Jack felt Elizabeth pulse around his cock, heard her cry out, and he held her hips hard against him as she bucked and shuddered. Her white-knuckled hands gripped the comforter on his bed, and her head was thrown back in release, spilling her soft blonde hair across her thin shoulders.

He wasn’t done with her yet, though. He caressed her soft, round ass cheeks and leaned over her, placing a kiss between her shoulder blades.

“Turn over,” he murmured. “I want to see your beautiful face now.”

For a moment she hesitated. But he pulled out of her, moved her gently by the hips, and she turned so that she was lying back on the bed.

Jack was startled to see tears in her eyes. “Elizabeth!” He crawled onto the bed with her and wrapped his arms around her slight body. He ached to continue fucking her, but he set that aside for the moment. “What’s wrong? Did I hurt you?” Tell me I didn’t hurt you again.

She shook her head. “I wanted to stay angry at you.”

He gazed down at the delicate features of the face he’d come to adore. “Let me in, Elizabeth. Let me show you how much I love you.”

She raised her hand and touched his face. For a long moment she looked into his eyes, as if searching for something or trying to decide something. Then she wrapped her leg over his hip and drew him closer.

Jack slid inside her again. They didn’t break eye contact as they moved together, as her hips bucked upward, as her legs wrapped around him to force him deep. She offered her palms to him, and he intertwined his fingers with hers. She clenched his fingers hard as she pulled him inside her, her movements slow and sweet.

When Jack had entered her from behind, it had been raw and fast and hard. It was different now, deep and slow and close, as if something in Elizabeth had given way and she was, for the first time, fully open to him.

Nothing in his life had ever felt so right.

They moved together in a beautiful push-pull that brought Jack ever closer to orgasm. Each movement was a shock of pleasure that built up at the base of his cock, each graze of her nipples against his chest as she rose to meet him, each slide into her tight, hot wetness.

Elizabeth’s breath grew erratic, and she moaned with increasing intensity, watching him through half-closed eyes.

“Tell me when you want me to come,” Jack said.

This made her gasp again, and then she moved her hips so he could thrust to the hilt. “Now,” she said. “Now, Jack, please.”

He gave it to her hard and watched her as she came again, her hands clutching his as she writhed beneath him in her beautiful, shuddering orgasm.

Her pleasure sent him over the edge, and he closed his eyes and exploded into ecstasy, into Elizabeth.

* * *

As Elizabeth lay on the bed next to Jack, flushed and spent, she felt like her entire soul had been wiped clean of the past. In the floaty post-sex haze she could acknowledge that she’d been angry with Jack, but she also knew that anger was gone. She’d forgiven his nineteen-year-old self, and now her future was with the man he’d become.

This wasn’t a giddy, lust-fueled realization. It was a serious, weighty, wonderful one.

She turned her head to look at him. He was already watching her, his dark eyes questioning.

It had been easy to be open with him in bed. Now, she thought, came the difficult part. This would be the first time they talked with total honesty, starting over again now that the truth of the past was out in the open. Elizabeth knew it was a conversation that needed to happen, but she didn’t know how to start.

“Are you cold? Let’s get under the covers,” Jack said.

“I have a better idea,” she said. “Do you have tea?”

“I do.” He propped up his head and looked down at her. With his other hand he caressed the curve of her hip. “And I just realized it’s probably not even six o’clock. I hope the fact that you’re naked on my bed means you’re willing to stay for dinner.”

Elizabeth laughed. “When you put it that way, yes, I’m willing to stay for dinner.”

They stood up and got dressed. While she buttoned her flannel shirt, she asked Jack if Rugby had been sleeping upstairs.

“No, he doesn’t seem to have the hang of it with the staircase yet,” Jack said.

“Ah, yeah, he’s never been in a house with stairs before.”

Jack took her hand as they walked downstairs. He led her to the sofa in front of the fireplace, at which point Rugby jumped up next to her. The little dog might not have understood stairs quite yet, but he’d long ago mastered jumping on furniture to be with his humans.

“What kind of tea?” Jack asked her.

“Something herbal, if you have it,” she said.

He put another log on the fire and went to the kitchen to heat up the water. Elizabeth petted Rugby and watched the flames, gathering her thoughts. Her body was still suffused with the relaxing afterglow of sex, and the hypnotic warmth of the fire only added to it.

“Thank you,” she said to Jack when he brought their mugs of tea. It was an herbal hibiscus and she took a moment to inhale the fragrant steam rising from the red tea. She shifted so that Rugby wouldn’t cause her to spill, and so that Jack could sit next to her, which he did.

Jack spoke first. “Do we have a future?”

