Chapter 40

His cheek stung like fire.  Hannah packed quite a wallop.  But Justin refrained from rubbing his face as he mutely drove to her house, the woman in his thoughts staring out her window.  He deserved that slap.  He knew that.  The look in her eyes when she accused him...it was more painful than any physical blow.  

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked, breaking the silence in the truck.  Her anger had dissolved into an eerie, dispassionate state, and he worried for her.

Justin sighed.  “Hannah, I swear I didn’t know until last Friday...and it wasn’t for me to say anything.  I wanted to.  I tried to keep your mother from you, but in the end, all I knew was that I just had to be there when you found out.”

“Is that why you’ve been acting so weird?”

“Yes.”

She didn’t reply right away, but when she did, the guilt inside him faded.  “You were right,” she whispered unsteadily.  “This isn’t your cross to bear.”  She focused her eyes on him.  “I’m sorry I hit you.  I’ve never slapped anyone before...but, it hurts, Justin...it hurts so bad...”

“I know,” he said and reached over to take her hand in his, bringing it up to his lips, kissing the knuckles tenderly.  “Forgive me, Songbird...I was only trying to protect you.”

She only nodded forlornly, so Justin had to be content with the silence he received.  Keeping hold of her hand, he drove with the other as well as he could when driving a stick-shift.  Hannah closed her eyes with a weary sigh and leaned her head back against the seat.  He saw more tears leak down her pale cheeks, and his chest constricted.  

A few more blocks, and he pulled into her driveway, forgetting that the property would be swarming with work crews in a couple of hours.  All he could think about was her...her pain, her heartache, and how he could make it better.  If he could make it better.  There was nothing he could say that would ease her broken heart, that knowing her entire life had been a sham, a closely-guarded secret, and that her mother abandoned her -- not because Lawna didn’t love Hannah -- but because James Baker had loved Hannah too much for Lawna and Mark to reveal that secret and crush them both.

Hannah opened her eyes and sighed again.  “I left my purse and keys at the store.”

“We’ll use the spare,” he said, getting out of the truck.  His legs had lost the strength to walk, but he forced them to carry him around the hood and to the passenger side door.  She eased out of her seat and swallowed back a sob.

“Hannah...are you okay?”

“No,” she whimpered.

Justin cradled her in a tender embrace.  “I’m sorry, Songbird...so very sorry...”

“It’s not your fault,” she said, hiccupping against his chest.  “I know you never wanted to be bothered by any of this...I’m the one who's sorry, for getting you involved...”

He tilted his head back and looked down at her.  “Hannah...I do care for you--”

“Please, Justin” she begged, “don’t say something you’ll regret later.”

He frowned at her.  “I won’t--”

She put a finger over his lips.  “It’s okay.  I know this isn’t what you signed up for.  What we are...I know...I know...oh, I don’t know anything anymore!”

Now, his frown got perturbed.  “I’ll decide what I sign up for,” he told her.  She smiled sadly at him and stepped out of his embrace.  

They walked to her back door, where she retrieved the spare key from under her garden gnome, and together, they went inside.  Hannah managed to walk all the way to her living room, through the hallway, and into the study to feed her guinea pig, but then she saw a framed photo of her father and Mark on her desk, and she froze.

“Hannah?”

Staring at the photo, she tensed up.

Justin touched her shoulder.  “Hannah...don’t think about it...”

Her fingers shook as they picked up the photo and brought it closer.  “He watched me grow up,” she whispered.  “I remember the day his son got married, and when his grandson was born...the day his wife died...how he used to slip me saltwater taffy when Daddy wasn’t looking, because I had braces and wasn’t supposed to eat them...”

“Hannah, none of that matters...your father loved you, that’s all everyone wanted for you--”

“And what about what I wanted?” she asked seriously, angrily.  “Maybe I wanted to know who my real father was...to know my mother didn’t leave because she didn't want me...to know everything!”  Her fingers tightened around the picture.  And tightened harder, twisting the wood frame until the glass broke.  With a vehement cry, she threw the picture across the room.  It smashed into the fireplace, the glass shattering, and the guinea pig in its cage squeaked in protest.

