“I love you,” he whispered, melting my heart as he sank into me, my inner muscles quivering. I’d never been happier to be on birth control, that we were secure enough to not use condoms anymore. There was nothing compared to the sensation of him sliding within me, skin-on-skin.

He felt so damn good, like he was made for loving me. I guess that was right, since I knew I was made to love only him. “I love you, too,” I said, my breath choppy.

He kissed me, our tastes mingling as he began his steady, powerful thrusts. I felt the muscles of his back start to tremble with the effort to restrain himself. “I’m okay, Josh. Let go,” I urged, rocking my hips, swirling against him.

“Not until you do. I love to feel you come around me, the way you tighten. It’s incredible.” He buried his face in my neck and kept his rhythm, his words stoking the fire in me again, building the spiral.

“Again?” I asked.

“Again, and again,” he ordered. “I’m marrying you, December. Do you know what that means?”

How did he have the brain power to talk? My thoughts were consumed with the motion of his hips, on using the bed to push more powerfully against him. Luckily he didn’t wait for me to answer.

“It means that every night I’m going to make love to you. Every night I’m going to lick you, suck you, kiss you until you come. Then I’m going to slide inside you so deep”—he followed his words with a powerful thrust, stealing my breath—“that you’ll never be able to get me out. Even when I’m not with you, I’ll be there, with you, reminding you that you’re mine. Every. Delicious. Incredible. Inch. Of. You. Mine.” He punctuated each word with a thrust, and I whimpered. That sweet pressure had built again, wiping out every thought, and I wrapped my legs around his hips. I simply hung on as he used his whole body to love me, to tell me again what we both already knew—our souls, our hearts, our bodies, all of us belonged to the other. In giving ourselves over, we gained so much more than we could possibly ever lose.

“Josh,” I whimpered, the tension unbearable, hanging on the cusp of release.

His thrusts picked up precisely how I needed, as if he knew exactly what I craved. He slid his hand between us and changed the angle so he could slide deeper. Then he locked eyes with me and used his fingers to push me over the edge, until lights fired in my vision and my body shook with the force of it.

“Yes. God, yes,” he moaned, his thrusts finally becoming as uneven as his voice. “You’re so beautiful when you come.” His face tightened, and I gripped him with my thighs, swiveling my hips in the way I knew would push him past the point of return while my body still shuddered in waves. Then he met me, finishing with my name on his lips, his face buried in my neck.

He was perfectly heavy on top of me as our breathing regulated, the sweat cooling on our skin. As usual, he rolled to his side, pulling me with him, always scared that I couldn’t breathe under him no matter how many times I assured him otherwise.

“And that, Mrs. Walker,” he said with a kiss on my forehead, “is how we’re going to spend every night of the rest of our lives.”

Except when you’re deployed. The thought intruded, but I shoved it back, unwilling to lose this moment to bitterness.

“You set a pretty high standard,” I said with a smile, a scrumptious lethargy settling over me.

“You deserve the best,” he said, his voice trailing off in a tone of almost-sadness.

I looked into his eyes, letting all the love I had for him fill my fingertips as I trailed them down the stubble on his cheek. “Then it’s a good thing I have you forever, because that’s all I want, Josh. Just you.”

He pulled me closer, settling his chin on the top of my head, both of us unwilling to say what we were thinking.

There was a chance our forever would only be these next few days.

Chapter Eight

EMBER

Zero Day. He zipped up his MultiCam-printed backpack, and I sighed with the barest form of relief I could muster under our circumstances. He hadn’t found the note I’d tucked inside his headphones. Good. He’d need a pick-me-up once he was in the air.

“You don’t have to go with me,” he said, his gorgeous brown eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep. “It’s three a.m. You could go back to bed.”

I zipped his hoodie around me and shook my head. “I’m not ready to let you go.”

He ran the backs of his fingers down my cheek. “Yeah. Me, neither.”

I swallowed back the panic, the fear that had gradually clawed its way into my throat since last night. Be strong, but don’t hold anything back. You’re scared? Tell him. You’re proud? Tell him. Leave nothing unspoken. Mom’s words ran through my head as we walked out the front door. Josh closed it behind us and then locked it, the sound way too final for my liking.

He loaded his last bag into the back of the Jeep, and I looked up to Jagger and Paisley’s darkened house. Jagger left tomorrow on a different main body flight, and I’d be lying if I didn’t envy them this last twenty-four hours.

Time felt so relative right now. Where these few hours might not have meant anything a few weeks ago, right now they were everything and not enough.

The roads were dark as we wound our way to Fort Campbell. Josh held my hand, pressing kisses to my palm every so often as we kept a charged silence. What was there left to say?

Too much for a twenty-five-minute drive.

We pulled into the drop-off line, and as our turn came, Josh hopped out of the Jeep and handed over his massive duffel bags stenciled “Walker, J” on the bottom in spray paint.