Free Make Me Forever by Beth Kery

showed off his muscular arms and chest ideally. They’d been out on the yacht yesterday afternoon, and the sun had given his skin a healthy glow. His gaze on her was warm, as always.
    Even though he spent a lot of time with her in the evenings, he’d worked every day since Regina’s funeral, often returning to his office once Harper fell asleep. Harper tried not to complain. She thought focusing on work was helping him through the difficult period. But increasingly, she was growing worried. Often she was aware of him returning to bed at night, and holding her against him. When that happened, she sometimes sensed his arousal. But they didn’t make love. They
hadn’t
, ever since Regina had died.
    There was a chained quality to him she couldn’t comprehend.
    Although he was attentive and loving to her when they were together, he seemed strained. Although he touched her frequently, and they’d never been more intimate in their communication, they never came together in the fierce, no-holds-barred manner in which she’d grown used to . . . which she loved. Harper was starting to suspect that Regina’s death, and the guilt he’d carried since he was a child, had scarred him more deeply than she’d first suspected.
    Even though she was nervous about confronting him about their strained physical distance, she was determined to do it tonight. The longer she waited, the further he might move away from her. And after all they’d been through, distance between them was something she refused to tolerate.
    He sat down on the couch near her and she set aside one of the letters. Milo was in her lap. She idly petted the drowsy puppy’s ear.
    “I like reading the letters,” she replied to his question with a smile.
    “They don’t make you cry anymore,” he said quietly, studying her face with that sharp, narrowed gaze that saw so much. “I’m glad.”
    “It was natural that they made me sad at first. All those years we missed together.”
    “Are you still mad at your parents?”
    She exhaled and looked away, finding the topic a difficult one. “Yes. But I think I’ll come to terms with it. Someday. I know they thought they were doing the right thing for me.”
    “I agree,” Jacob said.
    She gave him a sharp glance. “They were wrong, though.”
    He didn’t respond. He didn’t need to. They both knew her parents were wrong. They hadn’t understood Jake’s and her connection. They’d considered her connection to that boy to be an adolescent infatuation, a side effect of her trauma . . . something to be erased so that she could get back to her old, safe life. They hadn’t realized that their precious daughter had been changed forever in those West Virginia mountains.
    “It wasn’t the trauma of being kidnapped that made me so dysfunctional and anxiety-ridden for years, Jake,” she said quietly. “Believing you were dead was the final straw. My parents were responsible for me thinking that. I was smothered by guilt and sadness. I’d never truly felt like the world was random and meaningless and scary as hell until my parents told me you were dead.”
    “That’s a pretty good description of how I felt,” he said after a pause. “When I thought you were forgetting me. And then eventually, when I finally accepted you’d forgotten.”
    She inhaled for courage.
    “Jacob, do you love me?”
    He started slightly at the question.
    “I only ask because you haven’t been . . . you know. Wanting to have sex. Ever since Regina died,” she stated bluntly in a rush.
    His expression darkened. “You think I don’t want to have sex with you?” he asked quietly.
    “I assume not, because we haven’t. And you’ve put me off quite a few times.”
    He made a hissing sound and stood abruptly.
    “Jacob?” She gently moved aside a dozing Milo and stood. He abruptly turned to her, his eyes stormy.
    “You don’t get it, do you?”
    She blinked at his terse question. “I guess not,” she replied