It took some doing to get his hand positioned, long moments during which she shamelessly spread her legs and sucked in her stomach, the better to stretch the elastic between her hipbones and give him room to maneuver. He chuckled, and if movement were possible she would have smacked him for that masculine laugh. As it was, the raspy sound combined with his fingertips moving lightly over her mound tightened every pleasure center in her body—nipples, clit; the empty, needy walls of her sex.
He parted her folds and circled her clit. When she moaned, he bent and covered her mouth with his, not hard, just lightly enough to remind her that she needed to be quiet. His movements were torturously slow, around and around, calculated to tease and provoke without much promise of release. His tongue traced the edges of her teeth, dipped inside to rub against hers, then withdrew again.
When his fingers slid lower, inside, she gasped, a sound he almost managed to stifle.
“Shh,” he said, then stroked her G-spot and pulled out.
“Don’t be a tease,” she said, a threat in the words.
“Don’t be so loud,” he replied, and resumed his lazy circles.
He brought her to the edge of orgasm twice, each time stopping to glide inside her and feel the ebbing flutters while she cursed him. By the third time she’d lost her words but for
please
and
no
, which she sobbed breathlessly into his mouth when he once again left her hanging on the edge of the abyss. He reached between them and gripped himself, nudging aside the panel of her panties to expose her cleft, then covered her mouth with his hand. The scent of her own arousal made her mouth water. The first touch of his cock to her tingling opening made her tense up. The first sliding stroke, gliding over nerve endings teased into hyperawareness, seated him fully inside her, made her arch her back and cry out against his palm clamped tightly over her mouth.
He stopped, embedded deep inside her, and once again let the tension ebb from her muscles. She undulated under him, set off a quacking in the box spring, and sobbed. Endlessly patient, he waited until she subsided.
“I’ll make you come, but we have to be very, very quiet,” he murmured in her ear.
It was a steady, relentless, prolonged movement, all in his hips, heightening her senses. She could feel the slow drag of the flared head of his cock as he pulled out, the slightly increased pressure on her G-spot each time he slid back inside. A single touch of his finger to her clit and she’d come, something she could have done herself if she’d had the presence of mind to think of it. Instead she focused on the way her damp camisole rasped against her nipples, the growing stretch of her inner thighs as she held herself open for him, desperate, taking only what he gave her, unable to reach for more without alerting everyone on that floor to exactly what they were doing.
Her legs drew up by his hips, her heels dug into his buttocks. Blood pounded in her cheeks, her throat, and her muscles trembled from being flexed for so long. When she tipped over the edge into release, each contraction jerked her rigid, her sobs once again caught in his mouth. She had a vague sense of him burying himself deep inside her and grinding his hips until he came without a sound.
All her muscles trembled as he breathed deeply above her. Then he pulled out. “That’s going to leave a mess,” she mumbled.
“I’ll put the sheets in the wash before we leave,” he said.
This she understood, the heat, the desire, the way her body recognized him as a risk every time they had sex. The room settled into a familiar spot in her mind, the purposefully charming atmosphere of a bed-and-breakfast. The rest of the day seemed like a dream.
“Have you brought anyone else home?”
He slid a glance at her, amusement tugging at the corners of his lips and eyes. “Why? Jealous?”
Yes. It was an unfamiliar emotion, and not one she was willing to admit to. “No. Just curious.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Lindy. Allyson, the woman I dated for a couple of years while I was on patrol in the Bronx. We run together two or three times a month. Sandy, who came after Allyson. She moved to Detroit with her new boyfriend, so I don’t see her at all.”
“That’s a relief,” she said, and hitched the covers more securely under her arm.
His golden brows drew down. “Why is it a relief?”
“I’m not special. Remarkable,” she amended. “You’ve done this before. Brought home a somewhat surprising individual.”
He tucked his train ticket into the book and closed it. “Yeah, I’ve brought home a tattooed Goth drummer and a vegan sous chef,” he said. He slid down under the covers and arranged himself to mirror her, on his side, head braced on his hand. He reached out with his right hand and picked up her left, tipping her wedding band back and forth with his thumb. “But I’ve never brought home a wife.”
That word again, that odd, unfamiliar word. The reverberating silence was back, Daniel’s even breathing echoing in her head.
