Redemption's Kiss

by Ann Christopher

  After a minute, when he thought he’d collected himself again and braced for the shock of the next thing in the box, whatever it turned out to be, she reached inside and pulled out a silverframed, black-and-white photograph that nearly knocked him out cold.

  It was an extreme close-up of Jillian, with her eyes closed, pressing a tender kiss to Mary’s small face. Mary, the most beautiful baby ever, with a full head of dark curls, like Beau’s, and Beau’s pale toffee skin, and Jillian’s arched brows and a thick fringe of eyelashes resting against her cheek as she slept.

  Only she wasn’t asleep. She was dead.

  The hospital had contacted a photographer who specialized in taking pictures of dead babies who didn’t look dead, so their parents would have these mementos. This was a larger version of the picture Jillian kept in her locket, which was as close to her heart as she could get it.

  And the locket. The locket had been his new-mommy gift, picked out pretty much the second she entered her second trimester, when the baby was supposed to be safe. He’d never thought, on that amazing day so long ago, that the world would crash and burn around them like this.

  There was so much he had to tell her, so much explaining still to do. “I shouldn’t have gone to Canada, Jill. I should have been with you when you found out. I shouldn’t have—”

  Turning away, she stared across the room, lost in thoughts that she hid behind a blank face. Finally, she shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. You had a—”

  “It matters. You needed me and I let you—”

  “—trade summit and you were the governor—”

  Was he hearing right? That it didn’t matter that she had to hear the news that the baby in her belly had died while he was out of the country and she was all alone?

  “It matters.” Risking what felt like everything, especially the fragile peace they’d established here today, he touched her wrist. “That was the beginning of the end for us—”

  “No.”

  That one word, said with zero inflection, was all she had to say on the subject. With brisk efficiency, she pulled her arm free and began to collect the items again and replace them in the box. Her expression was a mask of serenity that didn’t fool him for even half a second.

  What the hell should he do now? Press a little harder? Or go along with this fairy tale she was spinning? Watching her raise the blanket high in order to fold it, he just couldn’t sit quietly and let it go.

  They’d come this far. They couldn’t go any further without complete honesty, on this one terrible thing, if nothing else.

  “Jillian.”

  She kept her eyes lowered, refusing to look at him as she repacked the box.

  “You’re angry with me. You’ve been angry with me for years—”

  “No, I’m not. You were doing your job and you had to go—”

  “I wasn’t there for you. In the one second of your life when you most needed me, I wasn’t there.”

  “No,” she repeated, as if that were the end of it forever.

  Stymied and floundering, he took a minute and then decided. To hell with it. He had a lot to say, and he was saying it. He had to say it.

  “It was like you were punishing me, Jill.”

  He hunched down over the box, trying to get into her line of sight so he could force her to really see him, this one time, but she resolutely focused on arranging the tissue paper.

  “You wouldn’t let me cry with you. You wouldn’t cry on my shoulder. You looked right through me. I asked you to talk to me, and you wouldn’t. I begged you to go to counseling with me, and you wouldn’t.”

  The emotion rose in his husky voice, all the blocked frustration he’d felt, and he let it come because they needed to get this all out there. It was eating both of them alive, whether they acknowledged it or not, and he was not going to live like this for the rest of his life.

  Jillian wouldn’t, either, not if he had anything to say about it. Some days he was sure she’d buried it so deep she didn’t even know what was driving her or understand the root of her own anger. She needed his help as much as he needed hers.

  Was her spirit still in there? Anywhere inside that body at all?

  “You turned your face away from me, just like you’re doing now.”

  “No.”

  With utter focus, she lifted the lid over the box and slid it into place. There was absolutely no emotion in her voice or expression; they might have been discussing which DVD to watch.

  Do you want to watch War of the Worlds, Jillian?

  No.

  A roar of frustration rose up in him and he wrestled it back until his throat burned with the effort. Keep it cool, man. Don’t give up.

  They weren’t going to go down like this. They were going to get past this issue because it was at the heart of everything that was wrong between them, the beginning of their long spiraling descent into ugliness and despair.

  He touched her arm again, stilling her hands, and she stiffened to granite.

  “You checked out on me, Jillian. I lost my daughter and my wife. Where did you go—?”

  Suddenly her head jerked up and she impaled him through the heart with the white-hot flash of her angry eyes, awash in unshed tears, the same as if she’d speared him in the chest at close range.

  There was murder in her face, and he shrank away from it. “Where did I go?”

  Her voice rang with fury; her body trembled with it, enough so that the wisps of hair around her face fluttered as though a breeze had swept through the room.

  “Where did you go? That’s the real question, isn’t it? Where did you go? When I woke up that morning and realized it had been a day since I’d felt the baby move, and I put an icy washcloth on my belly and nothing happened, where were you? When I called the doctor and she said come in, now, and I got there and she tried to listen for the baby with a stethoscope and then they did an ultrasound, and I had to look at their stricken faces and try to interpret what their silence meant—where the hell were you, Beau? In Canada, being a good governor? Well, isn’t that nice! Too bad you weren’t with me, being a good husband!”

