Page 19 of Red, White, and You

“You are.”

“I’m not getting out of bed.”

“That lines up with my plans perfectly.” I glide my hand down her naked torso and up over herhip, then dip down between her legs. “Although, unfortunately, I do have to tend to some things before I can spend the rest of the day in bed with you.”

Brie rolls over onto her back, spreading her legs to allow for my searching fingers, and opens her sleepy eyes. “Tend to me first,” she murmurs with a playful whine.

“I plan to.”

“Good.” Her eyes close again and she sighs. “I think I like vacations.”

I laugh as I circle her opening with my middle finger. “Are your vacations always like this?”

“If they were, I might have taken one in the past fifteen years.”

I pause my exploration of her, waiting for her to tell me she’s kidding. “Breezy.”

She opens one eye.

“You haven’t taken a vacation in fifteen years?”

She closes her eye again and shakes her head.

With a sigh, I resume trailing my finger through her growing arousal. “They could always be like this. Going forward.”

Brie’s face tightens briefly, then she opens her eyes. “Don’t do that, Brady.”

I slip one finger inside her. “Don’t do what?”

“Don’t talk about what could be. We’ve been over that before.”

“Not in recent years.” I pull my finger out, then slide two back inside. She stretches, opening her legs wider, and I begin to pump my fingers rhythmically, leaning down to pull her earlobe into my mouth. “I could wake you up like this every morning, baby.”

Her lips part as her breathing quickens, but her eyes remained closed. Whether too focused on the way it feels to be touched by me or shutting me out, I don’t know.

I press my thumb against her clit, then flick it back and forth. “Think about it. Every morning.” I lick the shell of her ear and she whimpers.

Truth is, I’ve been thinking about selling the lake. I love this place. It’s everything I envisioned and more.

But there’s always been something lacking, something missing that made me feel like a piece of the puzzle was absent.

Now that Brie is here, I am sure of what that something was.

Is.

It’s her.

What good is having everything I ever dreamed of if Brie isn’t here to share it with me?

I push up onto my elbow and lean down over her, slanting my mouth over hers as I bring her to the edge. I kiss her with slow, deliberate strokes, coaxing her orgasm from her with matching pulls of my fingers between her legs.

I’ve spent years wondering if I made a mistake when I let her leave, almost two decades contemplating what life could have been if I’d fought to remain at her side.

And though I know that who I was back then, that young kid without a plan or even an inkling of drive, would have only held her back, it pains me that letting her go was the right thing to do. Because in what world is being without Brie ever going to beright?

It certainly neverfeltright.

But now, as I pull back to watch her slowly unravel for me, memorizing the planes of her face all over again, soaking in the soft sounds that spill from her lips, I’m convinced that thetime we spent apart was exactly what had to happen to bring us back together.

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