Elizabeth blinked. She hadn’t expected such a direct question, but she also appreciated it. Despite the secret he’d kept from her, it firmed up her view of him as an honest person, with an honest heart. She answered carefully.

“I’m still working through everything. But I do forgive you, Jack. Or I’m in the process of forgiving you.”

He exhaled as if a weight had been lifted off of him.

“You seem … unburdened,” she said.

“I am. I’m glad you know the truth. Although if I were you, I’d still want to kill me.”

“I guess forgiveness comes easier for me.”

“That’s for sure.” His brown eyes darkened. “It’s taken my entire adult life to figure out that I can utterly reject the choices my dad made but still accept him for who he is. You seem to have accepted your dad no matter what he might have done—or not done.”

“My dad is flawed in many ways, and I spent plenty of years ashamed of him, but when I look back, I don’t see that he ever did anything less than his best for Emmett and me. He tried to be the best father he knew how to be.” She felt her heart open up—for both Nate and Jack. “It’s the same with you. You were trying to do what was best for your family, and you never meant to hurt me. Both those things are true.”

“You know I held back,” he said. “I couldn’t help what I felt around you, but I could help how I acted, and I did. That’s why I pulled away at the beginning. I’m telling you, Elizabeth, you can drive a guy crazy with how sexy and irresistible you are. I did my honest best at keeping my distance, but something comes over me every time I’m with you––and when I’m not with you, I’m thinking about you.”

Elizabeth reached for his hand and squeezed it, feeling tears well up. “I feel that, too, Jack. I really do.”

“I think maybe it’s destiny.”

Wow, she thought, her mouth dropping open. Did he really just say that?

“I think so, too!” she said. “I’ve thought it since the moment we waved to each other out there on the path, and I fell down. It felt—as weird as it sounds—that it was your love that knocked me down.”

“You were weird that day,” he said with a laugh. “Talking all kinds of nonsense.”

“But it wasn’t nonsense,” she said. “It was destiny, and I knew it even at the time.”

“I believe you,” he said. “I feel like we’re at the start of a journey that’s supposed to be beautiful. And I know there’s nothing beautiful about what we’re going through right now, but I still see that path with you—with my arms around you, holding you close. Lifting you up, supporting you. Loving you, always. I think if we can get through something like this, then nothing can ever stop us.”

“We’ll get through it,” she said.

“So what do you need?” he asked. “What do you need to move forward?”

“That’s a good question.” She looked out the large floor-to-ceiling window at the swirling glow of the night sky. “I feel like I need a do-over on life. You know?”

Jack nodded that he understood.

“I mean, I used to be a rough-and-tumble little kid,” she said. “I watch the little girls on my hockey team, and I’m just in awe that I ever used to be like them. They’re ferocious little beasts! And I used to be, too! And yet now I feel …” She looked back at him, floundering for words. “I feel like I’ve been stuck in the penalty box my whole life—since my dad was arrested, anyway. That’s how everyone has treated me. Like I’ve done something wrong and need to sit on the sidelines while everyone else gets to play the game.”

“That makes sense.”

“How have you felt all these years?”

“A lot the same way, actually,” he said. “Only I’ve put myself in the penalty box, and I’m not willing to be stuck in there anymore.”

“Neither am I.” She lifted her mug of tea for a toast. “To stepping out of the penalty box.”

“To stepping out of the penalty box,” Jack said.

They clinked their mugs.

“And here’s to having our own little hockey monsters one day,” Jack said, raising his mug again hopefully.

Elizabeth’s eyes lit up. “You want kids?”

“Absolutely.” He swept his free arm across the length of his spacious house. “That’s why I built such a big home––so I could fill it with little ones, if I ever crossed paths with a woman I couldn’t walk away from.”

Be still, my heart. “And have you?”

“You already know the answer to that, Elizabeth Armstrong,” Jack said. “Literally, all I tried to do was walk away from you, but you never let me. You kept showing up and you kept showing up.”

“I am persistent.”

“Thank you for that,” Jack said. “Thank you for showing up––and I promise that from this point forward I’m going to show up for you every day for the rest of our lives. I will never try to walk away again.”

You’d better not, she thought, but she knew he wouldn’t. Jack was a smart man, and he knew better than to fight destiny.

“Well, then.” Elizabeth clinked his still-outstretched mug again. “Here’s to lots of little hockey monsters running around––and here’s to us.”  

“And here’s to us,” he agreed.

They sipped their tea and talked for hours about things they’d never talked about before. Elizabeth stayed for dinner, and there was no question as to whether she’d spend the night.

She was home now.

Home with Jack.

And once they were back in bed, when his hands went under the blanket and set her body on fire, Elizabeth knew it would be that way forever.