“You won’t win any gold medals,” our instructor told us after our last lesson. “But you can save yourself.”
I burst through the water, chunks of ice battering my cheeks, scraping my arms. My lungs scream for air. I gulp a breath. Before I sink again, hands, steady and sure, clasp my wrists. I feel as light as a snowflake. In moments, I’m on the dock, then cradled against someone’s chest.
I brace to push away, but then see who holds me.
It’s George.
“Oh, sweetheart,” he’s saying, his words a whisper, a murmur, a plea. “What did he do to you? What did he do?”
My teeth chatter so hard, I can’t answer him. Someone tosses a blanket over my bare legs, but it’s still not enough.
“Oh, my God, oh my, God, Peri, Peri, Peri.” Athena sobs and clutches at both me and George, pulling us too close. We’re soaked and we’ll ruin her dress. “What were you thinking?”
Talking is beyond anything I can do at the moment. I send a pleading look at George, willing him to interpret my thoughts and weave a story that will get my sister back to her wedding.
“She told me she was going to do this,” he says, “earlier in the evening.”
“But she can’t even swim.”
George shifts me in his arms, deftly disengaging us from Athena. “Oh, I think she can. I think she can swim just fine.”
David arrives. His eyes go huge, but some tacit agreement passes between him and George, some sort of secret best friend guy thing. A moment later, he’s tugging Athena into his arms, leading her back to the wedding reception, getting her to laugh.
As George carries me up the balcony steps, I cast my glance around, a frantic heartbeat rising in my throat.
“Shh,” George says. “He’s gone.”
I relax into his embrace.
Caleb never was very good at dealing.
Chapter Eight
IN MY SUITE, George undresses me, although there is little left to peel off of my body. Still, he does, with careful fingers. I stand, naked and shivering on the bath mat while water flows into the tub.
His tuxedo jacket is crumpled on the floor, ruined, I’m certain, thanks to icy lake water.
“Hang on, sweetheart,” he says. “Let’s get you warm again.”
I want to tell him no amount of steam can melt the ice, but my teeth chatter too hard.
George pushes up his sleeves, but by the time he helps me into the bathtub, the dress shirt is soaked. I sink beneath the surface, my hair floating above me. Unlike my plunge into the lake, this is a slow caress of water. Warmth returns to my toes, my fingertips, my nose. I emerge to find George’s worried face mere inches away.
His eyes lock with mine.
“I’m here,” I say, a little breathless from my time beneath the water and the intensity of his stare.
“Yes,” he says. “You are.”
When I’m completely pink from the water and steam, I step into the towel George holds for me, step into his embrace. Again, his skin is so warm, I feel its heat through the thick Turkish bath towel.
He fluffs my hair with a blow dryer, then holds out a pair of underwear for me to slip into. He tugs them up my legs, and I wonder how being dressed by this man can be so sexy. Desire shimmers in his gaze, but he tamps it down. He will not make a move, not unless I ask him to. For the moment, I am without words to do so. For the moment, I am content to let him take care of me.
He eases me into a pair of oversized flannel pajamas and then bundles me in the resort’s thick terrycloth robe. By the time he settles me by the gas fireplace, room service has delivered hot chocolate.
He sits in a chair opposite me, his legs stretched out in front of him, a bottle of beer in loose fingers.
“You can talk,” he says, “but you don’t have to.”
It’s nearly impossible to relate a narcissist’s love affair without swallowing past the shame. There’s a special mortification for those of us who are unlucky enough to fall in love with one. I have no doubt every single tale begins with
Once Upon a Time
, but never ends with
Happily Ever After
—not unless the person in question enjoys walking a long and lonely emotional tightrope.
But I try to explain to George. I start at the beginning, how at first, it’s amazing; Caleb was amazing. You understand him, he says. You’re his world. What you don’t understand, not at first, is what he means by
his
world. It is his world, and his alone. Slowly, he will pare away those things he doesn’t like about you and
your
world. Friends? Nope—they take you away from him. Family—why do you care? They are grasping and needy and probably neglected you. He won’t neglect you.
You can’t tell the narcissist’s love story without looking weak-willed. You can’t be the strong woman who graduated summa cum laude, who speaks three languages and translates scientific documents and still bend to someone else’s bidding so easily.
I go back even further, to my mother’s drinking, to my father’s death, to Athena, at nineteen, clutching my hand at our mother’s funeral and vowing to take care of me. At last I admit my disgrace: how Caleb almost had me convinced Athena’s love was neglect—or worse, abuse. How I almost believed him. How I almost shut her out of my life.
How at last I wrote him a letter because I knew if I broke up with him in person, he’d talk me out of it. How I wrote the pages in a notebook, then carefully tore them along the perforation, because I knew he’d criticize the ragged edges. How even then, on the verge of casting him off, I bent to his will.
How I left for a week, only to return to find Caleb had been busy—both in bed and out. How he turned all our friends (his friends, really) against me. How for months, I talked to no one except a widower in his seventies and a housewife in her fifties.
“So you’ve told Athena this?” George asks, and his voice is as soft as the terry cloth.
I nod. “Most.”
“What does she say?”
“That if you don’t date an asshat, or a sociopath, or a narcissist, you’ll end up marrying one.”
“Excellent advice, but I don’t think she wanted you to date them all at once.”
I clamp a hand over my mouth, but tears rush in after the laugh, drowning it out, flooding my face in a torrent I have no hope of stopping. And George is there, taking me into his arms, smoothing my hair, letting me drench the last piece of dry clothing he’s wearing.
He cradles me against his chest and tucks me into bed. Then he sits by my side, and I think he must be the most patient man in the world.
“Don’t leave,” I whisper.
