Like
two kids who’d made some momentous discovery, they examined it, studied its
shape and form, marveled at the texture of this living creature before Casey
returned it to the water from which she’d plucked it.
He
was watching her with a bemused expression. “What?” she said.
“You
look about twelve years old, Fiore, playing in the water with the fishies.”
“Me?”
she said. “What about you? Jeans rolled up, sunburned nose—”
“At
least I don’t have seaweed in my hair,” he said, plucking out the offending
object and tossing it away. “You’re starting to look like the Wicked Witch of
the West. Good thing I know what you’re supposed to look like. Otherwise, I’d
probably run away in fright.”
“One
more crack like that,” she said, “and you’ll be hoofing it home.”
“That’s
what you think, darlin’. I’m the one with the car keys.”
She
leveled a long, steady look at him. And smiled wickedly. “I can find them,”
she said.
He
grinned and edged closer. “Maybe I was wrong earlier,” he said.
For
no discernible reason, her heart began to hammer. “About what?” she said.
“Maybe
this is the part where you’re supposed to sit on my lap.”
“And
search for car keys?”
He
toyed with a strand of her hair. “And search for anything your little heart
desires,” he said, and lowered his head toward hers.
Behind
her, a car door slammed, and the high-pitched voices of children floated over
the nodding beach grass. Slowly, her eyes opened and looked directly into his,
just inches away. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” he said. “I can’t take this any
more. Let’s go find a room somewhere.”
They
walked back to the car in silence. He popped open the trunk and she dropped in
her bounty of rocks and shells. He unlocked the driver’s door and got in,
unlocked her door, and without speaking, they busied
themselves adjusting seats and fastening seat belts. He started the engine,
released the emergency brake, stepped on the accelerator, and popped the
clutch.
The car came to a sudden, jerky halt, and he flushed. “Goddamn
Japanese cars,” he muttered, and started the engine again.
This time, he managed to keep it running. She lay her hand atop
his on the gearshift knob. “Where are we going?” she said.
“How the hell am I supposed to know? I’ve never been on this
frigging island in my life!”
So she wasn’t the only one who was a basket case. She wondered if
his stomach felt the way hers did, all hollow and jumpy and queasy. “Just up
the road,” she said with a calm she was far from feeling, “there’s a turnoff
that’ll take you back to Bar Harbor.”
He found the intersection, made the turn, and followed the
twisting road back through the wilderness, past beaver dams and rusted trailers
and road signs with bullet holes in them. Through Bar Harbor, with its
crumbling mansions, and out onto the main route that led back to Ellsworth.
There, perched on a sprawling hillside that looked out over Frenchmen’s Bay,
they found a motel that hadn’t yet closed for the season.
He left her waiting in the car, her insides knotted in terror. It
had been too long since she’d been with a man. She wouldn’t know how or where
to begin. She wanted to be perfect for him, but she wasn’t. Her neck was too
long, her breasts too small, and she had the tiny beginnings of crow’s feet
around her eyes. What if he found her lacking? What if she found him
lacking? What if they ended up destroying fifteen years of friendship?
The car door opened, and he got back in. “I rented a cabin,” he
said. “I hope that’s okay with you.”
A cabin was less impersonal than a motel room. More private. “A
cabin’s fine,” she said.
“Look,” he said, his gaze focused on the narrow road he was
navigating through the back forty, “there’s something I have to say before this
goes any further. I’m thirty-five years old. I’ve been married and divorced
twice, I’ve had some really lousy relationships, and in between, I haven’t
exactly lived like a monk.”
“You don’t have to apologize for your checkered past,” she said
softly. “I know all about it, and it doesn’t matter.”
“I just want you to understand where I’m coming from. For a long
time now, there’s been nobody. Not for lack of opportunity, but because I
haven’t wanted anybody but you.”
