Meeting Miss Mystic (35 page)

As though he could read her mind, his lips turned up tenderly and he whispered. “I love you, Zoë Holly. I love all of you.”

Her heart exploded with love for him and she couldn’t speak. The tears rushed from her eyes as she covered his hand with hers, lacing her fingers through his as he flattened his hand along the ravaged skin of her injured leg. She leaned forward to kiss him again, pressing her open mouth to his, their tongues finding one another urgently. She wrapped her arms around his neck, her fingernails scraping lightly against the short, prickly hairs there until she felt him shiver in her arms.

His hands returned to her hips, and he pulled his legs together, shifting her onto his lap as the skirt of her dress bunched up around her waist. He pulled her up against him until her chest was against his, positioning her over him until she felt his hardness through his pants, pressed against her bare skin. He must not have felt the barrier that panties would have created and one hand remained on her hip while the other slipped under the fabric of her dress. It slid slowly, agonizingly up the warm, soft skin of her thighs until it dipped inward, finding no barrier to the waiting mound of soft curls.

He tore his mouth away from hers like he’d be electrocuted. “You’re not wearing—!”

She touched her lips, smiling at him, holding his eyes. She panted softly as she shook her head back and forth slowly.

His eyes were wide and wild, his hand stilled and stayed over her most intimate place.

“Zoë,” he groaned through a strangled breath, two fingers stroking her softness.

“I want you,” she gasped, arching forward, knowing she was probably dampening the crotch of his pants with her arousal. Her blues eyes held his, her chest heaving with the force of her breathing, pushing into him, then back, then into him again. “I know we have a lot to talk about. But…”

His eyes burned for her. He flicked his glance to her lips, then back to her eyes, his fingers still stroking her gently. She surged forward to increase the pressure of his touch, and he groaned again.

“I want you to make love to me.” Her voice was thick and deliberate.

He searched her eyes, and for one, brief moment she wondered if he’d push her away, if he’d insist they should wait, or tell her they needed to sort things out first.

“My place or yours?” he asked in a low, taut voice, sliding his hand back down her thigh and holding her waist to help her stand up.

“Yours,” she answered, her insides hot and liquid. “Now.”

He stood up beside her, kissed her lips then pulled her back down the hallway, back out the double doors, back into his car, driving back to his driveway with alarming speed, without dropping her hand except when they got into the car.

When they pulled in front of his house, he cut the engine, but neither of them made a move to leave the car. His thumb rubbed the pad of her palm softly in silence and his other hand lingered on the steering wheel, staring straight ahead in the sudden silence of the car.

Finally he turned to her and her heart clenched in gratitude, in wonder, in disbelief…in belief, in spite of everything. He belonged to her. His eyes said so.

“Are you sure, love?” he asked softly.

“Paul. I am—” She reached out to cup his cheek with her palm and smiled back at him, her voice soft and certain. “—
madly
in love with you. I’ve never been so sure of anything in my life.”

He twisted his head just enough for his lips to graze her hand, his smoldering eyes holding hers.

“We still have a lot to talk about,” he whispered.

“We will. Later. Right now, I just need to be with you.”

As he drew back, his eyes narrowed briefly and he shook his head, love making his face soft and reverent. His words were trance-like, soft and rhetorical. “How did this happen? How did I finally get the girl?”

“You’re all turned around.” She grinned tenderly, stroking his cheek with the backs of her fingers, her body throwing off heat with the force of her want, with the strength of her love, with the certainty that he was all she would ever need. “The girl finally got you.”

***

An hour later, she lay beside him on her side, facing him, her arm under a pillow and her face illuminated by the moonlight that flooded his room from the window over his shoulder. His body mirrored hers, one of his legs thrown over hers, his arm resting on her hip and his face close enough to feel her breath on his skin, to stop talking and kiss her whenever he felt like it.

She was telling him about the group of older ladies who had accompanied her and the Lindstroms to the park, and he smiled distractedly at her, barely able to concentrate on what she was saying. She had a tiny, flat, dark mole on her face, on her left cheek, and he stared at it, marveling at it, wanting to own it and kiss it every morning when he woke up and every night before he went to sleep. He never wanted to get into bed again without seeing that little mole last of all things in the world before he fell asleep. He felt yearning for her, wild and real—a longing to own her, to possess her, even to hate her a little if that tiny brown speck was ever further from him than it was right this second.

