Only Forever by Linda Lael Miller

the motion, that she needed so desperately, but he was too big and too powerful and she could not move him. “Oh God, Nick. Why do you do this to me—why do you love making me wait?”
    He chuckled and gave her a single, searing stroke metered to drive her insane, but his expression was serious when he spoke. “I want you to remember this always—it has to be special.”
    Vanessa arched her neck, felt his lips descend to the fevered skin there. “It is—I swear it. I’ll remember…”
    His laugh vibrated through his vocal cords and captured her heart like a warm summer wind. “So this is the secret to making you agree to my terms, is it?” he teased.
    But he began to move upon her after that, quickening his pace heartbeat by heartbeat, stroke by stroke until Vanessa was covered from head to foot in a fine sheen of perspiration, until she was moaning and flinging her head from side to side.
    “Let go,” Nick whispered raggedly near her ear. “Stop fighting it and let go.” His words broke down the last flimsy wall enclosing Vanessa’s soul.
    With a series of straining cries, she surrendered all that she was to Nick, all that she’d ever been or ever would be. The relief was exquisite; for a time, her soul escaped its bonds and flew free.
    There was no restraint in Nick’s release. He trembled, lunged deep inside her and cried out in satisfaction as pleasure induced its unique seizure.
    For a long time afterward there were no sounds in the room except for their breathing and the popping of the fire. Then inexplicably, uncontrollably, Vanessa began to weep.
    Nick groaned and rolled over to look down into her face. “Don’t do this to me, Van,” he pleaded, wiping away a tear with one thumb. “Please, don’t be sorry for what we did.”
    She shook her head. “I’m not,” she managed to say. “It’s just that—”
    He kissed her briefly on the mouth. “It’s just that we don’t know each other well enough, right?”
    She nodded. “Right.”
    He leered at her and wriggled his eyebrows. “Okay, I’m an eighties guy, I can relate. What’s your sign, Baby?”
    Vanessa gave a shout of laughter through her tears. “Stop,” she pleaded. “This is a sensitive moment.”
    Nick squinted at the clock on the bedside stand. “It’s also dinnertime, and I’m hungry as hell. Let’s make spaghetti.”
    Vanessa was too relaxed to contemplate getting up and doing any kind of work. “Make spaghetti? I am spaghetti.”
    “I have a hot tub,” Nick wheedled, sliding downward and beginning to kiss her neck again.
    Vanessa knew where that would lead. She twisted free and sat up. “You have a hot tub,” she mused, looking at Nick with shining eyes. “What the devil does that have to do with cooking spaghetti?”
    Nick declined to answer that and said instead, “On second thought, let’s go out to dinner. I don’t want you to get the idea that I’m a cheap date.”
    They took a shower, this time sharing the same stall, and dressed in the clothes that had been strewn from one side of the bedroom to the other. Vanessa reapplied her makeup and styled her hair.
    “I hope this place is casual,” she said, giving Nick’s jeans and flannel shirt a look.
    The restaurant was a few miles away on the edge of the only town the small island boasted, and the spaghetti there was good.
    “The owner must be Italian,” Vanessa guessed, stabbing a meatball with her fork and lifting it to her mouth.
    “Paddy O’Shaughnessy?” Nick teased. “Definitely. He probably grew up in Naples, or maybe Verona.”
    It was a night full of nonsense, restorative and precious, and Vanessa didn’t want it to end. She knew, of course, that it would, and that the morning would bring painful regrets. She concentrated on enjoying Nick, the spaghetti and, later, the hot tub.
    There were plants in the glass-walled room where the hot tub bubbled and churned, and Vanessa wrapped herself in the night sky with its glittering mantle of stars.