It Happens, Chapter Four
Title: It Happens, Chapter Four
Author: domfangirl
Starring: Paul Kellerman and Sara Scofield
Category: Multi-chapter
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Where there’s sparks, there could be fire, you know.
Author’s Notes: I just had a thought. No disrespect to Michael’s memory, it’s been six years by the timeline I use. Sara is only human. This story picks up with the inference that Michael and Sara married before he died, but does not take into account any of the *leaked* storyline for the straight-to-DVD movie. I don't intend to ever watch that, thus it will never be part of my canon. Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three
Additional A/N: There will be one more chapter…and it will be sort of an epilogue to this story and it will involve Lincoln, because I can’t help myself. (But no funny business, I swear!)
Throughout the day, after they'd eaten in an effort to refuel-and after Paul had driven Sara's car up the street to a drugstore for more condoms-they returned to Sara's bed. Sometimes they got up so she could show him pictures of Michael Junior, other times they moved just to change the venue, making love in various spots in Sara’s tiny house.
“Did you purposely buy the smallest house you could find, or what?” Paul asked as they settled back on the bed after a vigorous round that had involved him pinning her to a wall.
Sara’s laughter coasted across his nerve endings, and a shudder of pleasure wracked his body as she rolled up on one elbow to mirror his position next to her. “Well, we don’t need much room, just the two of us, but yes. I want Mikey to be aware of how to live without much. I don’t want him lost in a 19-room mansion feeling like the only person in the house who knows him is the nanny. Being on top of each other, so to speak, has contributed to our bond, I believe.”
He listened to her words, but heard the underlying sentiment in her story. Frank Tancredi, whom he’d only met one time, had been less than bonded to his daughter. Suppressing scandal had always been more important than whatever Sara had been going through, and that was why, once upon a time, Paul had been taken into confidence. Because there had been no one else to fill the void.
Nodding, he rubbed his hand down her bare arm briskly, her smooth skin gliding under his fingers like silk. “That sounds good. But is that the only reason? You’re not here because of financial problems, are you?”
Sara laughed again, much louder than before. She slapped his shoulder good-naturedly. “I’m not poor, Paul. And even if I was, I wouldn’t let you be my sugar daddy.”
He shook his head. “I wasn’t suggesting-“
“Shut up,” she said, pushing against his chest to emphasize her point. “My father was a very wealthy man and he left me a lot of money. If I wanted the Ritz Carlton on the beach, I could have it. I want this. I like this. This is my home.”
“Okay, okay,” he exclaimed, leaning into her to kiss her laughing mouth.
Things could have escalated from there, but he restrained himself. Paul had never had this experience before-the one where he couldn't get enough-and it felt a little like galloping frantically away from the panic that nipped at his heels as to the depth and breadth of his need for her while also gorging himself on her flesh. He didn't want to think about it too much, so he asked her questions to distract himself, and reveled when she asked him things that also kept his mind far from what he would feel when he had to leave.
Sometime later the conversation traveled to how he hadn't enjoyed being a politician as much as he'd thought he would. "I guess I'm just more of a behind-the-scenes kinda guy," he murmured, his fingers drawing lazy circles on her bare hip.
"I can see that," she said, her own caresses wandering dangerously low on his abdomen. She rubbed her knuckles idly below his navel and he tried to appear unaffected, because good God, how many times could he possibly get it up for her, anyway? The entire weekend had begun to feel like one of those stories he’d heard guys tell about their leave time when he was in the Army that he had never believed.
He focused on his bitter tale. "And no matter how much of a hero you are, people always remember the bad things you did, so I had to constantly hear my name in conjunction with the Reynolds scandal even while they praised my part in bringing down The Company. It's like they'd slap my face just so they could kiss my ass. I got tired of it."
"What are you going to do now?" she asked.
"I have no idea," he replied, which made him realize that's why he'd come here. He was at loose ends, so maybe coming here to try to tie this one up had only backfired on him, because he didn't feel like anything had ended. Now there were just more loose ends.
"Some of the articles I read about you cited your Chief of Staff as Kristine Kellerman. I thought maybe you'd gotten married." He tried not to react too strongly to this very revealing statement.
"Little sister," he said by way of explanation.
"You have a sister?"
He couldn't help his smirk. "Yes... Even I have a family. I didn't just spawn from an evil empire. Well. My mother was her own kind of evil, so perhaps that's an apt description."
