I’d dreamed of this day. I’d lain in bed countless nights torturing myself with the possibility of it. At least half those nights were spent trying to talk myself out of it too.

I could have let her move on and forget about me. Maybe that would have been the right thing to do, but the minute I picked up the phone and called Michelle, I knew there was no going back. Even if Kate had fallen in love with someone else, I’d find a way to get her back. She was my wife, and nothing would ever change that. Not even my supposed death.

The sun was hot on my shoulders, the sand giving way to my footsteps as I walked toward her figure on the beach. She was faced my way, her gaze seemingly fixed on me. My heart started to race. Did she recognize me already?

My imagination rushed through every scenario I’d fantasized about. Her happy tears. Jumping into my arms. Falling into bed the first second we could. My palms itched to touch her again. My sweet Kate…

She stood stock still as I approached, her mouth agape, arms limp by her sides. So no jumping into my arms then.

I slowed in front of her, and my heart stopped as our gazes locked. Those blue eyes… Heaven help me, they’d slain me the second I saw them back in school. I was a goner. Nothing had changed.

“Kate.”

I reached out, desperate to touch her.

But she shook her head, lifting a trembling hand to her lips. “It can’t be.”

“Kate, it’s me,” I said with more force. “It’s Price.”

She kept shaking her head, almost stumbling backward. “You’re not real. This isn’t real. You’re dead.”

“No, I’m real, sweetheart. It’s me. I promise you.” I couldn’t keep my distance anymore. I took a couple long strides toward her, grasping her arms and bringing us chest to chest.

But the second I touched her, a sob tore from her throat. Her pain was so raw, so real. It clawed down my limbs and slugged me in the gut. I wrapped my arms around her, buried my face in her neck, and breathed her in. Grapefruit. God, she still smelled the same. I wished everything else could be the same right now.

She was still sobbing, her body so delicate in my arms. She was thinner. I hadn’t missed the dark circles under her eyes, either. The lifelessness that lived under the shock she wore at seeing me. I’d make all that go away…as soon as she stopped crying and let me kiss her and love her.

I hushed her, pulled back enough to see her face and brush away her tears. Then a flash of dark hair behind her caught my eye. Michelle stood on the lanai several yards away.

“Chelle.”

The second I said her name she ran toward us. Kate pulled away before I could keep her close, and Michelle took the space in a flash.

“You bastard. Oh my God, I can’t believe you’re really here. It’s really you!”

Tears flowed down her cheeks, catching on her smile and wetting my face as she peppered a thousand kisses all over me. I held her tight, and her tears soon turned into laughter. I hadn’t heard such a wonderful sound since… Well, since a happier time.

She finally stepped back, and we both turned to Kate, who had wrapped her arms around herself. Despite the tropical heat, she shivered.

Michelle took her hand. “Come on. Let’s go inside and finish that bottle. We have to celebrate.”

Kate managed a weak smile, her gaze floating back to me like she still couldn’t believe I was real. I followed them both inside, noting the open-air design of the house. Nothing like the non-stop pump of air conditioning to kill the joy of being on a temperate island.

“Beautiful place,” I said with a grin. I’d picked this villa for the occasion after a little research. It had to be remote, of course, but for Kate, it also had to be the best. I hoped she liked it. Without a doubt, it beat the boat I’d called home for the past many months.

Kate leaned against the bar-height counter, a faraway look in her eyes, while Michelle bounced from the stainless steel fridge to the dark lacquered cabinets, pulling out another champagne flute.

“It’s amazing. You sure know how to pick the perfect spot for a family reunion,” Michelle said, succumbing to another happy giggle.

Kate slid her gaze from Michelle to me and back again. “You knew?”

Michelle’s smile softened. “Price called me last week. All he said was to book this place for the two of us and to keep it a secret. That’s why everything came together so quickly. I had to get you here as soon as possible.”

Kate shook her head again, fresh tears rimming her eyes and catching on her long lashes.

“Sweetheart…” I took a step toward her.

“Don’t sweetheart me!” She slammed her hand against the marble. “You were dead. We buried you!”

Michelle set the champagne bottle down. “You deserve some space. I’m sorry,” she said gently. “I’m going to go explore the island a little. I’ll be back before dark.” Looking down, she brushed past me, but not before pressing another quick kiss to my cheek.

Then she disappeared, leaving me alone with my wife. My very angry, passionate, beautiful wife. The woman I could make come in under a minute. The woman I’d vowed to love my entire life.

The woman who’d endured my funeral…

My jaw tensed almost painfully with that vision. Kate, shrouded in black, saying goodbye to me forever among our family and friends.

“There was nothing in that casket, Kate.”

If they’d found a body, I wouldn’t be standing here right now.

Her head fell into her hands and she sobbed quietly. I resisted the urge to take her into my arms again.

“I know you’re upset—”

She shot her head up and narrowed her eyes. “Upset? You left me alone, Price. For a year, you left me to pick up the pieces of our life. Where were you while my heart was rotting? Island hopping? Surfing?”

She gestured up and down the length of my tanned and toned body as if I’d scrubbed all signs of life from my identity to go on an extended vacation. She was dead wrong.

I closed the space between us, bringing her hard against me. I wasn’t letting her go this time. “I did this for us! I did this for you, Kate. You don’t understand right now, but trust me. There was no other way.”

She swallowed, her anger and her tears seeming to subside for the moment.

“I love you,” I said between gritted teeth. God help me, she’d never know how much. “I’m alive, but part of me died when that plane went down. I want it back. I want you back.”

She tried shaking her head again, but I caught her cheek and tilted her face up, stilling her. Our lips were so close. If only I could make her understand everything with a kiss, a promise that my heart had been in the right place this whole time.