He closes his eyes, a near grimace on his face. “Peri, sweetheart. After everything—”
“He’s gone,” I say. “And I’m not fragile. I won’t break in half when you’re not here in the morning.”
“That’s just it. I want to be here in the morning. I don’t want to catch the redeye out of here.” He runs his knuckles along my cheekbone. “Maybe I’m the one who’s fragile. Did you think of that?”
He has me laughing, and perhaps it’s this that changes his mind.
“You are strong, Persephone Jones. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
* * *
Still dressed, George crawls in beside me. He throws the covers over our heads. I stifle a giggle. He goes for the buttons on the flannel pajamas, working them slowly, deliciously. I tug at the soft, cotton undershirt, desperate to get it off him, to press my hands against his chest, to feel his heartbeat beneath my palm.
His abdominal muscles are taut and they flex beneath my touch.
“Are my fingers cold?” I can’t tell, since his skin is, as always, so warm.
“No, no. I’m just unusually …” he trails off.
“Horny?” I suggest.
He laughs and the sound surrounds us. “Yes, that. And it’s no small part due to you.”
This steals my breath. That this man wants me as much as I want him? My head swims with the notion, and I squirm closer to him, trying—without much success—to undo his tuxedo trousers. Something rips and I freeze, petrified I’ve ruined this last piece of clothing.
He merely laughs. This, I think, is what makes him so strong, his ability to laugh at the world. Then he yanks on the pajama top and the pop of buttons fill the air. We wriggle out of the rest of our clothing. Then his hands, his mouth. They’re everywhere and I’m not certain I’ll survive the onslaught. His fingers skim my breasts, teasing my nipples, making them ache, making me ache. I arch my back as if in search of his weight. I need more of him, all of him.
His kiss is slow, deliberate. I open my mouth to take all of him in. I capture his moan and it mixes with my own. He moves lower, blazes a trail across my throat, and lower still to capture one of my aching breasts in his mouth.
I shudder, desire pooling in my belly, wetness between my legs. He wedges a thigh between mine, and he must feel how wet I am, how wet he makes me. I clutch his back, my fingers exploring the fine cut of his muscles.
“Jesus,” he whispers, his mouth near mine again. He kisses along my jawline, my neck. “I don’t know how I’m going to get enough of you.” This time, when his mouth dips lower, covers a breast, it doesn’t stop there.
He strokes my hips, lips hot on my stomach, then on my thighs. His fingers go exploring. They tickle and my hips hitch. His breath is hot against my folds, and the sensation sends a shiver through me. I feel the rush of desire, his fingers tracing patterns in the wake of his breath.
The strokes are slow, parting me, touching me. I think back to the tiny coach-class restroom. Not even my wildest fantasies can compare to him.
“I wanted you from the start, you know,” I tell him. “In the airplane.”
“The airplane?”
“I was going to ask you to join me in the mile high club.”
And if his breath is hot on me, his laugh is double. “I’m glad we waited, if only so I can touch you, taste you.”
My breath catches. His mouth hovers over my pussy, and I feel it clench in anticipation. He rims my opening with a finger, then his tongue. Then his mouth moves higher and his finger takes over again, easing inside me the moment his tongue touches my nub.
I cry out, knot my hands into the sheets to keep from bucking wildly against him, from losing control. I so want him inside me, but his mouth is unrelenting. He is unrelenting. But I need his weight. I need him.
“George, please,” I say, my words either a plea or a prayer. I can’t be certain.
He draws his mouth away, but doesn’t stop stroking and thrusting with his finger. He explores the tender juncture between hip and thigh, his tongue making circles that drive me crazy. He continues, upward, over my hipbone, darts his tongue into my navel in a move that makes me squeal.
Then I have him, his weight, all of him. He is between my thighs and I wrap my legs around his waist, pull him close. With one hand, he scrabbles for his tuxedo trousers. In seconds, the condom is on. He is not a man to put me at risk, disregard my safety. And I spread my legs wider to take him inside.
His cock teases my opening, much the way his fingers and tongue did. It slips against my clitoris, and I thrust, hoping to capture him. But George is taking this slow, and again his tip dips inside me, stretches me, makes me want him that much more.
When I’m in a frenzy, when I think I can’t take another playful foray, he drives himself deep inside me. We freeze like that, with his cock buried in me, his hand clutching the back of my head, mouth searching for mine.
He feels just right like this.
His exhale is a blast against my ear, the sound of it full of desire. Then he moves again, and I match him, thrust for thrust. One hand stays locked behind my head, the other inches downward, and finds a path between our bodies, slick with sweat, his thumb finds my nub.
When it does, I am no longer ice. Fire consumes me. I clench around him, unable to stop myself from bucking wildly this time. His thrusts go deeper. He rams himself into me harder.
When he comes, I am certain I’ll never be cold again.
* * *
We disentangle slowly. He eases out of me, dispenses with the condom all before I can miss his heat. Then I am in his arms again, my back flush against his chest. My ass brushes his cock and it twitches, hardens despite what we’ve just done.
“I’m not sure my heart can take another round just yet,” he says.
I giggle like a schoolgirl.
He strokes my face, runs his fingers through my hair. My eyelids grow heavy, although I would very much like to do this again. Perhaps it’s the drama of the day or how secure I feel in his arms, but sleep isn’t far away.
“Just so you know, I would love to be here in the morning. I would feed you breakfast in bed, and make love to you again. And we would shower, and I would make love to you again. I’m sorry—”
“No,” I say. “No regrets. Okay? This night? It was more than I could’ve hoped for.”
“Oh, sweetheart.” He tugs me closer still and buries his face against my neck. He doesn’t say anything else, doesn’t need to. His skin is so warm and it is easy to sleep.