The next part wouldn’t be so easy. She was taking him home, to England, for New Year’s.
Late December
“R
ight, then, who shall I list as the primary driver?”
Daniel rubbed his eyes with the thumb and forefinger of his left hand and fumbled for his wallet with his right. An hour of sleep on the flight from New York to London left him with the discomfiting brain slosh that characterized near-complete exhaustion. “Me,” he said.
“I’ll drive,” Tilda said.
They stood at the rental car counter at the airport, their bags clustered around their feet. Winter sunlight filtered through the windows, washing everything out. The airport bustled along, travelers coming home from Christmas or leaving to ring in the New Year somewhere warm or exotic. The holiday decorations felt out of place given the unseasonably warm temperatures that had settled over the UK the week before. Based on the weather forecast, he’d brought a jacket with a zip-out lining. The jet lag, the warm weather, and the holiday decorations added up to his perception of being out of time, out of place.
He looked at Tilda as he added yet another item to the list of things he was learning about her. “You drive?”
“Of course I drive,” she said. Perhaps the jet lag was affecting her differently. After two flights to London in the last month followed by late-night phone calls all over the world, her body clock had to be completely jacked.
“I just didn’t know you did.” He’d seen her on the subway, in taxis, on the train to Long Island, but never behind the wheel.
“I don’t drive in New York, but who does? It’s the whole point of the city, not needing a car.”
“I drive,” Daniel said firmly, attempting to regain control of the situation. “I am a licensed driver, a sworn officer of the law, and scored first in my class on the training course.”
“Yes, but you’re jet-lagged whereas I’m accustomed to travel, and you’ve never driven in the UK, while I have.”
“I assume you rent to first-time American drivers all the time,” Daniel said.
“We do, sir,” said the unflappable clerk behind the counter. “As long as they present a valid driver’s license, proof of insurance, and a valid bank card, we rent to anyone. Even Americans.”
He turned to Tilda. “Do
you
have a valid driver’s license?”
Tilda pursed her lips. “I did.”
Daniel narrowed his eyes at her. She smiled back, firing on all twelve cylinders. Maybe she was just running on adrenaline. She looked a little wild around the eyes. “I’m driving,” he said to the clerk, and slid his driver’s license out of the clear slot in his wallet.
“Of course, sir.”
The clerk typed information into his computer. “It’s a rental car counter,” Daniel said. People could talk all they wanted about globalization, but this was definitely England. “LaGuardia has one, Kennedy has one, and they all feel pretty much the same. But this one feels different. It’s definitely not home.”
She looked around, as if seeing the place for the first time when she’d been in and out of Heathrow ten times in the last six months. “It’s the teeth,” she said.
He laughed. “Teeth.”
“Americans are obsessed with perfect teeth.”
“We are?”
“Braces, whitening, crowns and caps. You can tell an American by the smile.”
He looked at her slightly crooked lower teeth, the hint of a gap between her incisor and her front teeth. “So this feels like home to you?”
She looked around. “Airports certainly do,” she said.
Twenty-five minutes later they stood behind a car not much bigger than his mother’s bread box. “You might have to ride on the roof,” he said.
“You should let me drive,” she said, watching him attempt to cram their suitcases into the trunk.
“Number one, you don’t have a license that’s valid in either the US or the UK. Number two, and perhaps more important, the thought of you, who happily sits on ledges two hundred feet above the street, behind the wheel of anything more powerful than a golf cart makes me break out in a cold sweat.”
She laughed delightedly, as if it were the highest compliment he could pay her, a frisson of terror skittering over his nerves, and opened the driver’s side door. The passenger side door, actually. This was going to take some getting used to.
“You think this has more power than a golf cart?”
“I think you might have to get out and push,” he said. “Buckle up. How are you with maps?”
“I am brilliant with maps,” she said.
His brain preoccupied with shifting with his left hand and steering with his right, he paid little attention to anything other than traffic signals and other cars on the road until they cleared the heaviest of the London suburbs. They stopped to get coffee, then got back in the car. “Did you drive yourself back and forth from London?”
“I took the train, then a bus,” she said, then gestured to the left. “The motorway entrance is just there.”
He turned on his blinker, pulled past a line of waiting cars, and merged into traffic. Tilda dissolved into laughter, sliding down in her seat and holding her stomach.