Sara laughed again, and he wondered at the frequency. Did he cause it, or was she just like this all the time? It was something he had gotten used to far too quickly over the course of 24 hours. He loved it when anything he said got some sort of reaction out of her like that. The light that shone from her face seemed angelic to him. "Your son will never be able to make such a statement," he found himself saying, and then he felt his face flushing in embarrassment over his sentimentality.
Sara's expression softened while her fingers whisked up his torso to cup his jaw in her palm. "From your lips to God's ears," she said, leaning in to kiss him.
Paul slid his hand down over her lower back and tugged her body into his so they were pressed together. "What's he like?" he asked. She'd shown him pictures of Mikey on various birthdays or outings to the beach with Lincoln, Sofia, LJ, and their twin daughters, but she hadn't spoken about him too much.
"Oh, he's wonderful. He's a sweet, sweet boy. Lincoln says he has the same temperament as his father, though I guess Michael-big Michael-could be quite a snotty know-it-all and little Michael doesn't have a bit of that. He's overly kind, and has always been that way. Always shares with kids at daycare, always tells me he loves me, or how pretty he thinks I am. And he's beyond reality when he interacts with Linc and Sofia's girls. Sometimes I think him being nearly perfect was the universe's way of trying to make up for his father being taken too soon."
He was thoughtful as he constructed his next sentence. “What’s the hardest part about Michael being gone?” he asked.
Her eyes dropped from his, her gaze sliding up and focusing on some point on the wall above his head. He waited as she took a couple of calming breaths, and then a pained smile flashed over her face. “It’s not just one thing,” she finally said. “It’s more like lots of little things, things you can’t even imagine until you’re faced with them.” She shrugged. “It’s everything.”
“Give me an example,” Paul said. He wasn’t sure what he was trying to accomplish by this line of questioning, but now that he had started it, it seemed imperative.
She waited a moment, obviously thinking. “Oh, I know. When Mikey was two, I started potty training him. He was a quick learner, and soon-within a few weeks really, he hadn’t had any accidents. It was one of the weekends where he was supposed to go to Linc’s-we try to do it at least once a month. When Lincoln brought him home, he mentioned that Mikey sat on the toilet to pee. I was like, ‘so?’ and Lincoln was like, ‘He’s a boy, Sara.’ Now, there are plenty of books out there that say that learning to do it sitting down isn’t a big deal, I know because I’ve read them, but it was just that. You know, it would never have occurred to me. It’s a boy thing. It’s a dad thing. So that made me think, in a fast-forward sort of way about when he gets older. And girls. And you know…all that stuff. I cried every time I thought about it for days, not because it matters if he sits or stands to urinate, but because Michael wasn’t here to show him how to do it.”
The hand Paul still had resting on her lower back had started moving slowly up and down in a soothing rhythm as she spoke. “But Lincoln will be around for all the growing up boy stuff,” he said in an effort to encourage her. “You seem very close to him.”
“Well, yes. Lincoln is my brother now, in every sense of the word, and he takes his responsibility to Mikey very seriously. It’s definitely better than nothing.” She brought her eyes back to his and this time her smile looked more natural. “And Linc is great. Don’t get me wrong, he wasn’t even criticizing me about the peeing thing, he was telling me in his awkward way how to be better. But the point was, I didn’t even think of it. There are certain things I’ll never think of, just because I’m not a man.”
Paul nodded, waiting to see if she responded well to his next move before saying anything. Where their bodies had already come to rest against each other, he relaxed into her so that she began to bear his weight and they slowly rotated until she lay on her back and he rested on his arm over her prone body. “You can’t beat yourself up about that type of stuff,” he said, brushing her lips gently with his.
“Mother’s guilt is the worst,” she mumbled under his lips.
Allowing a little bit of space to develop between their faces, he cupped her cheek in his palm and rubbed his thumb over her jawline. “I could tell just by setting foot in this house that you are a good mother.”
Her cheeks flushed, and he wasn’t sure if it was the compliment or the heat growing between their bodies. His only consolation in his own insatiability was the seemingly matched hunger within Sara. She lifted up against him and opened her legs slightly so their bodies brushed intimately. “You don’t have to flatter me, you know,” she said, arching purposely as he got harder and bigger.
“It’s the truth,” he said, his breathing getting harder to control. He moved across her, reaching for a condom on the bedside table. The action caused his chest to rub across hers, and she arched again, moaning softly as his penis breached her opening and she shifted suddenly and then he was there, pushing inside her while clutching an unopened packet in his hand.
