“Might as well get a good look now, honey. It’s not a pretty sight.” He turned slowly so that she could see his chest, his side and then his back. “The scars from Nolan’s beatings are nothing compared to what that explosion did to me.”

He knelt in front of her, his gaze cast downward at the scars covering the right side of his body from shoulder to waist.

As she looked at the thick, discolored scar tissue, she sucked in her breath. “Oh, Jack…Jack.” With an unsteady hand, she reached out and skimmed her fingertips gently over his chest. “It must have been horrible. The pain had to be excruciating.”

He covered her hand where it lay in the center of his chest. “It’s pretty repulsive, isn’t it? I wouldn’t blame you if-”

She leaned forward and pressed her lips against his shoulder, then carefully, tenderly, distributed kisses over his battle scars.

Jack closed his eyes and clenched his teeth.

When she lifted her head, she reached out and unbuckled his belt. He opened his eyes, looked up at her and smiled. Then he rose to his feet, unzipped his pants and kicked them off. He stood before her in his brown and black striped briefs, his hairy legs powerful, his scarred chest broad and muscular, his arms large and strong.

“You’ve filled out nicely,” she told him, a teasing smile twitching the corners of her mouth.

“So have you, honey.” He opened his hands and covered the undersides of her breasts, lifting them gently as he lowered his mouth to her left nipple.

She whimpered the moment his warm, moist mouth made contact with her hot flesh.

“You like that?”

“Yes,” she replied on an indrawn breath.

He switched to the other breast. She cupped the back of his head with one hand, encouraging him to continue, and clamped her other hand over his shoulder to brace herself.

While he laved her nipples, moving back and forth from one breast to the other, he slipped both hands inside the waistband of her pajamas and slid them under her buttocks, lifting her enough to maneuver the bottoms down her hips. She cooperated fully and helped him strip her naked.

Jack pushed her farther back in the bed and then came down over her, straddling her, his knees on either side of her thighs. She reached up between them and caressed his straining sex through the thin barrier of his cotton briefs.

He pushed her hand away as he licked a path from her collarbone to her belly button. Cathy trembled with sexual longing. When he parted her legs and touched her intimately, her buttocks tightened and her body instinctively thrust upward. He moved lower through the thatch of curls, and his tongue found her clitoris and began stroking gently. She whimpered and moaned and latched on to his shoulders as he increased the depth and strength of his laps.

While his mouth worked feverishly, he kept one hand under her butt and brought the other up to caress her nipples. Within minutes, Cathy became mindless, her entire being centered on achieving pleasure. Her body arched higher. Jack licked and sucked and lapped with an intensity that brought Cathy to the brink and then tossed her headlong into an explosive orgasm.

While the aftershocks of her climax rippled through her, Jack rose to his feet, leaving her for a couple of minutes. When he came back to her, he kissed her long and hard and deep, and she tasted the damp muskiness of her own body on his lips.

He reached between them, took her hand and brought it to his erect penis. When she circled him, she felt the thin condom sheathing his impressive erection.

Without saying a word, he lifted her hips and plunged into her, deep and hard. She gasped as he filled her. With a shared single-mindedness, they came together in a wild frenzy, her body responding feverishly as he hammered into her. He came first, shaking and groaning and then kissing her repeatedly while she climaxed again. Sated completely, he sprawled on top of her for a couple of minutes, and she stroked his back and buttocks. When he rolled away from her and onto his back, he slipped off the full condom and dropped it on top of his briefs lying on the floor. Then he slid his arm beneath her, pulled her up against him and brushed soft, tender kisses down the side of her face from temple to chin.

I still love you, Jack.

The words filled her mind. But she didn’t say anything. She lay there in his arms, happier and more fulfilled than she could ever remember.

Jack grabbed the edges of the blanket and sheet, pulled them up over their damp bodies and kissed Cathy. They fell asleep wrapped in each other’s arms.

Chapter Twenty-three

Jack and Cathy didn’t get much sleep, only taking short naps between lovemaking sessions. They made love as if there were no tomorrow. Each took pleasure and gave it in equal amounts. And when morning came, they showered together and made love again. Cathy tried not to think about the past and tried even harder not to wonder about the future. She wasn’t a seventeen-year-old kid with her head in the clouds and a bunch of foolish dreams in her heart. She was thirty-four, widowed and the mother of a son who would soon turn sixteen. She had somehow survived her husband’s horrific murder, a mental breakdown that nearly destroyed her and a mother and in-laws who had been determined to keep her son from her. Maybe she had been weak and helpless. Maybe she had needed a trial by fire, so to speak, to harden her into a mature woman. All she knew was that she would never again allow other people to make her decisions and tell her what to do. Whatever she had with Jack this time around, be it sex or love or a combination of the two, she wanted it. If their relationship turned out to be a short affair, so be it. And if it became more…

Jack came up behind her, wrapped his arms around her waist and kissed her neck. She squirmed against him.

“Go sit down,” she told him. “The pancakes are almost ready.”

“How about I pour us both a cup of coffee?” He released her and reached out to retrieve two mugs from the overhead cupboard.

“Thanks. And while you’re being my helper, get the syrup out and put it on the table. I’ve got two kinds. Plain pancake syrup and blueberry flavored. The blueberry is Seth’s favorite.”

“How about that. It’s my favorite, too. One more thing your son and I have in common.”

Cathy flipped the four large pancakes on the griddle before replying. “What else do you and Seth have in common?” She tried her best to keep her voice calm and even.

“You,” Jack replied. “You’re important to both of us. You’re his mom, and you’re my…You’re my what? Girlfriend? Lover?”

Cathy breathed a sigh of relief. “I like the sound of both. How about girlfriend in public and lover in private?”

“So you’re okay with my referring to you in public as my girlfriend?” He popped her on the butt before he poured their coffee.

“Yes, I’m okay with it, just as long as I can call you my boyfriend.” She giggled. “God, we sound like a couple of kids, don’t we.”

He set their full mugs on the table, and then searched the cupboards for the syrup. “How do you think your in-laws will feel about your dating me?”

“I’m sure they’d prefer that I date Donnie Hovater.”

“Yeah, I’m sure they would.”

Cathy flipped the pancakes onto two plates, turned off the griddle and carried the plates over to the table. “I prefer you.” She set the plates on the table. “I like Donnie, but he doesn’t put butterflies in my stomach or make me shiver when he touches me or-”

Jack yanked her into his arms, nuzzled her neck and then he lifted his head and stared into her eyes. “In case there’s any doubt in your mind, I’m crazy about you, honey.”

She wrapped her arms around his neck, stood on tiptoe, gave him a quick kiss and said, “I’m crazy about you, too.”