Page 43 of An Ex Affair

He squeezed my fingers. “You didn’t wreck them. You just clarified what was important.”

We stood there staring at each other, our hands swinging back and forth between us. He looked so good, no shirt, no mustache, and those serious eyes looking into my soul. A simple apology couldn’t fix the nineteen years between us, but maybe it could pave the way to a different kind of future.

“Where does that leave us now?” I asked quietly.

Colson shrugged, bringing my hand up to his mouth to kiss my knuckles. “Two adults with a past who still care about each other?”

His lips skated over my skin, lighting little fires of desire in their wake. “Can we really have sex without having feelings?” It was the question circling in my brain. The one question I didn’t want to ask, but Colson deserved a mature Tully, asking the hard questions just like he had.

He slowly dropped my hand and disentangled his fingers. His palms landed on my hips again, tugging me into his chest. “I don’t plan to bottle up my feelings. I suggest you don’t either. What I will do is kick all ideas about the future out the window. I just want to focus on you and me setting the past aside and focusing on right now.”

I nodded, sliding my hands up his thick arms to wrap around the back of his neck. “I can do that too.” I tilted my head toward the river, feeling a renewed sense of playfulness now that we’d hashed everything out. “You know, we did a lot of making out by this river…”

Colson skimmed his hands down over my ass and then back up my spine, this time under the cotton T-shirt. I shivered at the feel of those calluses on my skin. “I don’t want to make out.”

I rubbed my belly against the steel rod in his pants that hadn’t gone away during our conversation. “No?”

“No.” He bent his head and skimmed his mouth along my neck before whispering in my ear. “I want to fuck you ’til you scare all the squirrels away screaming my name.”

My knees started to wobble. Colson took charge, whipping my shirt over my head again and picking me up. I held on to his neck for dear life. Before I could ask where he was taking me, he squatted down by the flat rock and laid me down on my back.

“Here?” I asked breathlessly.

He didn’t answer. He just spread my knees apart and crawled between my thighs. Thank God for flat rocks large enough for two people. Except that voice in my head that just couldn’t relax blared at me that I’d been sweaty, working all day at Mama’s house.

“Wait! I was just working…” I trailed off at the lecherous grin Colson gave me.

“You think I give a shit?”

And then I only saw the top of his head as he buried his face between my legs and used that wicked tongue like a master. Stars danced across my vision that had nothing to do with the darkening sky above me. I quickly realized that I wasn’t the only one who’d learned a thing or two since we’d been kids. The flat of his tongue transported me to another world. He brought me back with the rapid flick of just the tip of his tongue on my clit while he buried two fingers inside me. True to his word, he didn’t let up until I screamed his name and nearly tore his hair out grabbing the strands in my fists.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Colson

If I’d beenhard-pressed to describe heaven, I’d have said listening to the river eddying around the rocks, squirrels scattering leaves, the moon rising high in the night sky, and Tully. The only woman for me spread out on this rock, her taste on my lips, her cries weaving into the fabric of our special spot. I didn’t think I’d ever get the chance to worship her body like this again, so clearly I had to have died and gone to heaven.

I lifted my head and took in the sight of her chest heaving, her neck extended, face lifted up to the stars. “Nineteen long years being denied this pussy.”

Her fingers, the ones that had nearly ripped my hair out and then gone lax, tightened again. She lifted her head off the rock, eyes hazy and lips parted. “Oh, you’re a dirty talker now?”

I licked my lips, tasting her all over again. I could have sworn her cheeks went pink, but maybe that was just the moonlight lying to me. “Fuck yeah. Learned the hard way to say what needs to be said before it’s too late.”

Tully’s eyes went even softer and her fingers stroked through my hair, sending shivers down my back. “Get up here.”

I obliged, unbuttoning my jeans and shoving them down to my ankles as I climbed over her body. “Fuck.”

“What?” Tully tried to shift to give me more room on the rock, but it wasn’t the room I needed. I required a fucking mattress, pillow, or even goddamn knee pads.

I looked down at her, a wry smile replacing some of the seriousness I’d felt a moment earlier. “This rock always been this hard?”

Tully grinned. “Gettin’ old’s a bitch.”

My eyebrows nearly went in my hairline that hadn’t receded even a millimeter over the years, thank you very much. “Talking tough for a woman who’s laid out on her back like a princess.”

Tully started giggling and it was music to my ears. The years faded away and it was just me and my best friend down by the river again.

“Switch places,” Tully ordered, sitting up and nearly pushing me right off the dang rock into the dirt. “Watch it!”

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