Their eyes met, and the challenge in her gaze made him realize she was doing it on purpose. Distracting him, mesmerizing him, bending him to her will, he desperately tried to hold on to the thoughts in his mind, but at this moment, as he'd experienced several times over the last 24 hours, the only thing he could think of was how much he wanted her, not just for the next few minutes until orgasm overcame them both, but forever. He cursed under his breath and then held the unused condom up so she could see it. “We should-“ he began, but then she thrust her hips up and he was deeply inside her, and like the first time they’d done it, the sensation electrified him. Sex in anyway, shape, or form with Sara was immensely satisfying, but with no latex between them, just the sweet, tight, wet fit of her around him, made him wish for death so that he never had to experience anything like an ending of this fantastic moment.
He closed his eyes, trying to cool his blood enough not to lose it completely. Sara matched him in every way, and she was undoubtedly the only woman he would ever be with for the rest of his life. This was it for him, and the idea had a paralyzing affect. He wanted it, but he didn't. He didn't understand it entirely so it frightened him. And he had no idea what, if anything, she wanted in return.
This moment, while she battled to dominate him, seemed erroneous compared with all their other couplings, and the conflicting thoughts and feelings rushing through him made everything more urgent. He dropped his head down, capturing her lips in a fierce kiss. He kissed her until he felt her hand wrap around his and pluck the condom from his fingers. She flung it away and moved under him again, since he still hadn’t started thrusting himself.
As she moaned, their lips slipped apart, and her panting gasps made his temperature soar dangerously high. "I think there's something wrong with me," he gritted out, his hand reaching to grab her hip to keep her from moving. He held her so tightly he knew he would leave marks.
She quivered, and a thin, throaty cry erupted from her lips. "I don't," she breathed.
When he didn’t allow her to move her hips, he felt her inner muscles clenching and he muttered something that sounded like, “Goddamn you,” though he didn’t mean it in the way it was traditionally used. He forced himself not to move and then expounded by saying, “There's definitely something wrong with me, because I can't. Get. Enough.”
Sara's arms wound around his neck, pulling him into her even though he was trying to keep distance between them. “That's how it's supposed to be,” she whispered.
It was either the power of that truth or being pushed beyond his endurance level that made him finally start moving. He groaned her name as her legs slithered up around his hips, and within minutes they were both there, panting and gasping, sweating as they burst into shared bliss.
Paul dropped his head down on to her shoulder, physically unable to move away from her. Emotionally, he knew he would never be separated from her, because it wouldn’t matter if he never saw her again, he would never stop thinking of her. Of this. Of what it had been like to be with her, even for just a short while.
He must have drifted off for a few minutes because his next moment of awareness was Sara pushing him off of her and then her settling into his side, her leg draped over his thigh and her head on his shoulder. He patted her bottom gently and wrapped both arms around her, squeezing her against him.
“So, you never come to Mexico, huh?” she asked, and he shook himself fully awake when he realized she wanted to talk.
It took a moment for his brain to register what she meant. “Well, never before.” He opened his mouth to say something else, a witty vacationer type remark, but before he could come up with something, she said, “If you get out this way again…I wouldn’t mind it if you stopped by.”
Paul hesitated, but then reached for her hand, lacing their fingers together. “Even when Mikey’s here?” he asked.
She tensed up against him, and then she shook her head. “No, you’re probably right about that. But, if you called ahead, and it was a weekend he was at Linc’s…”
“Right,” he said, trying not to let the balloon of disappointment in his chest rob him of air. “It would be hard for him, probably.”
She lifted her head from his shoulder to look at him. “It would be harder for him if you came around for a while, and then you stopped. I’d rather wait to introduce you until we’re a little more…”
She didn’t finish her thought, but Paul didn’t need her to. He cupped her head in his hand and pulled her face to his. The only reason he wouldn’t come back was if she asked him not to. The thought that she didn’t want her son to get attached to him, not because of all the terrible things he’d done, or who he’d been in the canvas of her past life, but because it might be too hard for him to say goodbye at some point gave him more hope than he’d ever enjoyed in his entire life. He kissed her lips with love brimming in his throat, but for all that she drove him out of mind and made him lose control of everything else, he didn’t say what was in his heart.
He had a feeling she knew anyway, but that was his, and he would keep it until-if ever-it felt right to give to her.
