Max sighed. Jed had given him little notice of his trip and no indication when he’d be back, but Max knew well enough whatever he was doing at his old Army base in Colorado wasn’t anything fun. “Don’t mind me. It’s been a while since I had a real conversation. Luke and Raffi don’t say much. I missed you too. A lot.”
Jed’s expression softened. Max put his hands on his chest and took a moment to absorb the metronomic thud of his heart. He closed his eyes, willing away the memories of those dark, dark days when that steady beat had slowed to nothing. His short-term memory often failed him, but that black moment would stay with him forever. He couldn’t clearly recall the scene, the faces around him, or even the explanations that came later, but sometimes he could still feel the icy wrench in his heart as the center of his world slipped away.
Jed closed his hands around his wrists. “You with me?”
“Think so. Did you say something?”
“Nothing important.” Jed rubbed his stubbled cheek against Max’s own. “Come inside?”
“Where are the others?”
The deep rumble of a truck engine answered his question. Jed grinned. “Taking the dogs into town to pick the girls up from school. Belle seems to have Raffi under her spell.”
“She gets that from you,” Max said dryly, noting that Flo had disappeared. Recently, he’d come to realize Belle was, in her own way, just like Jed—stubborn, insanely observant, andsobloody lovable.
“If you say so.” Jed yanked on his hand, harder this time, more demand than request. “Now come inside.”
Max didn’t protest as Jed led him inside. He’d come to know the glint in his eyes rather well over the past few months. Clothes littered a path into the cabin. They barely made it to the bed, and it seemed no time passed at all before Jed pushed Max down on his stomach and slid into him from behind.
The pace started slow and sweet, but fast became rough and urgent as weeks of separation with little contact began to fade away.
Jed covered Max with his body, wrapping his strong arms round his neck and shoulders in a viselike grip, molding them together in a perfect fit as the bed jumped and squeaked beneath them.
Max braced himself on the wall, scrabbling for purchase on the chipped paint, and reveling in the sensation of Jed inside him. They didn’t often fuck like this, so rough and physical. The desire was there… damn, it was always there, but sometimes, the inferno between them was too much.
Jed slipped his hand around them, sliding his chest against Max’s sweat-slicked back. He took Max’s cock in one hand and joined his other hand with Max’s on the wall. The change in angle made Max see stars. He pushed back, desperate to take more of Jed in, to feel him all the way from his curling toes to his tingling fingertips. Jed wasbig, thick and long… too much, but never, ever enough.
Release hit him like a freight train. He came with a shout, spilling into Jed’s hand. Behind him, Jed stilled and released inside him with a rumbling groan.
Max’s arms gave way, and he collapsed face-first with a rueful smirk. Though a dominant, physical lover when his mood was right, Jed was as quiet during sex as he was with everything else. Max liked that. It suited him.
He gathered his shortened breath and rolled over. Jed lay sprawled on his back beside him, his sun-lightened hair a sex-tousled mess. Max pushed it out of his face.
Jed opened his eyes and smiled. “So you really did miss me, huh?”
Max ducked under Jed’s raised arm. “Piss off.”
Jed grinned, and new warmth crept into Max’s bones. He remembered the first time they’d slept together, that stormy night when Jed was so tired and devastated he’d wept in his arms. Sex was different these days.Jedwas different these days. Sometimes Max could hardly reconcile the smiling, energetic lover he had now with the haunted, broken soldier who’d walked onto his land nearly a year ago.
Happy, healthy Jed was a sight to behold.
Max traced the fresh pink scar on Jed’s belly. It was three inches long and dwarfed by the other scars branding Jed’s body, but to both of them, the tiny incision represented a new lease on life.
Jed shivered.
Max stilled his fingers. “Am I hurting you?”
“Nope. Feels kinda—” Jed yawned.
Max rolled his eyes. Getting a conversation out of Jed after sex was hard work, but he didn’t mind. He settled by his side and watched him doze for a while, his mind still entrenched in the rough six months they’d endured.
It had taken Jed a while to consent to the experimental surgery. The idea of having a tiny pacemaker fitted in his stomach had, understandably, freaked him out. The minuscule device was designed to help him maintain the diet he needed to be healthy and control the chronic pain and sickness that made him so miserable.
To Jed, it had sounded too good to be true, and in the beginning, Max had shared his skepticism. How could something so small work such magic?
But they’d both been wrong… hugely and wonderfully wrong.
It had been like flicking a switch. Jed got over the surgery and was jogging around the lake two weeks later. In the weeks that followed, real color returned to his cheeks, and Max caught his first glimpse of the fit, agile man who’d been lurking beneath such a debilitating illness.