A hand wiped across Ben’s mouth as the lightning lit up his face in the window. “Dammit, Ben! How could you be so fucking stupid?” While the pulsing still lingered through his fingertips, Ben balled his hands into fists and cursed his stupidity.
She spotted Ben across the dimly lit room, and Imara smiled as she reached out to him. “Good morning, handsome. Why don’t you climb back in here and love me some more?”
Seeing his worried face, her eyes closed for a moment. “I’m pregnant again, aren’t I?”
“I’m sorry, Baby. We’ve been so careful. I’ve even been wearing those goddamn rubbers all for nothing.” Wiping his forearm across his eyes, Ben inched back across the room. “Why is this happening? I’d let that fucker kill me a million times, but I can’t lose her again. My heart can’t take it anymore.”
She pulled the covers back and bent her fingers to him. “Come here.”
Ben slunk down onto the bed and pressed his head into the mattress. “Don’t do this to yourself, honey. It’s out of your hands now. It always was.”
Even with his voice muffled as he spoke into the sheets, she could hear every bit of pain. “I may as well have killed her myself, Imara.”
Imara rolled over and curled herself over onto his back. “What’s happened to us was out of our control from the very beginning. How it end’s though, Ben, that is under your control, and this time will be different. Fate is on our side, don’t give up on me now.”
His hand brought her fingers to his lips, and he pressed his lips against them. “No matter what I do, it ends up with losing you both.”
Imara pulled on Ben’s arm until he crawled into her arms.
Curling his dark air around her fingers, Imara delivered the little comfort she could give a man like Ben. “No one really knows what will happen to them. If it hadn’t been that awful man that came for us, it could have been a fire or a tornado. The only thing that makes us any different from other folks having a baby right now is that we happen to know how it’s coming. And, you know what, this time, I’m grateful for that. You told me that your biggest regret was that you didn’t get to spend enough time with us. Well, we get one glorious year with her, and we will not waste a single second of it. We’re going to spend every day of Sweet Pea’s life showing her love and happiness. No matter what happens to us, we’ll always have those memories.”
Imara kissed his forehead as he circled her skin with his fingertips. “The clock’s ticking, Imara.”
Imara rubbed her lips against his skin. “Yes, it is. But I’ve been to the other side of it all, though. When I was in that castle, you know what I felt for the first time in about a hundred years? I felt safe, Ben. I looked around at everything, and I knew Selvin couldn’t touch us there. You’re going to end things this time, and you’re going to meet me there, and we’ll never be apart again. So, to that end, I can’t wait for the clock to run down. We’re almost home, and that sounds good, doesn’t it?”
Ben looked up to Imara’s face, and she leaned down to kiss his lips. “It’s almost over.”
The back of his fingers traced her jaw, and he nodded. “You know what I’m going to do?” His chin rested against her chest as he looked up at her. “When I was waiting on those worthless rubbers at that store, I saw they had these little cameras. You just take the pictures, take the camera back to the store, and then pick up the pictures later. I’m going to buy a big stack of them and take pictures of everything. That way, if there’s a next time, Thorin can pack them away in that trunk with all our other things for us.”
Imara smiled and rubbed Ben’s arm. “Yeah, that’s exactly what we should do.”
Looking over Imara’s breasts as they popped out of her nightgown, Ben raised his brows and slid his fingertips down her chest. “I could think of a few things I’d like to take some pictures of right now.”
Imara shook Ben’s hair in her hands. “Well, it doesn’t look like there will be any training going on today anyway. Why don’t you just climb on up, sir? You’re looking like you could use a little Southern Comfort right now.”
Pushing Imara to her back, Ben moved his leg across her and lingered over her body. He rubbed his fingers across her lips and said the truest thing ever to cross his tongue. “I just want to love you both as long as I can.”
As she pulled up her gown, Ben freed himself from his boxers. Imara felt her body relax as Ben made his way across her face with his soft kisses until they met her ear earlobe. As his pulsing cock found its way home, Imara’s lips grazed Ben’s shoulder while he rocked in and out of her. Ben wanted to be one with his wife, part of the family he created. For these few moments, they were all that existed.
Imara skimmed her nose across Ben’s jaw, inhaling the warm, musky smell of her long-ago home, of Ben. He cried softly against her ear, and she held him so tight she could barely breathe. “I wish we could stay this way forever, Imara.”
She placed an open-mouth kiss on his chin. “Someday we will, Ben. I promise you.”
While the midsummer storm raged against the house outside, Ben drifted back to sleep in the comfort of Imara’s embrace. He dreamed he walked through a dense, dark forest.
The ravens overhead cawed out a warning to him as he came to the opening beyond the trees. As Ben left the forgiving shade of the tree cover overhead, a blinding light hit his face.
As he turned his head away from the false sun above him, Ben held out his hand to shield his eyes from the bright illumination. Walking through the field of war-torn bodies, Ben saw a castle built into a mountainside through the rays of gold and white light. His eyes adjusted to the glowing orb above the battlefield, and he wrinkled his nose. “Baby, is that you up there? What in the hell are you doing?”