“What?” he demanded. “What’s so funny? What did I do?”
“You just bypassed an entire line of cars waiting to make that left-hand turn. You were in the oncoming traffic lane!”
“Jesus Christ.” That explained the shocked looks from the drivers, who were actually passengers.
Giggles shuddered through her shoulders, and she clapped her hand over her mouth.
“Stop it. I need to focus.”
That set her off worse. He gritted his teeth, kept the car at precisely the speed limit, and waited for her to laugh herself out. “I can’t wait to see how you handle roundabouts.”
“I can handle a roundabout,” he said grumpily.
“I have complete confidence in your driving ability, Daniel,” she said. She smiled and turned her attention to the scenery.
“Excited to see Nan again?”
“Very.”
The road followed twists and curves through rolling fields. Occasionally he could see the sea, glinting through a valley in the distance, the grassy land dropping sharply away to rocky coves and cliffs. They drove past seaside hotels and luxurious estates, and through villages, where they stopped for a picnic basket from Darts Farm, the contents of which cost more than an expensive dinner for two in the city. Either city.
Her energy changed as the sun rose in the sky, like she was drawing strength from the land and sea. Her knee bounced until she flattened her palm on it, forcing it to stillness.
“How much longer?”
“Not long. A few minutes,” she said, as much to herself as to him. “It’s the most beautiful place on earth,” she added, without a hint of irony. “I’ve traveled all over the world. But there is nowhere,
nowhere
, as beautiful as Cornwall.”
“It’s pretty spectacular,” he agreed.
“Turn here,” she said.
They exited the main road to a narrower, more winding road that wound through a cluster of well-kept shops and freshly painted municipal buildings. Daniel carefully navigated the car down the single-lane road. The harbor, not much bigger than a cove, peeked through the roofs and white-painted houses. Stretched to the end of the chains, boats rested on the rocky bottom while the sea lapped at the breakwaters constructed a dozen yards farther out. “That’s some tide,” Daniel said.
“The breakwaters were constructed during Henry VIII’s reign,” Tilda said absently.
“They’re older than the United States,” Daniel mused.
“Most of England is older than America. That’s our inn,” Tilda said, pointing at a charming stone house perched behind a stone wall protecting the village from the sea. The water was placid, pale green shading to deeper colors as it stretched to the horizon, but he had no doubt a winter storm would hurl the ocean at the inn’s windows. “No, don’t pull in. Nan’s expecting us. Up the side of the harbor, along there. I just wanted to show you the town before we go on to Nan’s.”
Above the village she directed him along a hedged lane to a dirt path leading to a tumbledown little cottage. The house had the barely claimed look of a place losing the battle with nature. Tall grasses waved in the yard not fenced off into a small, dormant garden layered with manure. Chickens clucked and squawked in an enclosure, and a few sheep dotted the hillside that swept down to the ocean. He’d imagined Tilda growing up in a London town house, or in a Harry Potter version of suburbia. Now that he’d seen Davies Farm, he couldn’t imagine her anywhere else.
Tilda stumbled out of the car with uncharacteristic clumsiness and closed the door. “Nan?” she called.
“Round back,” came a strong voice.
Tilda hurried up the front path, which was flat stones set right into the sod, and followed a branching path around the house to the back yard. Daniel followed more slowly, stretching his back and legs, giving Tilda a moment with her grandmother. He heard a cry of unadulterated joy, and smiled as he strolled around the house. The back yard, or garden, as Tilda would call it, sloped gently to an orchard of twisted fruit trees and a tangled bramble of bushes. His imagination supplied the scent of fruit. An uneven stone patio held a weather-beaten wooden kitchen table painted a bright pink, and mismatched chairs. A stone wall extended from the house before tumbling into the ground. Climbing roses grew everywhere.
He found Tilda hugging her grandmother, eyes squeezed shut. The older woman had Tilda’s height, or did before age hunched her back. What little of her hair he could see under an enormous straw hat was white, not gray. Lines bracketed the soft skin around her mouth and eyes the same color as Tilda’s. Sturdy pants, a pilled, shapeless cardigan in a faded red, and a barn jacket hung on her nearly skeletal frame. A pair of Wellingtons that looked old enough to have been worn by the duke himself, slapped against her calves.
“Daniel, this is my Nan. Nan, this is Daniel.”