“What about me?” she yelled, picking up a vase of flowers and letting it fly.  Rose petals flared out as the heavy crystal vase bounced off the books on a shelf.  Next soaring through the air was a tin can of pens and pencils.  “What about what I wanted?!  What about Daddy?!”

When the stapler barely missed his head, Justin wrapped his arms around her body, holding her as she cried and howled, swung and kicked.  

“Hannah!  Hannah!  Calm down!”

“He deserved to know!” she wailed, resisting his restraints and bucking her body wildly against him.  “He deserved to know!  He deserved...”

Her struggles slowed almost at once, and she slumped in his arms, weeping like a woman who’d been physically tortured, mentally tormented, emotionally murdered.  Justin buried his nose in her hair and hugged her with everything he had.

“He should have known,” she moaned, clutching his shoulders fiercely.  “Oh, God!  He died, not knowing!  He thought she didn’t love us...didn’t want us...”

“He knows now, honey,” he murmured, dropping to his knees as he locked her in his embrace.  “He looks down from Heaven, now, as we speak, Hannah, and he knows now...but he loved you...and he will forgive them, Hannah, because you are his daughter.  Nothing has changed that, and you are a good, loving person, and he’d want you to forgive them, too...”

“I can’t,” she cried.  “I can’t...Why can’t I?  I want it to all go away, Justin!”

She pressed her face into his neck, her tears soaking the collar of his shirt.

“I’m sorry, Hannah...I wish...what can I do, honey?  Just tell me what you need, and I’ll do it,” he said, his throat aching around the lumps that would not go down.

Another sob shuddered through her, shackling her body in misery.  “Make it go away, Justin,” she whimpered, raising her head and placing a wet kiss on his mouth.  He blinked at her as she tried to force the kiss on him.

“Hannah...”

“Please, Justin,” she implored, “I don’t want to think about it anymore...I don't want to think at all...make love to me, make it all go away...please!”

She tried to kiss him again, and he allowed it.  He closed his eyes and kissed her as gently as he could, but she urged him for more, thrusting her tongue into his mouth and hastily ripping her shirt over her head, buttons popping from the force of it.  “I want you,” she moaned, still crying, as she crawled intimately into his lap.  “I need you...please...Justin...please...I love you...I love you...”

His eyes flared open.  She said it.  Hannah licked her way down his neck and yanked his shirt out of his jeans, her hands going immediately to his belt buckle.  She didn't seem to notice that he was no longer an active participant.

“...I love you...”

He reared back, breaking contact with her desperate kisses.  “Hannah, don’t say that because you’re hurting.”

She blinked, confused.  Her eyes and nose were swollen and red, and to him, she was beautiful and in a lot of pain, but he wasn’t letting this go.  “I know you’re upset -- I do -- and that you don’t know what you’re saying, but those three words are very serious to me,” he explained.  “Don’t say them if you don’t mean them.”

“I love you?”

“Yeah, those.”

A tiny smile finally fell across her features, nearly erasing the past agonizing hour.  She brought her palm up to his jaw, a loving gesture, as she said, “Then let me repeat -- I love you, Justin Kirkland.”

“Hannah...”

“It’s not a commitment, Justin, or a threat, or a plea to love me back,” she said quickly.  “It’s simply a fact.  I love you.  I didn’t plan to love you, but I do.  This isn’t grief or anger or anything else speaking.  It’s me.”  She stared hard at him.  “And it’s making you uncomfortable, isn’t it?”

“Hannah, I...after everything that’s happened today, I want to believe you, but...”

“Then forget I said it,” she said, going after his belt again.  

“That’s not likely to happen,” he replied, but her fingers were tickling his belly as they tugged on the buckle and unbuttoned his jeans at the same time, and he couldn’t stop his body from responding to her touch.

She shrugged.  “It doesn't matter right now.  I still want you.  I want to feel you inside me, to feel you everywhere...you make me feel complete, Justin, and I need that right now...please, make love to me.”

With a sigh of defeat, he said, “And I still want you.”  And I love you, too...

She smiled at him, and he kissed her...slowly, deeply, and thoroughly.  “Yeah,” he moaned feeling vibrations shooting through his groin as her fingers pulled down his zipper, “I want you bad, Hannah.  Are you sure about this?”

"Make love to me, Justin," she repeated passionately.  "Give me that much of you."

