All of You (55 page)

Danny’s hand slid, with excruciating slowness, down her inner thigh and Kat moaned in grateful appreciation.

“
Yes, please…hurry…
” she begged, pushing her pelvis up again, squirming like crazy in an attempt to bring his fingers in contact with any part of her drenched, aching core.

But Danny stopped just short of where she needed him to be and Kat let out an anguished, frustrated cry.

Danny’s brow quirked, a wicked smile tugging at his lips. “What do you want, Kat?”

“
Touch me…
” Kat lifted her pelvis, yet again. “
There…
” She scooted to the left to try and press up into his hand. “
Please, Danny…
”

“Here?” Danny’s fingertips barely grazed Kat’s folds, instantly morphing the ache into full-blown pain. “Or maybe here,” he said, just barely dipping a finger between them – coming dangerously, painfully close to the empty, aching spot only he could fill. “Or…just maybe…” Danny’s fingertip slid up her folds until it rested on her clitoris. “How about here?”

He held his finger there, the steady, immobile pressure on her clitoris driving Kat very close – but not quite allowing her – to orgasm.

Every muscle in her body twitched and quivered. Her heart was racing and pounding, her breathing was jagged and hard, and her skin felt so sensitive it hurt.

Kat’s eyes welled with frustrated tears.

“No good?” Danny dragged the pad of his thumb across her clitoris a few times, eliciting a loud moan and more wild, rhythmic pelvis movements. “Ah, there we go…” He kept it up until Kat was panting, writhing, and moaning his name. “That’s what I want to hear…” Danny’s thumb continued the sensual assault on her clitoris as his middle finger found the opening to her body. He pressed it in, lips curling as Kat’s chanting of his name grew louder and more fevered. “That’s good, Kat…” His finger delved deeper. “’Cause I think you forgot for a second there…” Danny thrust his finger all the way in, causing Kat to cry out. “Say my name.”

“
Danny!
” She tugged at her arms, desperate to free her hands…so she could grab his wrist and force his hand harder against her.

Or, better yet, get her hands on his erection and get it buried inside of her, as deeply and quickly as possible.

Danny withdrew his finger and Kat groaned at the empty, dull ache his absence left behind. But then she watched, with spellbound fascination and unadulterated lust, as Danny lifted his fingers to his mouth. He slowly sucked at his middle finger, eyes never leaving Kat’s, every nerve ending in her body feeling like it caught on fire and frayed at once.

Danny slid his finger out of his mouth, positioned his erection at the entrance of her body, and stared down into her eyes harder than he ever had before. “
Mine.
”

“
Yes! Yours!
” Kat bucked and squirmed and twisted, mindless in her fervor to have him. “
Yours, Danny! All yours! Just, please…
”

“Please, what?” he asked, pressing the head of his erection against her now aching, drenched, quivering, throbbing core. Danny’s lips curled slightly. “Tell me what you want, sweetheart…and maybe I’ll give it to you.”

Kat tugged at her restrained arms again. “
I want you! Inside of me! Now!
”

He shook his head slowly. “What do you want me to do to you? Once I’m inside of you?”

“Um, move in and out?”

Danny laughed, but as his eyes continued searching hers, the smile faded…leaving behind a very serious, very intense expression. “I want to hear you say it. So we’re clear about what you want, Kat,” he said thickly. “Because the way you froze me out yesterday – and what I walked into today – has me a little confused.”

“I want to have sex with you,” Kat whispered.

“Oh, we’re way beyond plain ole sex right now, Kat.” Danny pressed himself against her again, garnering frustrated moans from them both. “Say it, Kat. Now. Before I fuck you so hard you can’t remember your own name, let alone how to say what I want to watch those sweet lips beg me for.”

Kat got it, then.

And so she gave it right back to him.

She gave him exactly what he wanted.