The cabin was immaculate, with knotty pine walls, a fieldstone
fireplace, and a magnificent mahogany four-poster bed. Casey looked at her
face in the mirror over the bathroom sink and was horrified by her windblown
appearance. Rob brought in her overnight bag, and she shut herself in the
bathroom and tried to repair the day’s damage. She washed her face with cool
water, brushed her teeth, her hair, and thought about hiding in the bathroom
until tomorrow. Was she afraid they wouldn’t be good together? Or was she
afraid they’d be too good together? She knew him better than anyone else in
the world. Why did she feel as if she were about to face a stranger?
While he took his turn behind the bathroom door, she stood gazing
out at the ocean that was so close she could hear its muffled roar through the
closed window. On Frenchmen’s Bay, a lobsterman was hauling traps. The
afternoon sun caught on some shiny object on the deck of his boat, exploding
with blinding brilliance. In the bathroom, Rob was running water into the
sink. Casey adjusted the window blinds to allow the sun in while still
ensuring privacy, and sat in the wicker rocker to wait.
In the bathroom, she heard the
screek
of the ancient faucet,
and the water stopped running. Then silence, and she wondered if he was
gathering his thoughts, and his courage, the way she’d done. The door opened,
and he came out, crossed the room slowly and sat on the floor in front of her,
his lanky body folded like a pretzel.
“Hey,” he said softly.
“Hey.”
He wrapped a hand around her ankle, snagged the strap to her
sandal with a finger and peeled it off. Deep inside her, something began to
pulse with a slow, measured thudding. He tossed the sandal aside, peeled off
its mate, and rested her bare feet on his raised knees. She wiggled her toes
against soft denim as he drew her feet slowly along the length of his thighs
and planted them flat on the floor on either side of him. Hands bracing her
ankles, he said softly, “C’mere, woman.”
There was only one direction she could go, down the length of
those lanky legs and into the valley between his knees and his shoulders, her
hips riding his, her knees flanking his ribcage. Even through all the layers
of clothing that separated them, she could feel that this was the way they were
meant to fit, man and woman, and in spite of her fear, already he had her so
excited she thought she would explode. “Told you,” he said lazily, “that I’d
get you on my lap before the day was out.”
In a voice like raw silk, she said, “Is this any way to treat a
lady?”
“Who the hell wants a lady?” he said. “I’d rather have a woman.”
She took his hand in hers and placed it on the upper
slope of her breast, just above her racing heart. “Well,” she said, “here I
am.”
“Your heart,” he said. “It’s thudding like a
jackhammer.”
“That’s how much I want you,” she said. “Just in case
you had any doubts.”
His hand lingered, warm against the curve of her
breast, while they studied each other, their rapid, shallow breaths mingling as
green eyes probed green eyes. Her fingers played up and down his arms, felt
the quivering tension in his muscles. Then his warm hand slid up to the back
of her neck and tangled in her hair, and all the breath left her lungs as he
closed the gap between them.
She knotted her fists in his hair and lost herself in
him as he kissed her until she was fluid and boneless, breathless and gasping
and senseless and giddy. She’d waited so long for him.
So long.
A
muffled moan broke from her throat as he worked his way from the corner of her
mouth to the soft underside of her jaw.
“This time,” he said hoarsely, “we’re not stopping.” She tipped
her head back and he ran his tongue along the spot where the pulse beat at the
base of her throat. “This time,” he said, “I’m taking you all the way. All
the way to heaven.”
“Yes,” she said, excitement billowing and swirling inside her. “
Oh,
yes
.”
He ran his thumbs up the inside of her thighs to the heated place
where they joined, and she gasped as he stroked her boldly, with no hesitation
or shyness because that was how it would be with them, they would love each
other openly and fiercely and in the broad light of day. His hands continued
their plunder, up over her hip bones and past her navel, and she was shuddering
with excitement when at last he touched her breasts. She closed her eyes and
forgot to breathe as he made slow, erotic circles around the sensitive peaks.
“Ohmigod,” she said.
