Sarah leapt off the sofa and into Joss’s arms. They rocked together for a long moment, and then their mouths found one another in a dizzying kiss that was meant to solemnize an agreement Sarah had yet to verbalize.
“Will you?” Joss asked between rushed kisses. “Will you come back to me? Will you stay with me? Will you forgive me?”
A tear slipped from Sarah’s eye. She looked at Joss in a way she never had before—with awe, with reverence, and with, Joss was relieved to see, unbridled joy. “Yes, yes, and yes, Joss. Being with you is the only place I’ve ever wanted to be.” A trace of a smile formed on her lips. “Well, there is one other place I’d like to be right now. Before we go anywhere else.”
Joss laughed, Sarah’s eyes having told her where her thoughts had already wandered. “Show me?”
Sarah raced to the bed, shedding her clothes along the way. Joss did the same, falling on Sarah in a hail of kisses and affectionate murmurings.
“There’s so much I want to tell you,” Joss whispered, but Sarah stopped her with a finger against her mouth.
“Later. I can’t wait another second, Joss. I need you to make love to me. Now. God, I need you to take me as hard and as fast as you can.”
Sarah didn’t wait for Joss’s reply, grabbing her by the wrist and forcing her hand down and against her wet, soft flesh. “Oh, Joss, I need to feel you inside me. Please.”
Joss needed the physical connection too. Feeling how wet Sarah was, she thrust her fingers inside her, hard. She thrust until Sarah moved rhythmically with her, demanding Joss fill her, demanding it deeper and faster and harder until she came with a loud guttural groan. She clenched herself around Joss’s fingers, her body trembling with spasms that seemed to emanate from her very core.
“I love you, baby,” Sarah blurted, her breathing still coming in short bursts. “But I’m not above using you for the next couple of hours before we talk again.”
“I love how much you love sex with me.”
“And I love when you make me come. Please make me come again.”
“You mean use my mouth for something other than talking right now?”
Sarah nodded, biting her bottom lip to keep from screaming as Joss’s fingers found her again. She was so wet again, so insatiable for what Joss could give her, that it made Joss wet too.
* * *
The first stroke of Joss’s tongue immediately drove Sarah to a place higher than she’d been before. Sex with Joss had always been wonderful, had always left her fulfilled and wanting more, but now that she knew Joss loved her, her heart had joined her body in this state of pure ecstasy. Something deep and needy had now been answered in her, something that went far beyond her body to encompass her heart and soul too. She was, she realized, with the woman she needed to be with for the rest of her life. She was with the woman who would dream with her, who would soar with her, who would laugh with her and cry with her, who would comfort her and love her.
Sarah rode the waves of pleasure Joss’s mouth gave her, and when she came again, she began to cry.
Joss scooted up beside her. “Sarah, honey, are you all right?” She covered her face with tiny kisses. “I love you, baby, and I won’t let anything happen to you, I promise.”
“I waited so long to hear you say that, Joss. It almost feels like it’s too good to be true. Please tell me it isn’t.”
“It isn’t too good to be true.” Joss turned on her side, leaning on an elbow. “You were right. At the Frist Center, when you told me it was too late for talk. That talk was cheap. And that’s when I realized I needed to make some real changes in my life if you were ever going to come back to me. That I needed to show you that I meant it. And…” Joss leaned down and kissed the tip of Sarah’s nose. “If I was ever truly going to be happy. Which I wasn’t before I met you.”
Sarah felt her heart lift. “I always felt you were so happy with me, and yet it was like you wouldn’t allow yourself to be.”
“No. Because I didn’t trust it. I didn’t trust that I deserved it or that I would know how to keep that kind of happiness going. God, Sarah, you were right about so many things. My parents, everything.”
“What about your parents?”
Sarah listened wordlessly but with rapt interest as Joss told her of her mother’s confession.
“Now that I know what a disaster their relationship was on so many levels, I know that I want so much more than that, something better. With you.”
Sarah began to pull Joss to her, but Joss held her back. “Wait. There’s more.”
“I’m not sure how many more confessions I can handle tonight.” She wasn’t entirely kidding. Her emotions, and her heart, hadn’t yet settled from the roller-coaster ride Joss had taken her on over the last hour.