Author: domfangirl
Starring: Paul Kellerman and Sara Scofield
Category: Multi-chapter
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Where there’s sparks, there could be fire, you know.
Author’s Notes: I just had a thought. No disrespect to Michael’s memory, it’s been six years by the timeline I use. Sara is only human. This story picks up with the inference that Michael and Sara married before he died, but does not take into account any of the *leaked* storyline for the straight-to-DVD movie. I don't intend to ever watch that, thus it will never be part of my canon. Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three
Additional A/N: There will be one more chapter…and it will be sort of an epilogue to this story and it will involve Lincoln, because I can’t help myself. (But no funny business, I swear!)
Throughout the day, after they'd eaten in an effort to refuel-and after Paul had driven Sara's car up the street to a drugstore for more condoms-they returned to Sara's bed. Sometimes they got up so she could show him pictures of Michael Junior, other times they moved just to change the venue, making love in various spots in Sara’s tiny house.
“Did you purposely buy the smallest house you could find, or what?” Paul asked as they settled back on the bed after a vigorous round that had involved him pinning her to a wall.
Sara’s laughter coasted across his nerve endings, and a shudder of pleasure wracked his body as she rolled up on one elbow to mirror his position next to her. “Well, we don’t need much room, just the two of us, but yes. I want Mikey to be aware of how to live without much. I don’t want him lost in a 19-room mansion feeling like the only person in the house who knows him is the nanny. Being on top of each other, so to speak, has contributed to our bond, I believe.”
He listened to her words, but heard the underlying sentiment in her story. Frank Tancredi, whom he’d only met one time, had been less than bonded to his daughter. Suppressing scandal had always been more important than whatever Sara had been going through, and that was why, once upon a time, Paul had been taken into confidence. Because there had been no one else to fill the void.
Nodding, he rubbed his hand down her bare arm briskly, her smooth skin gliding under his fingers like silk. “That sounds good. But is that the only reason? You’re not here because of financial problems, are you?”
Sara laughed again, much louder than before. She slapped his shoulder good-naturedly. “I’m not poor, Paul. And even if I was, I wouldn’t let you be my sugar daddy.”
He shook his head. “I wasn’t suggesting-“
“Shut up,” she said, pushing against his chest to emphasize her point. “My father was a very wealthy man and he left me a lot of money. If I wanted the Ritz Carlton on the beach, I could have it. I want this. I like this. This is my home.”
“Okay, okay,” he exclaimed, leaning into her to kiss her laughing mouth.
Things could have escalated from there, but he restrained himself. Paul had never had this experience before-the one where he couldn't get enough-and it felt a little like galloping frantically away from the panic that nipped at his heels as to the depth and breadth of his need for her while also gorging himself on her flesh. He didn't want to think about it too much, so he asked her questions to distract himself, and reveled when she asked him things that also kept his mind far from what he would feel when he had to leave.
Sometime later the conversation traveled to how he hadn't enjoyed being a politician as much as he'd thought he would. "I guess I'm just more of a behind-the-scenes kinda guy," he murmured, his fingers drawing lazy circles on her bare hip.
"I can see that," she said, her own caresses wandering dangerously low on his abdomen. She rubbed her knuckles idly below his navel and he tried to appear unaffected, because good God, how many times could he possibly get it up for her, anyway? The entire weekend had begun to feel like one of those stories he’d heard guys tell about their leave time when he was in the Army that he had never believed.
He focused on his bitter tale. "And no matter how much of a hero you are, people always remember the bad things you did, so I had to constantly hear my name in conjunction with the Reynolds scandal even while they praised my part in bringing down The Company. It's like they'd slap my face just so they could kiss my ass. I got tired of it."
"What are you going to do now?" she asked.
"I have no idea," he replied, which made him realize that's why he'd come here. He was at loose ends, so maybe coming here to try to tie this one up had only backfired on him, because he didn't feel like anything had ended. Now there were just more loose ends.
"Some of the articles I read about you cited your Chief of Staff as Kristine Kellerman. I thought maybe you'd gotten married." He tried not to react too strongly to this very revealing statement.
"Little sister," he said by way of explanation.
"You have a sister?"
He couldn't help his smirk. "Yes... Even I have a family. I didn't just spawn from an evil empire. Well. My mother was her own kind of evil, so perhaps that's an apt description."