“You’re not even listening to me,” she said, and he took a deep breath, gazing into her eyes.

“I am,” he whispered. “I can’t believe you’re here. I can’t believe we just…”

“We did.” She smiled and leaned forward a fraction of an inch to touch her red, swollen lips to his.

He pulled her closer until her breasts were pressed against his chest and his arms were totally around her.

“Don’t leave on Saturday,” he whispered against her shoulder.
Don’t leave ever,
whispered his heart.

“I have to,” she murmured.

He maneuvered her onto her back and braced his weight on his elbows so he wouldn’t crush her. He dropped a kiss to her lips, holding her face gently in her hands.

“Don’t.”

“I have to. I have, um, a surgery,” she swallowed, rolling her head to the side, hiding her scar, releasing his eyes.

“What?” he asked, softly tilting her head back up so he could see her eyes. His brows knotted together in worry as he stared at her.

She nodded and her eyes filled with tears.

“My face,” she whispered, and her shoulders shrugged a little, like she was embarrassed or uncomfortable, and he couldn’t bear it.

“When?”

She sniffled once as a tear spilled from her right eye, catching in the lavender crevasse before making its way into her hairline.

“C-Columbus Day weekend,” she murmured.

Columbus Day weekend. The weekend he was supposed to go and visit her.
Oh, my God. No wonder.

“That’s why,” he said, feeling terrible that his insistence on seeing her had forced her into this situation. “That’s why you didn’t want me to come. Why you had to come here instead.”

“Only partly,” she said, reaching up to cup his cheek, her cool fingers a relief on his hot skin. “I had to come to tell you the truth. No matter what.”

“I’m sorry, Zoë. God, no wonder you were so upset on the phone…”

She nodded, giving him a small smile. “I felt so bad. Making you stop talking, hanging up on you.”

“No. No, I was an…an ass to force your hand. I just wanted—I just wanted to see you. So badly.”

“I’m glad everything happened the way it did. It got us here.”

He leaned down and kissed her and she arched her body into his. And then there were no more words needed.

***

The tremors in her body were subsiding, but she shivered lightly in his arms, the aftershocks of their lovemaking raising goose bumps along the soft flesh of her belly and hip. His arm under her breast held her back tightly up against his chest and his lips rested on the back of her neck, panting slowly changing to breathing, though still fast and ragged against her damp, heavenly skin.

“Happy,” he murmured between breaths, his arm relaxing, then tensing, then relaxing again as the last shudders eased him into an exhausted, sated contentment. His eyes were so heavy, he closed them, burrowing into her neck. “Zoë, I’m coming to Connecticut. In October. I want to be there for you.”

She turned in his arms to face him and he opened his eyes to find her face stricken and hopeful at once. “Oh, you don’t have to—I mean, I don’t expect—”

He leaned forward, resting his lips against hers, more to stop her words than to kiss her. He moved his lips softly, brushing against her lips, licking them then brushing them again. When he drew back, he could make out her eyes in the moonlight, blue pools of worry, hope, uncertainty.

“I love you, Zoë.
I love you.
They’re not just words I said to get you in bed.”

“I know you didn’t. But, you also didn’t sign up for—”

“Yeah, I did. The second I said ‘I love you,’ I signed up for all of it. All of it. In fact, it’s mine. It’s mine now. It belongs to me.” He saw the muscles in her jaw clench and release, and he released her hip to brush her hair away from her face slowly, holding her eyes. “This is true love. Do you think this happens every day?”

She sniffled and grinned at him.
The Princess Bride.

He nodded and kissed her nose.

“So, I’ll be there when you go under and I’ll be there when you wake up, okay?”

“Okay,” she said. She tried to smile, but her lips didn’t quite turn up. “I don’t deserve you.”

“I don’t deserve you,” he murmured.

But the quiet sweetness of his declaration was interrupted by her stomach, which groaned and growled loudly between them. Her eyes flew open and she burst into an embarrassed chuckle.

“Do you have a small child in there?”

“Well…after tonight…”

“You said you were on the pill!”

“I am! I’m just kidding!” she said, raising her eyebrows and biting her lower lip in teasing.

“Quit that.”

