Even though there was more they needed to talk about, Joslynn didn’t want to wait another moment for Russ to touch her. She smoothed her palms up his chest and leaned closer. Circling her arms around his neck, she rose on tiptoes to kiss him.
He enveloped her in his embrace, pulling her hard against him as though he wanted to absorb her. As his tongue slipped between her lips, she moaned, welcoming the invasion and returning the ferocity of his kiss. Each low growl rising from his chest fueled her, making her body respond with waves of heat and longing.
Russ lifted her so that she could wrap her legs around his waist. Somehow, he was able to keep kissing her and stumble his way to the bedroom. He set her back on her feet and went about undressing her as she helped remove his clothes. Garments were cast aside as hands explored, reclaiming what had once been so familiar and so arousing.
He pressed her back to the cool sheets and came down on top of her, stretching the length of his body against hers. Then he cradled her face in his warm hands and stared down into her eyes.
Had he never confessed that he still loved her, Joslynn would’ve known simply by the love she saw reflected in those blue orbs.
Could Russ see the same kind of love in her eyes?
“I love you, Josie.”
“I love you too, Russ.”
“Oh, sweetheart.” He kissed her. “I’ve been waiting to hear that for so long.” He kissed her again and nudged her thighs apart before settling between them. The hard length of his cock nestled against her core as he shifted his lips to her neck, where he nibbled and then soothed each love bite with a lick.
Nearly mad with want, she reached between them to take hold of his erection and guide him to her entrance.
As Russ drove into her, Joslynn wrapped her legs around his hips, welcoming the feel of his heat deep inside her. Tears filled her eyes as tension built. He would push into her and then withdraw, each thrust harder than the last.
She came in a rush, a burst of bright lights dotting her vision as shivers raced across her skin.
He was right there with her, chanting her name over and over when he poured himself into her.
* * *
Russ had never known the kind of peace making love to Josie had just brought him. Things between them physically had always been great. Satisfying. But this time, there was something more.
Since he wasn’t one to question his good luck, he simply savored the satisfaction thrumming through his body and thanked God that she loved him. He withdrew from her and rolled to his side, grateful that she followed to snuggle up against him. All he wanted to do was hold her like this for the rest of their lives.
Unfortunately, reality would intrude. Until it did, he could keep his arms around her and protect her.
Protect her from what?
Biopsy.
The word was tattooed on his brain. It meant only one thing. Her doctor feared cancer. Russ knew nothing about what a thyroid did or whether it was something she could have removed and live without. When he had a chance, he’d sit down at the computer and see what he could learn so that he could help Josie through this as much as possible.
She couldn’t die. That just wasn’t possible. He refused to even allow that thought to take root. If he had to spend every last dime he had, he would find a treatment for her. She’d beaten cancer before. She could surely do it again.
“What are you thinking?” she asked as she brushed her foot against his shin.
“That I was so very wrong,” he replied.
“About?”
“About thinking I was doing the right thing by sparing you a scary future.”
She kissed his cheek. “If you love someone, you want to be with them through the good and the bad.”
“Exactly. I’m not about to let you do this thyroid stuff by yourself.”
Rubbing her cheek against his shoulder, Josie let out a sigh.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Russ asked. With his parents’ situation, everything was out in the open because his father’s symptoms were so obvious. He’d had no idea whatsoever that Josie was even having health problems. Not once had she complained about pain or feeling poorly.
“I guess,” she replied. “There’s really not much to tell. At least not yet.”
“How did you know you were sick?”
“I’m not even sure I am,” she replied.
He squeezed her against him. “I want to know everything, sweetheart. I want to do anything I can to help you.”
Another small sigh. “I have blood tests a couple times a year. Just to check my numbers. It’s not like I was feeling terrible or anything. I might have had a bit of fatigue. Nothing that seemed too horrible.”
“And the tests came back…bad?”
“Yeah. Not terrible. Just…off. The doctor is running them again and adding a few other tests. And he did an exam. That’s when he found out my thyroid had some swelling—a goiter that could be anything from a tumor to just inflammation.”
“All this is new to me, Josie,” Russ said, feeling ignorant. “You’ll have to explain what a thyroid is and what it does.”
“I will,” she promised. “Bottom line is that I’m supposed to have a biopsy of the lump.”
