After I took a shower and while Ben did some more work on the cars, maintenance stuff that I couldn’t help with, I went out to the back yard and ambled around.
The sun began to fade and cast long shadows on the grass, and I realized it was past time to start on dinner. I hurried in from the back yard, only to stop short.
Alec was sitting on the couch.
“You’re home,” I said, and threw myself at him.
He caught me, laughing, and held me on his lap. “I missed you, too.”
“You’re early.”
“I let the others finish.”
“Good.”
He laughed again.
He adjusted me on his lap so we could look at each other. I noticed my notebook lying open on the table, not on the page where I’d left off.
“I hope you don’t mind,” he said. “It was open, and I was curious to see your sketches.”
I picked up the book, and he held it in front of us with his arm around me.
“It’s mostly just the back yard and beach,” I said.
He flipped the pages slowly. His eyes smiled at each one, and he seemed to examine, like someone who knows what they’re looking at, who can see the technique, more than just the picture, but also the feel of it.
He paused longer at the one of the clouds I did a few days ago. They were the spiraling kind, like right before a storm. His fingers reached out as if to touch the page. “Overcast,” he murmured.
“The sky is prettier with clouds in it.”
“It is,” he said as he met my gaze. “Rain is beautiful.”
I turned to the next page.
He looked back to the notebook.
Part of me regretted the next page. It was the one of the kanji symbols on his chest, the best I could remember them, anyway. I hadn’t worried about it at the time—no one ever saw my drawings.
His eyes were still smiling.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“Death is peaceful.”
“Why would you choose that?”
“My rebellious years.”
I shifted his jacket to the side and lightly traced the lines faintly visible through the white fabric of his shirt. “Do you like them?”
“Yes and no,” he said. “If I had it to do again, I don’t think I would, but they remind me of that time, of who I was. I don’t want to be that person again, and seeing the reminder in the mirror every morning helps me to remember the man I want to be.” He held my hand to his chest and added, “I try, but I don’t always succeed.”
“I think they’re beautiful.”
“Thank you,” he said, and then added, “This morning, I didn’t—I didn’t scare you?”
My voice was soft. “I’m not scared of you.”
The notebook slid to the table, and he touched my face, as if memorizing, as if he was fearful of forgetting.
His lips brushed mine. The kiss quickly deepened. I pressed myself to him, and he sat back against the cushions.
My self-control was lessening, like the slip of the tide going out. The urge to unbutton his shirt was more and more difficult to resist. I tilted my head against his, pulling my lips an inch away. He was breathing heavily, but he let me stop, didn’t push for more.
Then I moved my head to his shoulder. I attempted to focus my thoughts on something else, something other than the smell of his aftershave, the cut of his chest, the taste of him…“Thank you for the flowers.”
There was a smile in his voice, as though he knew exactly what I was doing. “You’re very welcome.”
“What’d the note mean?”
He laughed under his breath.
I sat up. “Well…”
“That would be cheating. You have to figure it out.”
“You have to at least tell me the language. French, right?”
He just raised an eyebrow. I huffed.
No one won an argument with him. I moved on. “Are you hungry?”
His expression changed, intensified. “Yes.”
Focus. “What would you like?”
“You.”
My breath stopped. He leaned closer, his lips at my ear, warmth fogging my mind. “Breathe, Adriane.”
Then his mouth was on my skin. I wrapped my arms around his neck and sighed at the pleasant prickling from the slight roughness of his chin. He took a deep and ragged breath and moved to just below my ear.
The front door opened.
He stopped, tensed.
“Uh...sorry, sir,” someone said, a woman. Zoe.
“Just leave it on the table,” Alec said in a level voice.
I didn’t look over at her. Surely, she’d seen Alec kissing my neck.
The sound of a plastic bag being set down on the table. “Anything else, sir?”
“No. Thank you, Miss Summers.”
“Yes, sir.” The light sound of her footsteps on the stone of the entryway.
“And, Miss Summers,” Alec added. “Next time there’s a delivery, send one of the men. You needn’t make the trek up the drive.”
Her voice was hard, more the tone I would expect to accompany curse words. “Yes, sir.” The sound of the door closing.
I looked at Alec.
He paused as he met my gaze.
“It’s nothing,” he said.
“She’s nice.”
He nodded.
“But it’s none of my business,” I added.
His jaw clenched, and then he looked over at the dining room.
I shifted to get up. “Are you hungry?”
He held on to me. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“To make you dinner.”
“It’s on the table.” He set me on my feet and led me to the dining room. The name of a caterer decorated the bag Zoe had brought.
“Sit,” I ordered when he reached for the bag. “You’re the one who worked today.”
He raised an eyebrow. “And you didn’t?”
Ben was a traitor. “You said I could have whatever I wanted.”
“Too damn cute,” he muttered. “I don’t know what’s worse—if you understood your effect and abused it, or this completely oblivious control.”
I looked into the bag and started setting containers on the table. He was kind enough to let me serve without further comment.
After we were done, he changed into some shabby jeans and a white T-shirt, and we went out back for a walk.
