Free Crimson Footprints lll: The Finale by Shewanda Pugh Page A

hands in exasperation. Everything was always so clear to her husband, right and wrong, black and white, neat as the lines on paper. Hadn’t he ever felt conflicted before? Uncertain? Even his love for her, he swears, he’d known from the start. She’d never been instantly sure about anything, ever.
    “Look at me,” Deena said. “Look at my face.” She felt the desperation creeping in, the nasty voice that said no good things, especially not this man, were truly meant for her. Funny, that the voice should sound like her grandfather.
    “I love you. And I will talk to you. I’m just…sorting feelings out for myself.”
    He stared at her, the hardness of his features seeping into softness.
    “I could help you.”
    She shook her head, then drew up to him, pressing her lips to his. But instead of the familiar warmth she craved, a cold voice crept in instead. Here is where he slips away. Here is where you lose him, because you can’t love without controlling.
    He kissed her back.
    A brush of butterfly wings was what it was. A whiff of fallen snowflakes just there. A whisper of a kiss, swept away by winds of a weak current.
    She pressed closer and he swept her into his arms. Solid against her, steady, he was lips and touch and certainty all over.
    She had words trapped in her head and oxygen didn’t matter. Her hands raked under his shirt, trailing the hardness of his back.
    “Upstairs,” Tak groaned and snatched her by the hand.
    They scurried up, shut the door and locked it behind them.
    Tak pulled her in by the waist and kissed, open mouthed, fierce, devouring.
    She knew his strength, felt it as he lifted her, and experienced crushing weight when they dropped to the bed . Chest to chest, heart beating against hers.
    He dominated her with his kisses, each harder, deeper, and hungrier than the last. They could tangle no more, press one to the other no more, already they were all heat and roaming hands, a single knot of pulsing need.
    Clothes came away in hurried snatches, both aiding the other in the need for skin against skin. When Tak pulled away to discard his jeans, it was her who pulled him back, body shaking.
    He clamored on top, grabbed her hips and thrust, arching her back violently with the force of his entry. He’d pierced her to the core and kept going, going roughshod till she moaned pitifully.
    Words won’t come, only air, air that her hands couldn’t clench. Deena groped at the bed, wild, bunching sheets in her fist and quivering as her husband rammed tidal waves of pleasure right through her.
    Every thrust came with a grunt, every pound a measure of punishment, as he dug fingers into her hips and drilled wrath to her core.
    She flooded in spastic pleasure, mouthing his name, hissing nonsense, far beyond the point of done. He lifted her legs and pinned each back, so that knee touched shoulder on each side.
    Impaled, she gave up on not screaming.
    He burrowed in punctuated fashion, strokes ragged and hammering to a finish.
    She couldn’t hold on, couldn’t hope to hold on, not when he bucked like a bronco off a cliff. Harder and more emphatic he grew, as if to core her out, till he slammed with a groan of surrender. Liquid heat flooded her, earning a gasp of pleasure from Deena.
    Her gaze drifted skyward, ever conscious of the strumming of Tak’s heart. In the rawest, most torturous moment of her life, that heart had stopped beating, ceasing hers right along with it. She knew but one thing at the time: that after finding his love, she couldn’t bare being without it.
    He rolled away from her, sat up, and slipped into his clothes.
    “Tak?” Deena said as alarm sliced through her. “Tak, don’t just—”
    The door shut on her words. Of course, she thought. Of course sex hadn’t solved any of their problems.

Chapter Nineteen
    Finally, the loons had calmed down. A full day of Hammonds and Tanakas meant the full range of manic depression insofar as Tony was concerned. From Aunt June, Mike, John,