Shattered Trust Read Free

to ours—plus panic buttons.”
    Laura laid her head on his shoulder, her hands caressing his back. “You’re really worried, aren’t you?”
    His answer was a tender kiss. “No ... I just have trust issues.” He forced himself to smile for her sake, and knew she had done the same for him.
    She looked into her new husband’s intense, dark eyes and saw an old fear flicker within them. She understood it well, and knew the same was frozen within hers.
    Without more conversation, she surrendered to his method of banishing reality as his hands untied the sash of her robe. Yes, she understood his need to touch skin, to keep himself rooted in the present. That had also become her need.
    His mouth took hers in a slow opening of lips, a gentle duet of tongues, and she understood that their minds no longer had amnesty from the past, now that the dread had been admitted and named. Paradise had been compromised, but coffee-sweetened mango still tasted so good first thing in the morning. Their hiatus had been a placebo; they knew that. Caresses and passionate days and nights were just anesthesia ... an endorphin rush, like morphine, to chase away the adrenaline tension of bad nerves. That didn’t matter right now.
    She helped him shed his burgundy silk boxers, and allowed him to lead her back to the kitchen chair. She totally understood James’s way of saying, “Baby, I’m worried.” That was her way of banishing fear, too.
    It was all in his eyes, the way he took her mouth again ever so gently as she carefully straddled his lap. It was all in his touch, the way it grazed over the surface of her skin like she was fragile glass. It had been so obvious in his newfound interest in opening a small sporting goods shop with Steve ... the way they’d both talked in rapid-fire sentences about the most mundane of things; serving burgers and light fare, frozen drinks, Najira doing the books, Jamal working the registers, her marketing the concept to the resorts.
    She understood that James’s way was an easy slide into the present that kept him anchored, the same way he’d just slid into her. His motions were steady, not rushed, like his planning. Methodical to the point of crazy-making was his trademark, unraveling her resistance to let go of the past and the tension, one slow stroke at a time ... his unspoken signature making her keep her eyes on him, her eyes on the present not the past, a gentling of her spirit, the way one would calm a frightened thoroughbred. Just don’t look down and come to me, his touch beckoned, hands gliding over the now too-sensitive tips of her breasts, causing her soft gasp, which he swallowed.
    â€œI got this,” he whispered into her mouth.
    She swallowed his promise with a slight shudder. “I know,” she murmured against his neck, allowing her fingers to revel in his short-cropped hair, the slight waves within it teasing her fingertips. Her husband knew her very, very well, just like she knew him and could tell that he needed her to stay in the here and now.
    Releasing the threat of tomorrow, she bore down on him harder, gently rotating her hips in a slow, undulating circle that finally drew a quiet gasp from him and made him close his eyes.
    God yes, his wife knew him so very, very well, and the disturbing conversation began to ebb and flow like her hips, pushing itself into the far recesses of his mind. His hands found her tight, fleshy backside as her hands rested gently against his shoulders. Thoughts of possible hit men embedded in their future seemed so remote as he became more deeply embedded within her, their thigh muscles working in unison, in partnership to keep their slow, steady rhythm, the flow of agonizing movements unbroken.
    He loved the way coffee and mango lingered in her sweet kiss ... the way her tongue explored the inside of his mouth, pulling a moan up from his lungs as her tempo increased ever so slightly. Yeah