  And there it was. The poison that had begun the slow rot of his marriage from the inside out, served up for him on a silver platter.

  They stared at each other in the breathless silence. Jillian looked defiant; he felt only grim satisfaction.

  Then, without warning, something shifted. It was like a gust of wind swept through a mountain pass, sending a forest fire in yet another direction.

  Jillian blinked, and he realized, with sickening dread, what was coming.

  Oh, no. Not that.

  Yes—that.

  Her chin began to quiver. As though she realized she was losing it, she pressed her lips together, but it didn’t matter. All at once, her face crumbled and she bent double at the waist, ruined by agonized sobs that seemed to go on forever with no beginning or end.

  “Where were you?” The words, mangled by her raw emotion, kept coming until he thought the sound would make his eardrums rupture. “Where were you, Beau? Where were you?”

  Jesus, God. He couldn’t sit and watch her in this kind of pain without touching her. He’d sooner die. Trying not to startle her, he touched her hair and, damn, it felt right.

  This was right.

  He leaned closer, ready to take her in his arms, where she belonged, now and always, but she jerked upright and batted him away in a fit of blind hysteria.

  “No, no, no! Don’t touch me!”

  Yeah, okay. He let go because no meant no and he had to respect her boundaries, even if he hated them, but it felt as unnatural as eating dirt.

  He couldn’t let her go now. It just wasn’t in him.

  The best he could do was let her decide, and to hell with what he needed and, come to think of it, his pride. Opening his arms wide, he begged.

  “Please, Jill. Just this once. This one time.”

  She stared at him with her tear-drenched eyes. One tense second passed and then
—

  And then a miracle happened. Still crying, she crawled into his lap and didn’t scream or vomit or call the police when he gathered her close, murmuring to her and rocking her the way he sometimes rocked Allegra to sleep.

  Pressing her wet face to his neck, she wept and continued with her one single question, which had been so long coming.

  “Where were you, Beau? Where were you?”

  Stunned and reacting on pure instinct, he pressed feverish kisses to her hair, that same sweet-smelling hair that had haunted his dreams and waking hours for years, coconut oil or something, the most wonderful smell in the world.

  “Shh, baby. It’s all right. It’s all right.”

  Thank you, God. Thank you. Thank you. Thank—

  “It’s all right, baby. It’s okay. We’ll be okay.”

  “Beau,” she said. “Beau.”

  They went on like that. Three minutes may have passed, or it may have been three hours. He didn’t know and it didn’t matter. It was enough of a start to get him through three more years, if need be.

  She was here. With him. Letting him comfort her in a way she’d never done before, even in the darkest hours right after Mary died. They’d had a moment of complete honesty and made incalculable progress in healing the wounds between them.

  Could anything be better?

  Jillian. Her arms were around his neck, her hands in his hair, and it was real, not another high-definition, good-enough-to-taste dream that would leave him broken and empty when he woke up. Real. He wasn’t imagining the need he felt in her grip as she pulled him closer, or the intimacy of this absolute understanding that they could only get from each other.

  They needed to be together like this, offering each other consolation. This wasn’t about sex, and he understood that perfectly well. This was about an emotional connection and healing. The purpose of this moment was to get past the pain. That was just fine with him, and it was enough. Hell. Being with Jillian any way he could was more than enough. Sex never even crossed his mind.

  Until her fingers at his nape stopped clutching and started stroking.

  That was all it took for the tectonic plates of their relationship to shift, until feelings that had been trapped and hidden rose to the surface in a precursor to an eruption more violent than any volcano’s.

  With that one small thing, the air between them became all about desire. All about the delicious curve of her ass in his lap and the firm pressure of her breasts against his chest. All about her new stillness and tiny gasp of surprise and lust, as though she couldn’t quite believe what she’d done, but had zero intention of taking it back.

  He shuddered.

  She gasped, a whisper of hot air against his neck.

  And then she did it again, a curling of fingers in that one spot that wound him up tight.

  His breath caught and held because he would do nothing—nothing, God, not even breathe, even if it led to his ultimate suffocation and death—to force her along at this moment.

  But…where was this going?

  Slowly she pulled back, her face wet with tears and her breasts heaving with uneven panting that sounded, to his confused ears at least, like passion rather than pain. Then she raised her lids to stare at him with wet eyes that glittered with every conceivable shade of brown, from amber to deepest mahogany. And then…

  Was he imagining this? Was this a dream after all? A hallucination?

  And then she leaned closer…tipped up her chin, just a little…and waited.

  Disbelief pinned Beau right where he sat, dazed and frozen, and he could swear he felt his skin vibrate with leashed tension that strained away from his control.

  She had to know that he would swallow her whole right now.

  Was that what she wanted?

  Could he get this lucky? Was this a test? Did anyone really expect him to let this opportunity pass him by when he’d prayed for it for years?

  He wanted to do the right thing, but he’d be damned if he knew what that was. “Jillian?”

  There. He’d been honorable and raised the question, dumbass that he was. This was her chance. If she wanted this train to stop so she could hop off and run away, now was the time. Run while you can, Jill.