“
Fuck me, Danny
,” she whispered, adoring the way his eyes widened and then his lids dropped, hooding them. Their eye contact never broken, she lifted her pelvis once last time. “
I’m yours. Fuck me. Please
.”

Danny released her hands, bracing his palms on the table, on either side of her head, and drove himself into her so hard and so fast it stole Kat’s breath.

It only took a few solid, deep thrusts to push Kat past another threshold and she broke apart again, even harder this time – digging her fingers into his back, crying out his name, and pulsing around him as Danny continued slamming into her.

“
Shit…Kat…
” He lowered his face to her neck and Kat reveled in the exquisite way his hard, hot pants teased her now very, very sensitive skin. “
God, I love you…
” he breathed out, right before thrusting himself into her one last time.

Kat didn’t know much about male orgasms, but she could tell the one Danny was currently experiencing was a doozy. The rhythmic, pulsing contractions stretching her vaginal walls as Danny spilled himself inside of her were oddly…powerful.

And strangely emotional.

Or maybe it was just the way he was still whispering her name over and over again.

As Danny dropped his forehead to her shoulder, still breathing hard, the full impact of what she’d just allowed to happen – no, what she’d
instigated
happening – washed over Kat.

Her stomach turned, her heart dropped, and her hands went clammy against Danny’s back.

Kat removed her hands and lowered them to her sides. The intense self-loathing, shame, and guilt making it difficult to breathe…as was the actual and symbolic weight of Danny as he lay against her.

Kat’s next breath hitched, catching in her chest, as more tears welled.

She squeezed her eyes shut.

How could you do this?

To him?

To yourself?

This is the stupidest thing you have ever done.

The most selfish decision you have ever made.

And the most hateful.

Now you’ll need to hurt him in a different way.

A worse way.

The worst of ways.

Or he’ll never walk away.

He’ll never give up on you without a damn good reason.

So give him one.

Now.

Before you ruin any more of his life with your selfish cruelty.

Danny pressed his palms against the table and lifted his upper body. “
Sorry
,” he whispered into the crook of her neck. “I didn’t realize I was crushing you, sweetheart.”

Danny’s lips grazed her collarbone, then slowly kissed their way up the side of her neck. “I can’t stop tasting you…” He nuzzled the skin behind her ear before licking at it. “I can’t get enough…”

Kat balled her hands into fists, squeezed her eyes shut, and clenched her jaw hard.

Do.
Not
. Cry.

Do
not
hold him.

Do
not
tell him you love him.

Kat shivered when Danny’s tongue licked up the rim of her ear. “You just taste so fucking good, Kat.”

End it!

Now!

Stop dragging it out!

If you truly love him, you will stop jerking him around like this and let him go!

Kat opened her mouth to slay him, but Danny chose that moment to lift his head. He shifted his weight to one hand, freeing up the other to tuck a lock of her hair behind her ear. Danny searched her face so thoroughly, and with such tender regard, that Kat very nearly screamed.

He met her eyes, his own full of heart-rending emotion. “And you are so goddamn beautiful it hurts.”

Kat’s breath caught at the sight of moisture building in his eyes.

Danny blinked back against it, the backs of his fingers coming up to caress the side of her face. “Kat, last night…” Danny shook his head. “I know it’s my crazy insecurity…and I’m so sorry about that…” He swallowed hard, still blinking against the tears as he searched her eyes. “But it’s just…”

A tear escaped his eye and clung to his lashes and the pain it caused felt like someone was cracking her chest open and spreading her ribs apart slowly.

Oh, my God…

I cannot breathe.

It hurts too much…

Too much to even open her mouth and stop his sweet words.

Too much to do anything other than try to keep breathing.

Danny pressed his fingertips into his eyes and exhaled a short laugh. “Nothing about this is how I pictured it, including me crying like a fucking baby,” he said, shaking his head and still blinking back against the tears.