“Feel good?” he whispered.
“Oh, yes.”
“Wait. It gets better.” He tugged at her shirt, bunched it up in
his hands as he pulled the wrinkled fabric from the waistband of her jeans.
Clutching soft white cotton, he popped open a single button. “I’m gonna get
you so hot—” Her heart lurched as he opened the next button. “—that you’ll be
jumping out of your skin.” The third button popped open, and he stripped the shirt
from her shoulders, worked it down her arms and off over her wrists. Her heart
thundered when he pressed his face to the damp hollow between her breasts.
“And then,” he said hoarsely, his mouth soft and wet against her skin, “I’m
gonna give you the ride of your life.”
She cupped his face in her hands and kissed his brow, the faint
webbing of laugh lines at the corner of his eye, the indistinct prickle of
whiskers on his jaw. He fumbled awkwardly with the front clasp to her
brassiere. Impatient, she helped him with it, and his laughter came out on a
warm gusty breath against her cheek. “I’m not nervous,” he said.
Her cheek pressed to his, her nose buried in his blond curls, she laughed.
First one side and then the other, he peeled back ice blue silk, damp and warm
and still molded into the shape of her breasts. “You are so damn beautiful,”
he said raggedly.
With the tip of his tongue, he traced a moist trail from her chin
down the column of her throat, followed the outline of her collar bone, the
slope of her breast. Just when she was sure she would die from the agony of
anticipation, he reached the swollen tip of her breast and took it in his
mouth.
She gasped. He drew on her deeply, suckling like an infant,
melting her, destroying her. She cradled his head in her arms, guided him as
he pleasured first one breast and then the other, robbing her of breath, of
sanity.
He stopped too soon, left her still hungry. With shuddering
fingers, she struggled with the buttons to his shirt. They refused to give,
and in exasperation, she yanked hard, sending several buttons skittering off
across the wooden floor. He shrugged off the shirt and they met breast to
breast, skin to skin, hands tangled in each other’s hair as they tasted cheeks
and ears and necks and shoulders, his tongue dipping into the soft hollow at the
base of her throat, hers exploring the prominence of his Adam’s apple.
He took her over backward to the floor, pelvis to pelvis, belly to
belly, heat to heat. Breathless, they paused to study each other, hot flesh
sticky against hot flesh. “This is all I’ve been able to think about all day,”
he said hoarsely. “You and me, together, like this.”
With a fingertip, she traced the narrow white scar that angled
downward from his ribcage to disappear beneath the waistband of his jeans.
“When did you have your appendix out?” she said.
“When I was twelve.”
“So many things,” she said with genuine sorrow. “So many things I
don’t know about you. The name of your first-grade teacher. What you were
like at twelve.”
“Sister Mary Elizabeth. And tall and skinny, with feet like Bozo
the Clown.” He closed his eyes. “Ah, baby,” he whispered, “you’ve got me so
damn hot.”
“I know,” she said. “I can tell.”
He opened his eyes again. “Yeah?” he said with interest. “How
can you tell?”
“I thought recreational sex was your area of expertise,
MacKenzie. Am I going to have to teach you
everything
?”
“I hate to burst your bubble, pudding, but this is not
recreational sex. This is love.”
“Oh,” she said, inordinately pleased by the sentiment.
“And you know what else?”
She drew his lower lip into her mouth, slicked her tongue over it,
released it. “What?” she said.
“No boundaries. Anything you want, just ask, and it’s yours.”
Although it was a joint effort, it still took them some time to
get her out of the rest of her clothes, since every so often they had to stop
to kiss or fondle, to taste or tickle, some heretofore unreachable portion of
anatomy. She scooted up onto the bed and sank deep into the goose down
mattress, watching in admiration as he peeled off the rest of his clothes in
the dying light of an October afternoon. He was beautiful, all lines and
angles, a splendid combination of hardness and softness, a work of art haloed
by the setting sun’s glow.