  Only, Jillian didn’t run. To his continued and utter astonishment, she eased a hairsbreadth closer, which was just enough for her mouth to brush across his and send him past the point of no return and into the realm of raw desire of the fiercest kind.

  “Jillian.”

  There was no gentleness left in him, no patience. No nothing except for the blinding need to grab back what was his and keep her forever this time, because God knew he wasn’t living without her and hadn’t lived for years.

  A guttural sound raced up his throat and out of his mouth, a surprised cry all wrapped up in a shout of triumph.

  Jillian. They belonged together and here was the proof, wild and hot in his arms. He let go of his control because there was only this. Only her. Only now.

  Now, God. Now.

  Lowering his head, he took her sweet mouth with his and let the need wash over him until it was the only thing left in his universe.

  Chapter 13

  Was he hurting her? Kissing too hard? Taking too much?

  Maybe, but what could he do?

  Her mouth was hot and slick, honeyed and urgent. She tasted like the iced tea she served at the inn and something altogether more delicious that was only Jillian. One touch of his tongue was all she needed, one stroking sweep, and she cried out, opening for him and sucking him as deep inside as he could go.

  God.

  Frantic and unabashedly greedy in a way she’d never been before, she arched against him, thrusting her hips and scratching, licking and biting, ushering him into a world of purest insanity. Lust at its most uncontrollable.

  Jillian. Yes. Yes.

  But…no.

  He couldn’t get close enough. Couldn’t pour himself into her the way he needed to. Tunneling his fingers through that satin waterfall of hair, he jerked her head back, meaning to thrust his tongue farther into her mouth and take it all, now, but, God, look at her neck. A graceful arch of smoothest brown silk, straining back as he angled her head, it wasn’t something he could ignore.

  Dipping his head, he licked her. A single long swipe up the perfect column and across her small pointed chin, ending at her lips, which were parted in an earthy moan and waiting for him. The contrast of that cool neck, with its faint tang of salt, and the candied depths of her mouth nearly drove him over the edge into blackest oblivion.

  Another kiss. Deeper. Harder.

  More.

  No…not more. Look at her. Take a minute. Savor this.

  He pulled away. She didn’t make it easy, raising her head up off the arm of the sofa, where she’d settled, to pursue his mouth with the kind of shameless need he’d only dreamed of. But he took her arms at the elbows and held her back, ignoring her writhing.

  “Wait.” He tried to smile, but too much emotion was crammed into this moment. “Let me look at you.”

  She stopped resisting and lay back, stretching out, perfectly still but for the relentless heaving of her breasts. Equally breathless, he rose up over her and settled on his elbows and between her thighs, rubbing his erection against that soft spot there—right there—so she’d know what she did to him.

  She knew. The sensual knowledge was there in what he could see of her shining eyes, which were half-closed and partially hidden by her hair in her face. With a shaking hand, he smoothed back that hair and stared, too grateful and overcome to say anything remotely coherent.

  Her lips were swollen, her skin flushed. Beneath the soft stretchy cotton of her tank top and the cups of her bra, her nipples jutted out, too stiff with arousal to remain hidden. Her strong legs cradled him on either side, toned and sleek, possessive and determined. When he ran one hand down a thigh, she tightened them around his waist, pulling him closer. She wasn’t letting him go. Which was good, because he wasn’t
going anywhere.

  The need shuddered through him as he looked down at her.

  He needed to tell her…something…but his vocabulary was too limited to find words big enough for this moment.

  “You’re beautiful,” he said instead, helplessly.

  A shadow, just a hint of one, flickered across her bright eyes.

  What was this? She didn’t doubt him, did she? Did she think anyone in the world was, or ever could be, as beautiful to him as she was?

  Yeah, she did. Because he’d been unfaithful and she didn’t trust him again. But she would.

  Until that glorious day…now was not the time.

  Goddamn it.

  Rocking her hips, she opened her arms wide and beckoned him.

  “Come here. Make love to me.”

  Make love to her.

  This woman was going to kill him.

  Opening his mouth, he tried to explain, to tell her they needed to wait, but the words wouldn’t come when she was spread beneath him like a glorious banquet.

  Tell her, Taylor. Before this goes any further. She’ll understand.

  Yeaaaaah. In a minute.

  Leaning down, he kissed her again because he had to.

  And there were a few more quick things on that to-do list.

  He had to yank down the front of her top and her bra and let her full breasts bounce free for his gaze. He had to cup one in each hand and squeeze them together. He had to lower his hungry mouth to those plump nipples, which were hard and dark as blackberries, and suck each one into his mouth. Then he had to suck again, and again.

  Jillian wrapped her arms around his head, thrusting those breasts up and keeping him close. So he stayed close. Until the rhythm of her surging hips matched that of his circling tongue and her moans echoed off the walls in a thrilling symphony.

  Then he had to reach inside her shorts, search for that slick cleft he remembered so well, and see how wet she was.

  Ah, God. Honey, hot and thick. So much honey, because she wanted him.

  He stroked his fingers through it, lubricating her hard nub.