Page 45 of Echoes in the Storm
It feels good, that is, until I’m knocked off balance by one hard and heavy body, falling flat on my front, my hands doing little to soften my fall. “Ow!”
I’m rolled to my back, Duke braced over top of me, the muscles in his arms defined as he holds himself clear of my body so he can check me over. “Are you okay? I took you down a bit harder than I expected.”
“I guess this is the part where you tell me you were in a rugby team, too?”
“Isn’t every Kiwi guy at some point in his life?”
Fair enough.I chuckle, making a move to get out from underneath him, yet he doesn’t give me leave to do so. Instead, his elbows bend slightly, his body dropping closer to mine.
“Duke, what are you doing?”
“You need to laugh like that more often,” he says quietly, his eyes moving over my face, settling on my lips. “It’s a good sound on you.”
“Youneed to laugh more often, period.” I reach between us, settling my hand gently on his chest, testing the limits.
“How does this work?” he asks, his head dipping down, his breath tickling my face as he talks. “Once the car’s fixed—”
“Fuck the car.” I let my hand slide to his neck and run my thumb along the underside of his strong jaw. “What does it matter?”
“It gets fixed, I leave,” he murmurs. “This …” He tucks his chin to his chest, seeming to look down at how our bodies touch at the hips. “Us—it won’t last.”
“Only if you don’t want it to.” My heart lives in my throat as I search his eyes, looking for the truth. Does he want this? He said I drive him nuts, but isn’t love a kind of madness? Could heloveme, or will I only be a passing phase, a moment of lust, a simple dream?
“I want it too, Cam.” Duke’s eyes find mine, his throat bobbing hard as he swallows. “But wanting it and getting it are two different things.”
“So have what you can now. Don’t worry about the future—forget the past. Live this with me. Fuck, just enjoy what we’re doing, acting like two teenagers in an overgrown field. How often can you say you’ve let go and lived, Duke?”
His brow furrows, his eyes darkening the same as the sky does over us. I flex my hand on his neck to hold him here with me, make sure he doesn’t slip away to some place I’m not familiar with, a time gone by that I don’t know how to find him in.
“Live with me,” I whisper, pressing on his nape with my fingertips to urge him closer.
He lets out a heavy sigh through his nose, and then drops his mouth to mine. It’s everything our stolen kisses this morning and last night weren’t: urgent, needed, hungry. He tilts his head, burying one hand in my hair as he drops to his forearms in the grass. I gasp at the sudden pang as he pulls tight, anchoring me to him and stealing my next breath with his desperate kiss.
I wanted him to need me. I wanted him to save me from myself. But as he closes his eyes tight and pulls away to press his forehead to mine, I wonder who it was our chance meeting rescued from a life sentence of grief?
“It’s okay,” I whisper, unsurewhatexactly I’m assuring him of.
All I know is that behind those eyes, a battle rages. One that’s not fought overseas with guns and tanks, but one that wreaks havoc in the homeland with harshly spoken words and misguided beliefs.
He’s so hard on himself, his worst critic, but why?
“You’re the first since her,” he says through strained tones. “There hasn’t been anyone else; never could be.”
“The first what?” I loop both arms around his neck, holding him to me, not allowing him to walk away from what we’ve started here.
“The first woman I’ve kissed in a long fucking time.” He pushes on his hands, breaking my hold as he rears back to kneel between my legs. “I’ve been back from the war for three years, Cam. Three years, I’ve stuck to myself. Three years, I lived in limbo, refusing to believe there was anyone else for me.”
“What are you talking about?” I push up on my elbows, frustrated that this isn’t where our kiss was supposed to lead, but equally intrigued. “Whoare you talking about?”
“My wife.”
His fucking what?“You’re married?”
“Was,” he murmurs. “She died.”
I want to disappear. I feel so ashamed. He’s been listening to me break apart these past days, and he’s been hiding this? “Duke, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have got riled up like that. I’m … shit, I don’t know what else to say.”
His lips tilt up in a sad smile. “I finally silenced you, huh?”