“I know that to do this right I have to make changes. Big changes. Because I know I can’t have the kind of relationship I want with you if I don’t. I can’t just tweak a few things and fit you into my life the way it is.”
With mild trepidation, Sarah watched as Joss held her breath for a moment, then let her words rush out of her in a stream, as though she couldn’t wait to get them out. “I’ve handed in my resignation at the medical school, effective this June. Teaching was my father’s great passion and his legacy, not mine. But that’s not all, Sarah. With your okay, I’d like to hand in my resignation at the hospital too.”
“What?” Sarah felt herself go still. “Joss, you’re a gifted surgeon. Don’t tell me—”
“No, I’m not quitting medicine.”
She was smiling, and Sarah began to breathe again. “Good, because if you wanted me to support you on my artist’s salary, we wouldn’t exactly be living the high life.”
“You mean I can’t be your kept woman this time?”
Sarah pretended to consider. “Well, all right. But I’ll need you for sex three times a day. At least.”
“What? That’s hardly fair. I didn’t demand sex from you at all when we had our little agreement.”
Sarah pushed Joss onto her back and lay on top of her. “Maybe you should have.”
“Hmm, and you would have complied?”
“Absolutely. Your own personal mistress, at your sexual beck and call. Would have been a turn-on, actually.”
Joss laughed at her, and Sarah couldn’t help but join in. “Yeah, you’d have beaten the crap out of me if I’d even suggested such a thing.”
“Maybe, but let’s pretend right now that I’m your mistress,” Sarah said, dropping her voice an octave. “Tell me what you’d like me to do.”
Joss smiled and let her head sink into the pillow. “All right.”
* * *
It was after Joss’s second electrifying orgasm that she finally pulled Sarah to her. The hour was late and her strength was waning, but she needed to ask Sarah the one question that would change both their lives.
“There’s more I need to tell you. To ask you,” she said as her mouth left a tiny trail of kisses along Sarah’s temple and down her jaw.
“I think you’ve softened me up enough now to know I’ll say yes to anything.”
“Good. Then how about saying yes to moving with me to Chicago.”
“What?” Even in the dim light, Joss could see Sarah’s eyes become huge orbs of surprise.
“I’ve been offered a job in the cardiology department at Northwestern. Remember Dr. Jeff Billings from the Chicago conference you attended with me? The guy who gave me the concert tickets?”
Sarah nodded.
“Well, he’s offered me a job there doing valve replacements.”
“You really want to leave Nashville? What about your mother?”
“My mother’s encouraging me to do this, if you want to know the truth. Says I need to strike out on my own, get out from beneath my father’s shadow. And she says I need to quit being such a mama’s girl and focus on being Sarah’s girl.”
“Well, your mother is a very brilliant woman, as you know.”
“You could st
art over there too. They have some wonderful galleries there, and you went to college there, so you know lots of people, right? And—”
Sarah shushed her with a kiss on her lips. “You don’t need to work so hard to convince me, you know.”
“I don’t?”
“No. Joss darling, I’d go anywhere with you. And I love Chicago.”
A tremendous weight fell away from Joss. “You’ll do it?”
“Of course I will. But I expect you to make an honest woman of me one of these days.”
Joss winked. “You sound like your father.”
“Well, I’ll never tell him this, but he was right about that part.”
Joss laughed and let fantasies of Sarah in a wedding dress parade through her mind. There wasn’t anything stopping them from whatever it was they might want to do now. Not their families, not their jobs, not the ghosts from their pasts.
Joss kissed Sarah, a soft fluttering kiss that soon turned into a deep, soulful kiss. “Let’s plan a Christmas wedding.”
“Seriously? Oh no, no, no. No, you don’t, Joss McNab.”
Oh shit, Joss thought. “What did I do wrong now?”
Sarah firmly cupped her chin. “You will not ask me to marry you like that.”
“Oh, you’re right. What was I thinking?” A woman like Sarah would expect champagne, candlelight, roses, a diamond ring. “What are you doing next Saturday night?”
Sarah kissed her and smiled against her mouth. “I have a feeling next Saturday night we will be doing something very romantic.”
Joss pulled Sarah on top of her. The rest of her life, she knew without a doubt, wouldn’t be long enough to be with this woman. The tragedy would be if they didn’t start now.
“I love you, Sarah Young.”
“I love you too, Joss McNab. Now, make love to me again.”
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