She was crying, but she was still asleep. I’d woken to stoke the fire and add wood to it, the sky between the breaks in the trees catching my attention as brief streaks of light illuminated the dark forest.
When I heard the tiny whimpers coming from our shelter, I ducked inside, whispering Audra’s name, touching the wetness on her cheeks, my heart constricting painfully. She gasped out another sob, shuddering, and I put my arms beneath her, scooping her up and ducking back out through the door where I straightened.
Audra’s eyes opened blearily and she blinked up at me, her gaze disoriented and teary. She wrapped her arms around my neck, pulling closer. “Dane?”
“Shh, I’ve got you,” I said, adjusting my arms beneath her body so I had a better hold of her. “I have plastic over my shoes and you don’t. Let me hold you. There’s something I want you to see.”
She sniffled again but didn’t ask any more questions, resting her head on my shoulder, her breath warm against my neck.
When I stepped into the clearing, it was just in time to see a blazing golden streak as a shooting star shot across the sky. “Oh,” Audra breathed, tilting her head to the heavens as another star followed. She gasped, a sound that turned into a small sob as she pressed her face to my neck. “I want him back,” she cried, the wetness of her pain sliding down my skin.
“I know,” I whispered. “I do too, honey. I do too.”
She shuddered as another sob tore from her chest. “I didn’t get to hold him long enough.”
I pulled her even closer, nuzzling the side of her head, kissing her temple. “Nothing but forever would have been long enough, sweetheart.”
She cried as I held her, releasing more of her pain as dazzling light fell from a black sky, the earth proving that there was no such thing as complete darkness.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Audra
Morning had broken. The new glow of dawn filtered into our shelter, and I blinked at the rock wall directly in front of me, light and shadows dancing together. A waltz of sorrow and joy.
I’d somehow grown used to waking here. We’d been on this mountain long enough that I no longer had to orient myself when morning came. The fire outside snapped and crackled, and the winter birds were waking in the trees, singing their greeting to the brand new day. Despite the fire, the air in our shelter was still cold, but my body was warm. I snuggled against the heat of Dane at my back, recalling the day before and then the night. The shooting stars, the way my heart had swelled in a way I didn’t completely understand at the sight of those brilliant flashes of falling light. The way Dane had cradled me in his arms as I’d cried. The way he’d carried me.
I thought about all we’d said to each other: the revelations, the confessions, and truths. And I suddenly saw the situation with Dane—our marriage and the demise of us—in a very different light. We’d both made mistakes, both withdrawn from the other in our own ways, but we’d been so young, struggling with something for which there was no guidebook. But there had never been a lack of love, despite it all. We just hadn’t known how to access it. We hadn’t known how to offer it.
I loved him. I’d never stopped. And that had also been a small part of the reason I’d been so unwilling to venture back to the past in my mind. My heart had known that to do so would be to admit it still belonged to the man I’d once pledged my life to and meant it with every ounce of my being. The man I’d willingly given up, though never in the deepest part of my soul.
Dane sighed in his sleep and I smiled, scooting against him even more. He was so very warm,
so solid and yet so soft to snuggle against. I was hungry, my bones sharper than they’d ever been, and uncomfortable to lie on, and yet for the moment, I felt relaxed, safe even. He let out another soft moan and I realized I was wiggling against another part of him that felt decidedly solid. For a moment, I froze, but then a warm flush rose from my toes to my cheeks.
I loved him.
I wanted him and that’s all there was here in this small shelter from the brutal cold—love, desire, and yes . . . trust. I hoped desperately to be rescued, but until we were, I wouldn’t want to be weathering this storm with anyone but him.
A peace fell over me, inexplicable considering our circumstances, and yet it felt so good, I held on to it tightly, unwilling to let it go just now. Later . . . later we could deal with the very real challenges we faced. But here, now, I needed him. I needed to love and be loved, to remind myself why giving up was not an option.
I turned in the intimate shelter of Dane’s arms, his eyes just blinking open as he smiled sleepily at me. I put my hand on his bearded cheek, smoothing my thumb over his lips, and then his cheekbone, more defined than it’d been when we’d boarded that plane. I didn’t speak but he must have seen the desire in my eyes because he moved forward, pulling the blankets up to our necks.
I wrapped my leg around his, bringing our pelvises flush against each other. Dane gave a low growl of masculine pleasure and it shot straight between my legs like electricity. I answered Dane’s moan with one of my own, bringing my mouth to his. The kiss was slow and deep, a gentle dance of lips and tongue. It felt almost leisurely, but for the coiled tension I sensed in his body, in the way he pressed himself against me, hot and hard, his breathing ragged when he pulled his mouth away to kiss and nip at my throat. I leaned my head back, a smile on my lips, allowing myself to enjoy the physical expression of this man’s love for me.
“I’ve missed you,” I whispered. My voice caught, emotion pushing the words from my chest in a rush of joy, of gratitude, of so many feelings that had been trapped inside me for so long. In walling off the pain, I’d also walled off happiness and hope. I knew that now.
Dane paused, and I lowered my head, our eyes meeting as he gazed at me with adoration, the same look that had caught at my heart when I’d seen it in the groom’s eyes in Victor’s studio. Dane had looked at me like that on our wedding day, and he was looking at me like that now. I let out a sound that was part joy and part pain before Dane kissed me again, whispering, “I’ve missed you too, honey.”
For a time, we simply kissed and touched, delighting in the languorous joy of giving and receiving pleasure, of re-learning each other’s bodies, even though we hadn’t removed any clothes. My hand roamed under Dane’s shirt, his skin silky and warm, his heartbeat quickening beneath my palm. He pressed his erection between my legs, eliciting tingles of pleasure even through my jeans. Oh.
I closed my eyes, losing myself in the physical pleasure—the only one that hadn’t been taken from us in this unforgiving wilderness. Dane thrust slowly against me as we kissed again and I gasped, wanting more, wanting him inside me so badly I ached. “More,” I moaned.
Dane put his hand up my sweater, sliding over the skin of my belly slowly, torturously, his palm warm and slightly calloused. That felt so good, but when he reached my breasts and pulled one bra cup down to thumb my nipple, I cried out in bliss. He moaned against my neck as he continued to play with my nipples and I writhed against him. “Oh God, Audra, I’m so hard. I don’t think I can wait.”
“Don’t wait,” I begged, using my hands to unbutton my jeans, wriggling this way and that so I could pull them and my underwear down my thighs.
Dane reached under the blankets as well and I heard the zip of his jeans right before he came over me, adjusting the blankets so they were pulled over his back. He reached down with his hand and slipped a finger through my folds, our eyes locked in the dim light. When his finger dipped inside me, I sucked in a breath and his eyes went half-mast. He used his finger to bring the slippery proof of my arousal up, running his finger along my outer lips slowly and finally circling the spot that made me pant and cry out.