“Well, then. We have the biopsy, and then, when we have the results, we figure out where to go from there.”
She kissed his cheek before laying her head back against his shoulder. “Since you told me about having the Alzheimer’s gene, I should tell you about my fertility testing.”
“You got the ultrasound?”
“I did. One ovary is toast, but the right side is working. It might not be easy to conceive, but I can get pregnant.”
“That’s great, sweetheart.”
“After you found out you had the gene, did you change your mind about having kids?” Josie asked.
“I don’t really know how I feel about it,” Russ admitted. “But when your biopsy turns out fine, we’ll have our whole lives to figure things out.”
* * *
Russ paced the waiting room, feeling like a caged animal. This procedure was the most important thing that had ever happened in his life, and there wasn’t a thing he could do except wait to find out if Josie was sick—if she faced another battle for her life.
This time she wasn’t fighting that war alone. The stories she’d told him of her childhood leukemia made his heart break for the young girl without someone to lean on through the scary ordeal. No one should have to face their own mortality. But to do so when a person had barely reached a double-digit age?
Life could be so fucking cruel.
Would it be cruel now? Would it threaten to take Josie away from him when he’d just discovered that he needed her as much as he needed air and water?
Stop it. Stop borrowing trouble.
A glance at his watch showed only three minutes had elapsed since his last check. The world seemed to have slowed to some odd new dimension where time passed more and more slowly as his anxiety rose.
She’d taken the time to explain exactly what was happening back in the treatment room. Her thyroid—a gland, she’d told him, that controlled metabolism—would have a thick needle introduced into it after the area had been numbed. The doctor would suction out some tissue and any fluid that might be causing the lump. He’d check things under a microscope to be sure he got what he needed, and then all Russ and Joslynn could do was wait until a pathologist figured out whether she had cancer.
If time was going slow now, he figured the week they had to wait for the report would be agony.
* * *
Joslynn had never been as relieved as when the endocrinologist said, “I think we might be done.”
The procedure hadn’t been terrible. Lying on the exam table and tilting her head back to expose her throat was uncomfortable, because the blood kept rushing to her head. She could feel her pulse pounding in her temples. The shot of Novocain hadn’t been too painful, just a pinch of burning before her neck went numb. Then it was only a matter of the doctor getting a proper sample. She hadn’t felt much of anything while he’d been working.
Without turning her head too much, she watched him squeezing some samples onto slides and then looking at them under the microscope. She wanted to ask him what he was seeing, but she knew better. He couldn’t answer her anyway. Procedure was to have a pathologist do the actual diagnosing. Should this doctor say he saw nothing and the pathologist later find a malignancy, he’d open himself up for a lawsuit. Not that she’d even consider one, but some people…
“Good news. I’ve got all I need.” He stepped away from the microscope and removed the drape from her throat. Then he offered a hand to help her sit up. “There was a lot of fluid, which is often a positive factor. But…”
Joslynn held up a hand. “I know, I know. I need to wait for the pathology report.”
“Exactly.” She started to slide off the table, but he put a restraining hand on her shoulder. “Give your head a second to clear. I had you back far enough you need to let the blood circulate for a few minutes so you don’t get light-headed.”
She gave him a nod and felt a rush of dizziness that made her realize he was right. “You did a good job,” she said, feeling awkward. Is that how patients felt around her?
No. Probably not. Joslynn was really good at filling those too-silent moments with chatter that seemed to make her patients feel more comfortable. This doctor had been extremely quiet throughout the prep and the procedure. It wasn’t a surprise that he had little to say now.
Finally feeling as if her circulation had stabilized, she eased off the table, testing to see if her wooziness had passed. She was anxious to see Russ, and although her hopes had risen with the doctor’s words, she needed Russ to hold her.
Joslynn found him in the waiting room. The place was next to empty since it was near the end of the day. She marched over to him, and he smiled and opened his arms. She slipped her arms around his waist and laid her cheek against his shoulder.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Fine.”
“Are you in pain?”
“My neck’s still numb, but I doubt I’ll have too much trouble when the numbness wears off. Nothing aspirin can’t handle.”
He squeezed her tight. “And now we wait.”
Raising her head so she could catch his eyes, she nodded. “Now we wait.”