In the bedroom, he cupped her cheek with the most tender of touches, his lips on hers feather light. When he backed off, angled his head the other way, she murmured, “But we have to get back to work.”

“Screw work.” He licked the seam of her lips, her taste as intoxicating as if it were the first time. “I need this. I need you.” He needed all the things he’d craved, her kiss, her touch, her laughter, her voice whispering to him. “Kiss me.”

When her lips parted for him, he held her as close as he could without pulling her right inside his skin. She tasted of sunlight. Up on her toes, she wound her arms around his neck, opened everything to him. He took her with his mouth, his tongue, his need. She took him with her heart. The kiss lasted until he couldn’t breathe, until his pulse pounded and his blood rushed through his veins.

Then he lifted her, tossing her into the middle of the bed. She laughed. Christ, her laugh; it bathed his senses, turned him inside out.

“What the hell are you doing?” Her smile swallowed any bite in the words.

“I’m going to fuck my wife in the middle of the day in the center of my bed.” He yanked his shirt over his head. “What are you going to do about it?”

She stared for a long moment, a hint of shadow passing through her eyes, then she got to all fours and crawled across the bed to him. She laid her hand on top of his as he tugged his belt loose. “I’m going to suck my husband’s big, fat cock.”

This was what he’d craved in those hours past midnight. Her laughter, her banter, her dirty talk, when making love was hot sex and so much fucking fun. She’d given it to him during their games, but she’d denied it to him in their bed. “Strip first,” he ordered, “or you don’t get any cock.”

“Hah. You’re dying to give it to me.” But she pulled off her jacket, tossed it, slipped the buttons of her blouse loose, shoving it off her shoulders where, still tucked in, it dangled over the waistband of her slacks. Her bra was utilitarian cotton and oh so sexy. With one finger, he slowly pushed the strap off her shoulder, then down her arm until her nipple popped free.

“You’re so beautiful,” he whispered, the backs of his eyes aching, his breath catching in his throat.

She held his palm to her breast. “I love you.”

He raised his gaze to hers. It had been so long. “I never stopped loving you.” They would never stop missing Jay, but there could be moments like this, where they felt the connection like the beautiful, delicate threads of a web, unmistakably there yet so easily broken if you weren’t careful. They had not been careful with each other for so very long.

Putting a knee to the mattress, he knelt before her. Slowly, with care and deliberation, he unsnapped the back clasp of her bra. Holding her with his gaze, he slid the fabric from between them. Her nipples brushed his chest.

“So good,” he said, then pushed the thick luxuriance of her hair back from her neck. Breathing deep of her sweet scent, he licked the shell of her ear.

She shivered, then laid her palm flat, taking his nipple between her index and middle finger, squeezing. His cock jumped. “Even better,” she murmured. Bending to his chest, she licked him, bit his nipple lightly, then soothed the skin with her tongue. “You taste perfect.”

They removed the rest of their clothes in fluid, synchronous motions as if they performed an intimate dance. He was sure it would never happen that way again. He didn’t care.

Face-to-face, breast-to-breast, she stroked his cock. “I love how hard you get. That amazes me.”

It was always how he’d been for her. How he always would be. “You know what I want?”

She shook her head, her hair brushing him. “Tell me.”

“Missionary.”

She laughed. “You’re kidding.”

“That’s how I want it.” He trailed a finger down her side, then between them, tracing her pussy, testing. She was wet. “I want your arms around me, your lips on me. I want to see you.”

She laid back in the center of the bed, spread herself for him. “Take me, I’m yours.” Despite the quip, there was a momentousness to her words, a glow in her eyes.

There were no preliminaries, no foreplay. He simply filled her and filled himself with her. She tangled her fingers in his hair, pulled his head down, took his lips with a long drugging kiss. Slow, steady, sweet, hot, he made love to her until she writhed beneath him, moaned into his mouth, her pussy working him from the inside.

Someone whispered “I love you” over and over. He took her to the rhythm of that chant, their chant, loved her with the sweetness in those words. When he came deep inside her, she became his again, finally.

“We should do this more often,” she whispered against his neck, her body, hot and marvelously sweaty, plastered along the length of his. He was all smooth, hard muscle, the phantom feel of him inside her, his scent all over her, her own body-wash aroma sweet but changed, becoming his, utterly masculine.

He rolled, pinned her beneath him. “We should do it at work.” His dark eyes sparkled as he raised a devilish brow. “In fact, I have this fantasy of you walking into my office, closing the door, sitting in the chair, and lifting your skirt.” He dropped a kiss to her nose. “Then you whip out your vibrator and let me watch.”

She laughed. “You’re so filthy.” Then she cupped his face, held him, her heart beating loudly in her own ears. “Is that over? All the kinky things we did?”

He searched her face, his gaze moving from her left eye to her right, down to her lips, back up. “I loved watching you come. I loved your pleasure. I loved holding you while he licked my come out of you and made you climax all over again.” Even now, against her, she felt how much he’d loved it in the hardening of his cock. “But all I really needed was this, you in my arms, seeing me, loving me. I don’t need the rest the way I need you.”

“I don’t know if I want those things again. Maybe. Maybe not. Later. I don’t know. Can you wait?” She wasn’t ready to think about it now.

He kissed her soundly. “I can wait forever.”

He already had waited. She moved sinuously beneath him. “What we really need is some time off, a long vacation.”

“Good God.” He waggled his eyebrows. “You? Take off more than a day from work, especially in January.”

“Maybe we should do it in February. Valentine’s Day.” She burrowed her face against his shoulder. “Maybe I work too much.” She didn’t say we. The problem had never been Dominic. “We need time to learn to be together again.”

“Yes. We do.” He kissed her ear. “I love you. I have always loved you. I always will love you. But things are different now.”

She knew he meant Jay. She knew he meant their life without Jay. They’d said so many things today. There were so many things left to be said. They had to admit to each other that the ache would never go, but they would have to go on anyway. “I never stopped loving you. I just forgot how to show you.”

He wiped a tear from her cheek she hadn’t realized had fallen. Then he rolled with her once more, pulling her astride him. “Do you know how I survived?”

She leaned down, pressed her body to his. “No.”

“Past midnight,” he murmured, his eyes as deep, dark, and soulful as the hour of which he spoke. “I lived for when you touched me then.”

When things seemed their darkest, when she didn’t think she could go on, she’d always turned to him, and it had always been past midnight. “You were the only way I survived, too.”

“Don’t ever stop touching me like that in the middle of the night,” he whispered.

She put her lips to his. “I never will.” Then she kissed him.