Danny gave his head one more good shake and cleared his throat. As he began searching her face again, his smile faded, and was replaced by the most open, most loving expression Kat had ever seen. “I love you so much, Kat, and I don’t ever want to be apart from you again. I want to share every second of every minute of the rest of my life with you. I want your home to be my home. I want your burdens to be my burdens. I want to fall asleep next to you every night and wake up next to you every morning.”

Kat could no longer contain the tears and they poured out of the corners of her eyes in fast, furious torrents.

Danny’s fingertips wiped them away, a tiny smile tugging at his lips. “As much of an adolescent, Neanderthal caveman as it makes me, I want you to have my last name. A name that never meant shit to me before, a name I spent my entire life hating. But a name I’m now proud of it, because it’s something I can give you. Something that makes us a real family. Something we can share, just like all of the other shit I am dying to share with you for the rest of our lives.”

Kat knew what was coming. She could see it a mile away.

And she was a horrible, selfish, evil, cruel enough person to let it happen.

So she could pretend…just for one moment…

Danny’s hand gently cupped her face, his soulful, beautiful eyes latching onto hers tight. A small smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “It’s not when I planned on doing it…” He exhaled a short, hard laugh. “And it’s definitely not where or how I planned on doing it…”

Danny’s smile faded, leaving in its wake a wonderful, kind, loving, beautiful expression Kat knew she would never forget. “I never thought I’d find anyone like you, Kat. And I can now admit that, even though I thought that way, I still spent thirty-three long, lonely years looking. I guess because I was so homesick for you, Kat…missing you so much, even before we met…”

“
Danny, please…
” Kat pushed past her constricted throat.

But she wasn’t sure if she was pleading with him to stop or begging him to go on.

Because it all hurt: the beauty of it, the rawness of it, and the outright agony of it.

Danny wiped away fresh tears and smiled tenderly. “You are everything I never knew I wanted…and everything I will ever need. And I want to be all of that and more for you…forever. I want to take care of you, protect you, love you, make you laugh, make you crazy…just…make you
happy
. Because you are my best friend and the woman I want to grow old with. Because I love you so much. And I promise you that I always, always will.”

Danny paused and Kat’s breathing ceased.

“Will you make me the happiest, luckiest, most grateful man alive and marry me, Kat?”

Kat’s quiet weeping quickly morphed into hard sobs as scenes of what their lives might have been like together flashed before her eyes…

A simple little wedding.

Moving into Danny’s house.

Falling asleep in his arms and waking up in their bed together.

Cooking for him.

Taking care of him.

Letting him take care of her.

Years of fighting and making up.

Decades of laughing, talking, and touching.

A lifetime of living hard and loving even harder.

Kat shook her head against the image of herself pregnant with Danny’s baby…

Against the soul-shredding images of an actual person that was half his genetic makeup and half hers…

“
Kat…
” he whispered, brows lowered as he searched her eyes. “Why are you crying?”

As she stared up into his beautiful face, Kat wept harder…for those beautiful children they would never share…the children they would never hold in their arms…the children they would never watch grow up…

She wept harder still for all the lazy weekends they would never spend lying in bed with their kids, watching movies, eating junk food, and laughing at silly, sweet, funny stuff
Daddy
would say…for the school projects Danny would never help with, the homework Kat would never explain, the teams Danny would never coach, and the school plays they would never clap for…

The lifetime of memories they would never share.

Because Kat was sick.

And getting sicker.

She didn’t know how much time she had left and she didn’t want Danny spending a single moment of his precious life watching her die and then mourning her for the rest of his.

Suddenly and selfishly, Kat was weeping the hardest knowing some other woman would have the privilege of sharing all of that with him. That some other woman would be giving him everything Kat couldn’t. That some other woman would be keeping the types of promises about lifetimes of love, children, and futures that Kat’s body would have made it impossible to give or keep.

But this isn’t about you and your losses. Or the pain you’ll live with every day knowing Danny doesn’t love you anymore…the hideous agony of knowing he loved someone else, married someone else, and made a family with someone else.

His first family.