She gave him a drowsy smile. “What about you?”
“We’re getting to that.”
He lifted her against him and carried her to the bed. As she lay down, he stripped off the rest of his clothes. He did a push-up above her and settled between her thighs. She tilted her hips up to accommodate him, and he delved into her in one long glide. She was incredibly wet, but still glove-tight. He luxuriated simply in being grafted to her and feeling her subtle contractions that became ever stronger and soon had his breath hitching.
He groaned, “You’re killing me doing that.”
“I’m trying my best.”
“It’s working.”
He took her hands and stretched her arms above her head. Fitting her palms into his, he linked their fingers and began to stroke her inside. As before, he wanted her to remember this, because it would be engraved on his memory: the feel of her around him, the way she hugged his hips with her thighs, the sexy undulation of her belly against his, the sight of his chest hair dusting the hard tips of her breasts.
The kiss.
He kissed her, and, of all the other mind-blowing sensations, it was that of her mouth so greedily taking his tongue that caused his control to burst. When it did, she arched up and ground against his straining pelvis and brought on another soul-rending orgasm.
Later, he didn’t remember separating from her. He thought that both of them might already have been in the twilight of sleep before they moved, but when he woke up a short time later, he and Kerra were spooned together, his sex dormant now, but intimately tucked into the furrow of hers, her heart beating against his palm. He removed his hand from her only long enough to pull the covers over them, then returned it to cover her breast. Sleepily she murmured his name and snuggled closer.
For the first time in years, Trapper fell asleep without anger, at peace.
The Major was in conversation with the doctor who’d been overseeing his care when Hank poked his head around the door. “I can come back later.”
“No need, reverend,” the doctor said. “We’re finished.”
The doctor left. Hank came in. His smile was anemic, his manner subdued, his expression telegraphing bad news. “I haven’t seen you the whole while you’ve been here. You’re looking remarkably well for—”
The Major interrupted him. “Thank you for coming, Hank, but you can skip the pastor part. What’s the matter?”
“Nobody can locate Dad.”
The Major tried but failed to wrap his mind around what that signified. “Can you elaborate?”
“I was the last person to see him, and that was after midnight.”
“I haven’t heard from him since early yesterday.”
“Yesterday,” Hank said, pressing his temples between his middle finger and thumb, “turned out to be a dreadful day.”
“I know he had an anxiety attack,” The Major said.
“That was the diagnosis, which was a relief, but he was depressed after.” Hank described how Glenn had begun to completely unravel soon after getting released to go home. “Mom practically had to fork food into him to get him to eat. He was well into killing a bottle of Jack when Trapper showed up. Late. Uninvited. Kerra Bailey was with him. And before Trapper got done with Dad, he—”
“Got done with him?”
Hank expelled a sigh. “Trapper’s latest wild hair is that this guy from Dallas was behind the Pegasus Hotel bombing, that the men who did the actual deed were pawns. Supposedly, he—Wilcox is his name—has a stranglehold on Dad and involved him, to some extent, in the attack on you.”
“Glenn?”
“At first I thought this had to be just another of Trapper’s pranks. But no, he was dead serious. And what I really couldn’t believe is that Dad confessed to…” He gave a humorless laugh and shook his head. “In the light of day, it sounds crazy, or like I dreamed it.”
“Tell me.”
“Dad confessed to signing some kind of pledge with this guy to spy on you, you, in exchange for winning reelection.”
“The past election?”
“No. Back in the late nineties.”