“Why?”

“It drives me crazy.”

“Maybe I want you crazy.”

“You want round three?” he asked, jerking her body against his, evidence of his readiness obvious. “And here I was thinking you wanted dinner.”

She leaned back from him, grinning, eyes sparkling. “Can’t I have both?”

“You can have whatever you want.”

“Food would be good. Then I want to come back here and stay right here until the second I have to fly home.” She traced the outline of his lips thoughtfully, leaning forward to press a kiss against them.

“Speaking of you going home...”

“You’ll come see me in October. In three weeks.”

“I will. But, I can’t stay past the weekend. And I…I mean, I meant it at school tonight—when I offered you the job. Will you, I mean, would you consider—”

“Yes,” she said, taking a deep breath and releasing is slowly. He could see her making the decision before his eyes. “Yes, I’ll take the job. I’ll come back.”

“You’ll come back,” he whispered.

She smiled at him and nodded.

He clasped her to him, pulling her against his body and threading his hands through her hair, closing his eyes and kissing her neck.

“Will you live here? With me?” he asked, barely daring to hope.

“You want me to move in with you?”

“It will kill me if you living in this town doesn’t include you sleeping in my bed every night.”

“I wouldn’t want to be responsible for your death. I like you too much,” she said, and then more quietly. “I
love
you too much.”

“When can you come back?”

“Well, I have the surgery and then a follow-up appointment three weeks later, and…” Her voice trailed off and she looked away from him, thoughtful for a few seconds before finding his eyes again. “I have to work out things with Thea before I leave for good. I know this will sound weird, perhaps especially to you, in light of your history with her…but Nils said I reminded him of his sister, Jenny, and hanging out with him made me realize how much I missing being someone’s little sister. I need to make things right with her before I move here. I don’t know how long that will take. But, let’s say this…if she and I haven’t worked things out by Thanksgiving, I’ll come either way. I’ll be here by Thanksgiving at the latest.”

“Thanksgiving.” He couldn’t help the heaviness in his voice. It seemed like a million years away.

“But possibly as soon as Halloween,” she added. “I have a follow-up three weeks after my surgery, and after that, I’m done.” He winced and she shook her head. “I know it sounds bad, but it’s the last one. I’m sort of excited.”

“Well, I’m going to be a wreck.”

She kissed him lightly. “Don’t be a wreck.”

“So then what?”

“Well, I rent my apartment from Sandy, so I don’t have to break a lease. I’ll resign from my job with Stan when I get home and work the two weeks until the surgery finishing up projects for him. I don’t want to leave him in the lurch. He was kind to me, you know, when I was so lost.”

“It must have hurt to give up teaching.”

“You have no idea. I loved it.”

“You’ll teach again. In just a few months.”

She smiled and nodded at him. “Remember what I said before? At the school? You gave me hope. You gave me my life back. You keep doing it. Making things better. Making me better. How do you do that?”

“You let me. Maggie used to say....” He adopted a crisp Scottish accent. “Ye have all this bonnie romantic energy. I hate to see it go to waste.” He smiled at her, running his hand lightly up and down the warm, soft skin of her back.

“It’s not going to waste anymore.”

“Thanks to you.”

She narrowed her eyes, staring into his. Finally she blurted out, in an amazed whisper, “Why do you love me?”

He reached up and caressed her cheek, tracing the line of the scar gently, holding her eyes.

“Sweetheart, I’ve been waiting for you all my life.” The dueling images of Alice and Gia, of Princess Buttercup and Miss Temptation stood side by side in his mind until they merged like chalk on a sidewalk during a rainstorm and all that was left was Zoë. She was both. She was each. He didn’t have to choose. “You’re brave and beautiful and noble. Hot and mysterious and vulnerable. Strong, but you let me help you, love you. You’re funny and light…serious and dark. Adventurous and courageous, but still searching and uncertain and…you’re complicated and sad sometimes but then you smile or giggle and it’s like life can’t get any more perfect. You’re full of contradictions, and the thing is? The thing that scares me to death? I don’t know if I would have recognized you if we hadn’t happened the way we did. I wouldn’t have seen Miss Temptation. I would have been blinded by Buttercup. I wouldn’t have realized that what I actually wanted—needed—was both. Does that make any sense?”