Justin crushed her to him.  Yeah, he could give her that much.  Within seconds, he had her on her back, on the braided rug of her father's study, mindful of the broken glass, kissing the pain out of her soul, hoping to erase her grief with his touch, exciting moans of pleasure and hushed pleas to "hurry."

Then the squeaking began anew, and Justin tore away from his quest to bare two lovely beauties from her black lace bra, only to stare into a pair of tiny, black eyes peering at him through the mesh of its cage.  "Your rodent is staring at us."

"Just ignore her," Hannah panted, bring his mouth down to hers again.  And he managed to forget about it, until a snuffle sounded to his right, and he cracked an eye at it.  Teddy smiled at them.  Creepy.  Like voyuer creepy.

"I can't do this," he said, jumping to his feet.  "Not here."  His jeans dipped precariously low on his hips, but he pulled Hannah up with him.  "If I'm going to make love to you, it's going to happen in a bed."

"Fine," she breathed, "but you have to be naked by the time we reach the bed."

"What about you?" He asked, kicking off his boots as he spoke.  "The same goes for you, too."

She took off out of the room and up the stairs.  Justin ran after her, though tackling a whole flight of steps while trying to strip off a pair of jeans was nearly a suicidal feat.  When he got to the top, Hannah was standing in the doorway of her bedroom, frozen again.

“Hannah?” he approached cautiously.  “You’re thinking about it again.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head, and then sighed, “Yes, I’m thinking about it...what if...what if they, you know...did it here?”

He walked around, facing her.  “From what Mark told me, they didn’t,” he said.  “Stop thinking about it...let me make you forget.”  He picked her up, wrapped her legs around his waist and kissed her senseless, pressing her back against the wall.  “Let me give you something else to think about,” he added breathlessly, coasting his lips down her neck.

“Oh, Justin...I don’t want to think at all,” she whispered.  

“Hannah?”

“What?”

He lifted his head and said, “Hush, my heart.”

She smiled, and he carried her over to the bed, where he gently laid her down, coming down with her and stripping off what remained of both their clothes.  “Sing it again,” he urged.

“Now?”

His mouth trailed down her body, detouring to wondrous, exotic places of her feminine anatomy, nibbling at the pale scar on her abdomen.  “Yes, now...close your eyes, feel what I’m doing to you, and sing, Hannah.”  He turned his head to kiss her inner thigh as his fingers teased the most exotic of all her lovely terrain, and she gasped.  

“Sing, Hannah,” he urged while his fingers and mouth began to do more than tease.  “I want to hear your voice...a little concert, just for me...”

“Oh!” she breathed.  “I don’t...I can’t remember...omigod!”

Justin moved up her body, sealed her panting with a kiss and then looked into her entranced eyes.  “I’ll start...’Hush, my heart’...”

“‘You’ve got me stuttering a rampart’,” she sang softly, her eyelids flaring open when his dipped a finger into her.  “‘If...if he only’...oh, god!...’knew...’”

“There you go,” he spurred her.  “Keep singing.”  She sputtered a few more breathless lines of her song as he slid down the bed to return to his previous task.  Her back arched, her breathing faltered and her hands twisted the sheets by her hips, but she kept singing, adding a few, “oh’s” and “omigod’s” into the verses.  By the time she reached the end of the first chorus, she was singing at the top of her lungs and harmonizing along with the orgasm that ripped through her body.

Justin paused a moment to catch his own breath. Her legs had squeezed a vice around his head as she eclipsed, and his erection pulsed, impatient for what was next.  Drifting back up and hovering over her, his twitching, enthusiastic brute nudged her, seeking permission, but Justin’s focus was on the silly grin embellishing her beautiful face.  

“You stopped singing,” he murmured.

“You stopped everything,” she retorted.

“I’m waiting for my ears to stop ringing,” he joked with her.  “You’ve got some serious power in your thighs.”

She smiled and stretched, catlike, with a velvet moan of contentment, and his obliging member to slip partially inside her succulent warmth.  Both their eyes rolled back in both their heads.  He’d not been inside a woman without a condom since the night he created Josie.  He’d forgotten how intensely sensitive and great it felt.  So, he pushed a little further.  And little more.  And more, and a groan ruptured from his throat, and he continued to sink deeper and deeper into Hannah’s shallow passage until he hit her cervix, and there was no more room for the remaining length.  Justin knew he didn’t have anything to brag about, but it still pleased his baser pride to know that her compact channel couldn’t take all of him without getting rough.