It was worth a try. So I took her mouth, delving past her lips until I found her velvet tongue. Then I took more. I should have celebrated the soft wonder of her lips against mine, but instead I consumed. I devoured her until we could scarcely breathe. When we finally broke apart, I was panting and desperately hard, equal parts heartbroken and restored, conflicted and at peace now that she was close enough to hold.

“Kate, I have to be with you.” My voice cracked with barely harnessed need.

She lifted on her toes, sifting her fingers through my overgrown hair as she brought our lips together again. Like an ice cube in the summer sun, something melted inside me—the fear and doubt that had taken hold the second she’d recoiled from my touch. No. She was still my Kate. And I’d show her I was still the man I once was, in all the ways that mattered.

I lifted her against me, hooking her thighs over my hips as I journeyed out of the main living area into the nearest bedroom. I kicked the door shut with my heel and lowered Kate to her feet by the bed. Her eyes were hazy with lust. In that moment, I vowed to keep that look on her face as often as I could for as long as she was here.

I trailed my hands over her shoulders and down her arms. I was going to make love to her. Then I was going to feed her. And then… At some point, I’d have to give her some answers. But first she’d have to make a choice. One that would make or break our future. As much as I loved her, the choice had to be hers.

Before I could dwell on that, she reached for me, sliding my white linen shirt over my shoulders. Then she tugged at the drawstring of my shorts. “Take these off.”

Her tone wasn’t teasing or playful. It almost bordered on desperate. I knew because I was nothing short of possessed by the thought of having her naked, bared and open to me as I drove our bodies together until she cried out. I flinched when her touch grazed my cock, which was hard as fucking granite already.

Quickly I shucked the shorts. Her half-lidded eyes flicked wider, but I couldn’t torture myself with her hot stare on me a minute more. I tugged at the knot that held her sarong in place and pulled the ties of her bikini until it lay on the floor.

Pushing her back onto the bed, I followed, kneeing her legs apart so I could take the space between them. Everything inside me wanted to take her right then, but I worried she was too fragile. The last thing I wanted was to hurt her, or scare her with the beast inside me that hadn’t been fed in a year. The beast that only hungered for one woman. Only her body called to me, her scent, the taste of her perfect pussy.

The thought occurred to me then that she could have been with other people. Who knew what temptations she’d faced in her grief, believing I was gone forever? I pushed the thought quickly away. I’d forgive her, because I was the one who needed real forgiving for the hell I’d put her through.

With a groan I crawled lower, diving into the sweet heaven between her thighs. I breathed curses against her wet flesh, plunging my fingers into her, testing her, remembering her…

“I still feel like I must be dreaming. This can’t really be happening,” she said breathily, sliding her fingers through my hair.

Fucking hell, I wasn’t an apparition. I was her husband. I moved up her body. Sealing our mouths together with a hot kiss, I pressed the head of my cock against her opening.

“You’re not dreaming. I’m real. This…” I pushed into her, as deeply as I could go. “This is real.”

She arched her back and gasped against my lips. My God, she was beautiful. A dozen buried memories came to the surface in that moment. The first time I’d had her. The last time. Times when I’d made her say crazy dirty things in the heat of the moment. When I’d made even dirtier promises and delivered on them.

I brushed my lips along the column of her neck. “And when I make you come, Kate, you’ll know it’s real. No dream can do what I’m about to do to you.”

I pulled out only to slide in again, slowly this time, savoring every inch of the journey of our two bodies becoming one. She released a small cry and dug her nails into my shoulder. Fuck, I’d missed that sound. Birds, waves crashing against the rocks, orchestras. The rest of the world could have it. The only sound I wanted in my ears was the music of my wife’s delirious cries while I fucked her dizzy.

“Does it feel real now, sweetheart?” I punctuated it with a hard shove that brought our hips tightly together.

“Yes…yes.”

The word pushed past her lips a few more times to the rhythm of my thrusts.

I could spend forever this way.

I would. We would…

I kissed her again, slowly and deeply, wishing I could suspend time and stay in this moment forever. We deserved hours of fucking and multiple twenty-minute orgasms after what we’d been through. But I hadn’t prepared myself for how intense sex would be after a year without. And suddenly all I cared about was getting her there before I did.

I slipped out of her and yanked her down the bed until her ass rested on the edge. I kissed her smooth calves as I positioned them atop my shoulders.

She trailed her fingertips down my abdomen, a motion that pushed her breasts together in a most lovely way. “But I want to touch you.”

I slipped my cock back into her wet heat, holding back a groan from the incredible sensation. “You can. Right after you come, baby. I’m not going to last long.”

With that, I started pumping in earnest, keeping her hips at the perfect angle to hit her G-spot and send her into orbit. A decade could go by, and I’d still know the combination to this lock.

Her moans grew louder, and as soon as I started thumbing her clit, everything tensed up. Her fists balled, her toes pointed, and my balls drew up. So close. So fucking close.

“I love you, Kate…so much. Oh, fuck…”

She screamed. I might have blacked out. I lost track of her orgasm as mine barreled through me, rocking me as I rocked into her with the last drive of my hips.

I slipped out and joined her on the bed before my legs gave out. Tucking Kate beside me, I felt more content than I could ever remember.

Beside us stood a wall of windows overlooking the ocean and open sliding doors that led to another private lanai. A warm breeze blew gently through the room, billowing the silky curtains around the bed. I released a sigh made of pure bliss.

If I was dead, this was heaven.

Then Kate perched on her elbow and looked down on me like a blue-eyed angel. I reached up and touched her face, mesmerized by her softness. I traced every line and reintroduced myself to the faint freckles that crept up on the apples of her cheeks when they saw the sunshine.

She’ll say yes. She has to.

In that moment, I believed it. Then she finally spoke.

“You have to tell me everything.”