Sara laughed again, and he wondered at the frequency. Did he cause it, or was she just like this all the time? It was something he had gotten used to far too quickly over the course of 24 hours. He loved it when anything he said got some sort of reaction out of her like that. The light that shone from her face seemed angelic to him. "Your son will never be able to make such a statement," he found himself saying, and then he felt his face flushing in embarrassment over his sentimentality.
Sara's expression softened while her fingers whisked up his torso to cup his jaw in her palm. "From your lips to God's ears," she said, leaning in to kiss him.
Paul slid his hand down over her lower back and tugged her body into his so they were pressed together. "What's he like?" he asked. She'd shown him pictures of Mikey on various birthdays or outings to the beach with Lincoln, Sofia, LJ, and their twin daughters, but she hadn't spoken about him too much.
"Oh, he's wonderful. He's a sweet, sweet boy. Lincoln says he has the same temperament as his father, though I guess Michael-big Michael-could be quite a snotty know-it-all and little Michael doesn't have a bit of that. He's overly kind, and has always been that way. Always shares with kids at daycare, always tells me he loves me, or how pretty he thinks I am. And he's beyond reality when he interacts with Linc and Sofia's girls. Sometimes I think him being nearly perfect was the universe's way of trying to make up for his father being taken too soon."
He was thoughtful as he constructed his next sentence. “What’s the hardest part about Michael being gone?” he asked.
Her eyes dropped from his, her gaze sliding up and focusing on some point on the wall above his head. He waited as she took a couple of calming breaths, and then a pained smile flashed over her face. “It’s not just one thing,” she finally said. “It’s more like lots of little things, things you can’t even imagine until you’re faced with them.” She shrugged. “It’s everything.”
“Give me an example,” Paul said. He wasn’t sure what he was trying to accomplish by this line of questioning, but now that he had started it, it seemed imperative.
She waited a moment, obviously thinking. “Oh, I know. When Mikey was two, I started potty training him. He was a quick learner, and soon-within a few weeks really, he hadn’t had any accidents. It was one of the weekends where he was supposed to go to Linc’s-we try to do it at least once a month. When Lincoln brought him home, he mentioned that Mikey sat on the toilet to pee. I was like, ‘so?’ and Lincoln was like, ‘He’s a boy, Sara.’ Now, there are plenty of books out there that say that learning to do it sitting down isn’t a big deal, I know because I’ve read them, but it was just that. You know, it would never have occurred to me. It’s a boy thing. It’s a dad thing. So that made me think, in a fast-forward sort of way about when he gets older. And girls. And you know…all that stuff. I cried every time I thought about it for days, not because it matters if he sits or stands to urinate, but because Michael wasn’t here to show him how to do it.”
The hand Paul still had resting on her lower back had started moving slowly up and down in a soothing rhythm as she spoke. “But Lincoln will be around for all the growing up boy stuff,” he said in an effort to encourage her. “You seem very close to him.”
“Well, yes. Lincoln is my brother now, in every sense of the word, and he takes his responsibility to Mikey very seriously. It’s definitely better than nothing.” She brought her eyes back to his and this time her smile looked more natural. “And Linc is great. Don’t get me wrong, he wasn’t even criticizing me about the peeing thing, he was telling me in his awkward way how to be better. But the point was, I didn’t even think of it. There are certain things I’ll never think of, just because I’m not a man.”
Paul nodded, waiting to see if she responded well to his next move before saying anything. Where their bodies had already come to rest against each other, he relaxed into her so that she began to bear his weight and they slowly rotated until she lay on her back and he rested on his arm over her prone body. “You can’t beat yourself up about that type of stuff,” he said, brushing her lips gently with his.
“Mother’s guilt is the worst,” she mumbled under his lips.
Allowing a little bit of space to develop between their faces, he cupped her cheek in his palm and rubbed his thumb over her jawline. “I could tell just by setting foot in this house that you are a good mother.”
Her cheeks flushed, and he wasn’t sure if it was the compliment or the heat growing between their bodies. His only consolation in his own insatiability was the seemingly matched hunger within Sara. She lifted up against him and opened her legs slightly so their bodies brushed intimately. “You don’t have to flatter me, you know,” she said, arching purposely as he got harder and bigger.
“It’s the truth,” he said, his breathing getting harder to control. He moved across her, reaching for a condom on the bedside table. The action caused his chest to rub across hers, and she arched again, moaning softly as his penis breached her opening and she shifted suddenly and then he was there, pushing inside her while clutching an unopened packet in his hand.
