love you. I’ve never stopped. And you need to stop apologizing; there’s nothing to forgive. You didn’t do anything wrong, you didn’t cause the miscarriage. I realized I had to be willing to let you go, so that you could heal yourself before we could heal us. It killed me every day to be away from you, to not talk to you or see you, but I knew deep down, if I gave you the space, that you’d come back to me. I don’t know how I knew it, but I just did. I’m here to stay. I won’t let you push me away again, and I mean that, Kin.” I crush my lips to hers, catching her off guard a little. The gasp she makes gives me the perfect opening to plunge my tongue into her mouth, deepening the kiss.

Within moments, she’s pushed herself up from her position against the armrest into my lap, straddling me as she faces me. We’re chest to chest and soon, we’re both frantically trying to touch each other everywhere we can. Her fingers find their way to the hem of my shirt. She grips it, pulling it up as her hands slide underneath. She presses them flat against my abs, lightly dragging her nails up my skin as she slides her hands higher. I reach behind me and grab my shirt, pulling it off over my head in one move. When I break the kiss to fully remove my shirt, she drops her lips to my chest and kisses her way along my pecs, flicking her tongue around my nipples until they harden.

She slides off my lap, onto the floor between my legs, as she continues to kiss her way down my stomach, stopping at the waistband of my shorts. There is no hiding the bulge in my shorts, and it doesn’t help anything when she caresses my dick through them. It takes all my control to not thrust my hips up into her hand. Before I can even think of stopping her, she’s pulled my shorts and briefs down over my erection and has lowered her head, sucking me deep into her mouth.

Fuuuuuuuuuck, her warm wet mouth feels amazing around my cock. I can hardly control my thoughts as she bobs up and down on it. Kinley runs the point of her tongue up the underside, until she reaches the crown, where she swirls it around, sending shivers right up my cock and to the base of my spine. If she doesn’t let up soon, I’m going to really embarrass myself and come way too quickly.

Before I can pull her off me, she drops back down until I’m hitting the back of her throat, her cheeks hollowing around me as she sucks even harder. I’m on the edge and before I can pull her off, the tingle at the base of my spine spreads down, my balls tighten up, and my orgasm explodes from my body and down her throat.

“God, Kin. You’re going to kill me doing things like that,” I say, as she pulls off of me and crawls back up my body. “I wasn’t expecting anything like that to happen tonight.”

“I know, but your kiss just sparked something within me and I wanted to.”

“Sex isn’t going to fix everything,” I say, kissing her cheek and tucking a stray bit of hair behind her ear.

“I know.”

“You letting me back in, and promising not to push me away, is all I need. The rest, we can figure out as we go. Just promise me you’ll talk to me when things get tough. If you need to cry it out, then I want to hold you while you lose your shit. I want to be your strength when you’re feeling weak.”

“How did I get so lucky to have you in my life?” Kinley asks.

“I like to think I’m the lucky one,” I tell her.

“Can you take me to bed? I need to feel you everywhere. I need that connection with you again to feel whole.”

“You’re sure?”

“One-hundred percent. I still feel like a piece of me is missing, and I know, without a doubt, that piece is the connection with you. I need you to bring that back to me and make me whole again. Make me feel again, Brian.”

I slide her off my lap and stand. She grabs my hand and leads me into her room, straight for the bed. I pull her so we’re facing each other, one hand resting on her hip, and the other, I bring up to cup her face.

“If we do this, there’s no turning back, Kin. You can’t push me away again. It will kill me.”

Lifting up onto her toes, she brings her hands up to my neck, pulling me down to meet her, and she brushes her lips across mine. “I’m yours,” she whispers before kissing me again.

I lift her shirt up and over her head, exposing her naked torso to me. I drop my hands to cup her ass, lifting her up, and she wraps her legs around my waist. Her hands slide into my hair, playing with the ends at the nape of my neck. I kneel on the bed, laying her down in the center, then start kissing along her jaw and down the column of her neck, nibbling along her collarbone while I trail my fingertips down the valley between her breasts. Her nipples are already hard nubs, calling to me.

I drive her crazy, purposely avoiding her nipples with my lips. As I kiss my way to the underside of her breasts, leaving love bite marks in my wake, I take her nipples and roll them between my fingers. I descend further down her body, toward her navel, to where the band of her shorts rests across her lower abdomen.

I bring my lips back to hers for a quick kiss before finally descending on her breasts again, licking and sucking one, then the other, teasing her nipples lightly with my teeth. The moans falling from Kinley spur me on as I drive her wild.

I descend back down her torso, leaving her panting heavily, and slip my hand beneath the fabric separating us to find her wet and ready for me. I push her shorts and panties from her body, trailing my lips down as the fabric falls from her body. I don’t give her much warning before I latch onto her clit, biting it lightly before sucking it hard between my lips.

I continue to drive her crazy with my mouth, as I slip two fingers inside her until I find that one spot inside that drives her insane. As soon as I hit it with a fingertip, she’s arching off the bed, almost enough to pull completely away from me. I can feel her body start to flutter around my fingers, her clit swelling as I relentlessly swirl it with my tongue, sucking hard on it. It’s only a few more seconds before she’s fully convulsing and letting go as her orgasm wracks through her body. I slow the thrusting of my fingers and release her clit, lapping up her sweet juices, feeling her shudder beneath me. I slowly pull my fingers from her heat, then lightly kiss my way back up her sated body, allowing her to bask in her orgasm.

I take off my shorts and briefs, removing the condom from my wallet, then grab my hard cock and give it a few slow tugs as I wait for Kinley to come out of the fog of her orgasm. Kinley reaches over and grabs the condom from my hand, opening it and rolling it over and down my dick. She wastes no time, climbing on top of me and sinking down, wrapping me in her tight, wet heat.

“Fuuuck!” we both moan at the same time.

“Baby, you’re so tight like this. You’re going to kill me,” I grind out, bringing my hands to her hips to help her ride me.

I can only take her torturous speed for so long before I wrap my arm around her back and flip us around. I bring her legs up, resting them on my shoulders, as I start to pound into her. Garbled moans of pleasure fall from her lips and I can feel her start to clench around my dick. I slow things down, not wanting this to end, and push her legs from against my chest until she straddles either side of me, so I can lean forward and kiss her. I never stop thrusting, just slow my rhythm down, and rotate my hips a little differently with each thrust to drive her a little crazier.

With her lips fused to mine, I swallow each hum of pleasure that attempts to escape her throat. I slide my hands down to cup her ass, lifting it slightly so I can thrust harder and deeper inside. It only takes a few thrusts at this new angle for her to fall apart under me. She breaks our kiss as her cry of pleasure rips from her. I lean forward, snagging her bottom lip between my teeth and bite lightly, then soothe the sting with my tongue. I thrust through her release, as I chase my own a few moments later, her clenching pussy milking mine from me as I come, filling the condom. Completely spent, I catch myself on my forearms as I collapse down, not wanting to crush her with my full weight.

Once I’ve caught my breath, I roll off her and make my way to the bathroom, to dispose of the condom and relieve myself. Kinley’s waiting outside the bathroom when I walk back out, and I snag a quick, chaste kiss as I walk by her and back to the bed. She returns from the bathroom moments later, and crawls into bed, tucking herself in beside me.

Having her next to me and back in my arms is the best feeling in the world, and I fall asleep feeling complete for the first time since we lost the baby.