“A pleasure to meet you, ma’am,” he said.
She studied him for a moment. He stood quietly under her gaze, hands in his pockets, and let her draw her conclusions.
“He’s a handsome one,” she commented without looking at Tilda.
“Don’t spoil him, Nan. It’ll go to his head.”
He smiled at them both, content to let them tease him.
“You both must be starved. I’ll make tea,” she said, and drew the dirt-smeared gloves from her hands.
“Nan, we’ve been sitting since we left America, and we brought a picnic basket. Shall we eat outside? The weather’s gorgeous.”
It wasn’t that warm, but after a night in a plane, Daniel understood the desire to be outside, in sunshine and a sea breeze. “I’ll help,” Daniel said.
“No,” she said. “I’ll do it.”
He dropped the keys into her outstretched hand. She trotted back along the flagstone path to the car, and returned with the picnic basket, then slipped through the back door, into the tiny house. “Would you like a tour of the farm?” Nan asked.
“I’d love one,” he said.
They walked down the slope, into the trees. The air was crisp, sharp, scented of both land and sea, a scent that reminded him of Tilda. It rose from her skin, he realized, like her bones were made of the same wood as the trees, like the blood in her veins was the ocean. Nan named the varieties of fruit, patting the trunks like old friends.
“Do you make jam from them?”
“Oh, yes. It keeps me busy, and out of doors. Raspberry, Cornish gilliflowers, and black currants. Some strawberries, but they don’t often do well. The climate’s stressful for the plants, so we don’t get much fruit but what we do get has great flavor. How was your flight?”
“Fine,” he said.
“And when do you leave for London?”
“A couple of days. Tilda wants to look over some locations for the expansion. Her mother is hosting a dinner party for us.”
“I’m sure it will be lovely.” Nan stroked her hand along the branch until it reached the tip. “Elizabeth missed so much of Tilda’s childhood. She was such a dear little thing. Big eyes, black hair, like a sprite in the forest. She was constantly dirty. Did she tell you that?”
“No,” he said, trying and failing to imagine cat-clean Tilda smudged with dirt.
“Wild as a mink that girl was.”
“That I can imagine,” he said with a smile. “Have you lived here long?”
“In the village or in this house? The village, all my life. The house, since I married, although it’s a good deal older than that.”
“And your husband?” he asked as they strolled back up the hill to the house. He kept a sharp eye on her, worried about the uneven terrain and her loose boots, but she walked slowly, her gaze on the ground.
“Long dead. Tilda never knew him. He was also a good man. She has cousins in the village, but they’re not close.”
They reached the transition where scrubby grass became tended garden. The table was covered with a linen cloth frayed at the edges and faintly stained. Bone china cups, saucers, and plates were neatly set, the butter dish matching the pattern, but wisteria, not lilies, ringed the creamer and sugar bowl. He held a wooden chair for Nan, waiting until she found an even spot on the stones, then sat down next to her.
Tilda came out with plates balanced on her inner arms and carried in her hands. Daniel lifted one eyebrow. “I waited tables in college,” she said in explanation.
“We’re still getting to know each other,” he said to Nan.
“A lifetime job with her,” Nan replied.
After a prolonged look at the murky depths hidden by Tilda’s bright-burning surface, he was beginning to agree. Unmistakable differences characterized this casual tea in the late-afternoon gloaming and the polished perfection of New York’s cocktail parties and dinners.
Tilda set a sturdy teapot in the center of the table. “There,” she said, satisfied, and sat down.
“My dear, this is lovely. What do we have?”
“Well,” Tilda said. “We’ve got cheddar made near Exeter that seems to have won some sort of award, olives, freshly baked bread, two quiches, yogurt, scones, crackers and chutney, charcuterie from a local farm, and dessert.”
They ate while the sun traced a slow arc in the sky. Nan didn’t ask the questions about how they met. In fact, she seemed to know all about Daniel, his job, his family, his history with Tilda, which surprised Daniel in his jet-lagged state, until he remembered the letters, crossing the Atlantic once or twice a week for over a decade. He felt a little like one of those letters, flattened, colorless, only thinly connected to New York now that he was in Cornwall. Nan brought Tilda up-to-date on the latest news from this tiny, unknown, almost forgotten part of the world, a running conversation about people and places. Daniel watched, and listened.