Their eyes met, and the challenge in her gaze made him realize she was doing it on purpose. Distracting him, mesmerizing him, bending him to her will, he desperately tried to hold on to the thoughts in his mind, but at this moment, as he'd experienced several times over the last 24 hours, the only thing he could think of was how much he wanted her, not just for the next few minutes until orgasm overcame them both, but forever. He cursed under his breath and then held the unused condom up so she could see it. “We should-“ he began, but then she thrust her hips up and he was deeply inside her, and like the first time they’d done it, the sensation electrified him. Sex in anyway, shape, or form with Sara was immensely satisfying, but with no latex between them, just the sweet, tight, wet fit of her around him, made him wish for death so that he never had to experience anything like an ending of this fantastic moment.
He closed his eyes, trying to cool his blood enough not to lose it completely. Sara matched him in every way, and she was undoubtedly the only woman he would ever be with for the rest of his life. This was it for him, and the idea had a paralyzing affect. He wanted it, but he didn't. He didn't understand it entirely so it frightened him. And he had no idea what, if anything, she wanted in return.
This moment, while she battled to dominate him, seemed erroneous compared with all their other couplings, and the conflicting thoughts and feelings rushing through him made everything more urgent. He dropped his head down, capturing her lips in a fierce kiss. He kissed her until he felt her hand wrap around his and pluck the condom from his fingers. She flung it away and moved under him again, since he still hadn’t started thrusting himself.
As she moaned, their lips slipped apart, and her panting gasps made his temperature soar dangerously high. "I think there's something wrong with me," he gritted out, his hand reaching to grab her hip to keep her from moving. He held her so tightly he knew he would leave marks.
She quivered, and a thin, throaty cry erupted from her lips. "I don't," she breathed.
When he didn’t allow her to move her hips, he felt her inner muscles clenching and he muttered something that sounded like, “Goddamn you,” though he didn’t mean it in the way it was traditionally used. He forced himself not to move and then expounded by saying, “There's definitely something wrong with me, because I can't. Get. Enough.”
Sara's arms wound around his neck, pulling him into her even though he was trying to keep distance between them. “That's how it's supposed to be,” she whispered.
It was either the power of that truth or being pushed beyond his endurance level that made him finally start moving. He groaned her name as her legs slithered up around his hips, and within minutes they were both there, panting and gasping, sweating as they burst into shared bliss.
Paul dropped his head down on to her shoulder, physically unable to move away from her. Emotionally, he knew he would never be separated from her, because it wouldn’t matter if he never saw her again, he would never stop thinking of her. Of this. Of what it had been like to be with her, even for just a short while.
He must have drifted off for a few minutes because his next moment of awareness was Sara pushing him off of her and then her settling into his side, her leg draped over his thigh and her head on his shoulder. He patted her bottom gently and wrapped both arms around her, squeezing her against him.
“So, you never come to Mexico, huh?” she asked, and he shook himself fully awake when he realized she wanted to talk.
It took a moment for his brain to register what she meant. “Well, never before.” He opened his mouth to say something else, a witty vacationer type remark, but before he could come up with something, she said, “If you get out this way again…I wouldn’t mind it if you stopped by.”
Paul hesitated, but then reached for her hand, lacing their fingers together. “Even when Mikey’s here?” he asked.
She tensed up against him, and then she shook her head. “No, you’re probably right about that. But, if you called ahead, and it was a weekend he was at Linc’s…”
“Right,” he said, trying not to let the balloon of disappointment in his chest rob him of air. “It would be hard for him, probably.”
She lifted her head from his shoulder to look at him. “It would be harder for him if you came around for a while, and then you stopped. I’d rather wait to introduce you until we’re a little more…”
She didn’t finish her thought, but Paul didn’t need her to. He cupped her head in his hand and pulled her face to his. The only reason he wouldn’t come back was if she asked him not to. The thought that she didn’t want her son to get attached to him, not because of all the terrible things he’d done, or who he’d been in the canvas of her past life, but because it might be too hard for him to say goodbye at some point gave him more hope than he’d ever enjoyed in his entire life. He kissed her lips with love brimming in his throat, but for all that she drove him out of mind and made him lose control of everything else, he didn’t say what was in his heart.
He had a feeling she knew anyway, but that was his, and he would keep it until-if ever-it felt right to give to her.