“More,” she growled, shaping her hips to fit all of him.

Justin’s forehead dropped to her shoulder as she squirmed, and he moaned, “I can’t go any further...I’ll hurt you.”

“I want more.  It feels so good...better...”

“That’s because I’m not wearing a condom,” he gulped, squeezing her hips with his hands to stop them from moving around so much.  He was having a hard enough time just being still.

“You’re not?” she asked, her head coming up off the pillows.

Justin could only shake his head as his body automatically inched out and plunged back.  Oh, hell, you’ve got to stop, man!  This is how it all started!  Yes, it feels good...so, so, very good...but, you can’t...you can’t...

“Oh,” Hannah said after a moment.  “Um...I have some, hang on.”  She twisted around and dug into the drawer of her nightstand.  The movement tortured Justin.  He embedded himself in her and sucked in lungfuls of air.  A cold, harsh plastic packet was pressed into his palm. “Here you go...just hurry.”

Justin stared at the condom.  It was the smart thing to do.  

She’s on birth control...it’s okay.  

No, that was reckless.  

She loves you, you love her...she’s not Beth; she’s not anything like Beth...it’ll all be okay.  

But Hannah gave him the condom.  She wanted him to use it.  

Does she?  You know how wonderful it would be without the barrier.  She thinks so, too.

“Justin?  Please,” Hannah pleaded.  “Make love to me!”

His eyes searched for her.  The gold and green combined in the special way which only meant she was allowing her passions to take control of her mind.  Make love to me...it was that simple.  But until now, he’d not been making love to her.  Because that one phrase was as serious to him as “I love you.”  It wasn’t a casual romp between the sheets.  “Making love” to someone meant so much more.  He loved her, too, so much, so he knew that he only wanted to “Make love” to her from now on.

“I can’t, Hannah,” he said, his brain fogging with incoherent thoughts.  “I can’t make love to you--”

Her eyes blinked with sudden fear and pain.  He held up the condom and elaborated, “Not with this, because that’s not making love.”

She frowned.  “I don’t understand.”

Aware that his erection jerked in protest of their inactivity, Justin sighed.  “Those words mean more to me, Hannah.  To me, making love is two people combining their bodies and their minds and their hearts without obstruction.  It is creating passion without anything between them.  And it can only happen when those two people trust each other completely, knowing what might result from their intimacy, and knowing that together they are one and can face anything that happens.  That’s making love, Hannah.  And if that’s what you truly want, I’ll gladly make love to you all day and all night.”

Two bright spots appeared high on her cheeks.  “Justin, I won’t get pregnant--”

“I know that,” he said.  “But I’m not only talking about babies.  I’m talking about us.”

Solemnly, she asked, “Do you love me, Justin?”

He wasn’t expecting the question, and he wasn’t prepared to answer yet.  He thought he'd have more time, but she'd already said it, so he just didn't know what to do.  “Hannah....”

“Could you ever love me?”

That one was easier to answer, so he managed to say, “Yes, Hannah, I could.  I've never made love before, so maybe today is a day for firsts.”

She smiled, exhaling.  “Then that’s good enough for me.”

“Are you sure?  You have to be sure,” he prodded, showing her the condom.  “We can go back to having sex like we used to.”

Hannah snatched the contraceptive from his fingers and tossed it across the room.  “No!  I’m not going back to that.  I want you to make love to me, Justin.  Even if you don’t love me...show me that you can.”

Yeah, he could show her, since he was too much of a coward to tell her.  He lowered his head, pressing a kiss to her mouth, and his irritating erection lurched for attention.  Hannah felt it and laughed against his lips.  “You’d better do something about that,” she whispered.  “Or it might start a rebellion.”

“Sorry, he’s got a mind of his own,” Justin apologized wholeheartedly.

“Hmm, then I think we should let him do all the thinking for a while.”

“With pleasure, Songbird.”

And Justin kissed her again, slowly, deeply, and allowed his body to take the reins.  Together, they became one, as he made love to his red-haired siren, and she breathed in his ear, “I do love you,” when their climaxes hit simultaneously.