At the edge of the cliff, we watched the sun finish its descent into the distant waves. The peace was tangible. It was in the breeze, the way he held my hand, our silence. A part of me didn’t want to know any of the secrets he hid from me.
The sun sprayed through a gap in the clouds. And his eyes—they were so bright. The emerald color was radiant, like when light hits a dew-covered window. It bounces off each bead of water and expands the brightness until it glows.
He turned to look at me.
I touched his face and murmured, “Your eyes.”
“My mother’s”
“She must’ve been beautiful.”
“She was.” There was both pride and remorse in his voice, and something else, something that went deep, that defined him.
I squeezed his hand.
“May I show you something?” he asked.
I nodded, and he led me back toward the trees, to a path of trampled brush. We meandered slowly through the dense forest. The light continued to fade, but the green was still visible all around.
Eventually, the path opened to a small clearing just big enough for a little stone bench that sat in the middle, surrounded by flowering trees so tightly packed I could barely see the massive oaks and maples behind. They towered over the blooms toward the sky, as if hiding this spot, keeping its secret. The breeze moved gently, filling the air with the perfume of the fluttering blooms all around.
He led me to the bench. I sat, and he straddled to face me, and then lifted my legs so my knees bent over his thigh. I was wearing a little cotton skirt, the only casual skirt I owned, that I’d thrown on after my shower this afternoon. He rested his hand on the bare skin of my knee and stroked with his thumb.
“Do you like it?” he asked.
“It’s beautiful. Who made this?”
“My mother. Hanna told me she used to come here and read for hours.” He took a deep breath and looked away. I had the feeling he hadn’t talked about her in many years, not even with Hanna.
His expression was turning flat, removed.
I touched his cheek, and he met my gaze. I swore I could see into his mind, into the rigid paths of rationality. The disciplined, self-imposed torture lined the walls of his thoughts, poisoning his view. Most people probably saw him as cold and unfeeling, but I knew him. I saw past the detachment, past the anger.
And there it was, in his eyes, staring back at me. Guilt. This was part of what pulled him away from people, kept that barrier in place—he didn’t want to hurt anyone else. He’d probably felt this his entire life, from the time he first learned how his mother died.
I held his gaze, willed him to believe. “It wasn’t your fault,” I said. “She made the choice. She chose you.”
He continued to meet my gaze as though trying to understand, as if the concept was alien to him, as if he’d never considered another option other than fault, as if it’d been beaten into him. It was like watching a man who’d only ever known slavery being told he’d always been free and didn’t know it.
He leaned his forehead on my shoulder, and I stroked his hair.
The silence continued. The breeze died away, leaving absolute stillness. The only movement was my hand while I soothed him.
“Thank you,” he finally said.
His arm around my waist tightened, and I locked my grip around him.
The world stopped with us—no sound, no movement, only his slow, even breaths. Darkness enveloped us, made everything else disappear. Only he was visible.
I pressed my lips to his cheek, and a rush of heat surged through me.
He kissed my neck, like he was hungry for me. I tilted my head as he drifted to my throat, and then he found my mouth. There was no gentlemanly restraint this time.
His hand caressed down my leg to my ankle then back up, past my knee, pushing at my skirt to feel my thigh. My hands drifted across his shoulders to his back, holding on.
I forgot where we were, how to let go. I wanted to be with him.
Right now.
Then he began to slow.
His fingers trailed from my thigh along my hip to my back, and he changed to lightly brushing my lips before stopping. With gentle pressure, he pulled me closer to lay my head on his shoulder..
The only sound was again our breathing.
My breath wouldn’t slow. I kept my head on his shoulder and tried to focus, to think of anything other than…
His voice was low, with a slight strained edge. “I should get you inside. It’s turning cold.”
I definitely wasn’t cold.
He lifted my knees then stood as he swung his leg back over the bench. He took my hand, and we walked up the path toward the house. He kept an arm around me, warming and also guiding. I couldn’t see anything, until the dull moonlight touched the grass and faintly illuminated the texture of the brick of the patio and house. The only light in the house spilled in from the tall windows and showed us up the stairs.
I held his hand to lead him to my room. We didn’t talk. I wasn’t sure what I was doing, exactly. I just knew I didn’t want him to go away. My thoughts kept jumping out of my grasp. Trying to control my mind felt like trying to catch the breeze in my hands and hold on to it.
He sat on the sofa while I went to the other room to change into my nightclothes, my shorts and tank top.
He looked over when I came back out. Then he moved his gaze to the fireplace.
“Alec,” I said softly.
He looked at me again, only at my eyes, focused.
Then he stood and walked over. He pulled the blanket back for me, and I crawled into bed. His gaze stayed on the fluffy, white fabric as he leaned over me to cover me with the blanket.
As he moved to stand straight, his gaze slid up, across my chest.
He closed his eyes and pulled away. He glanced at the door.
“Stay with me,” I said.
He looked at me, only at my eyes. “You’re safe here, I promise.”
“Please.”
He slipped off his shoes and lay next to me but on top of the blankets.
“You’ll be cold.”
He shifted to allow me to pull the covers over him up to his waist. He turned sideways facing me and leaning close as he trailed his fingers down my hair then my neck. Something in his eyes seemed removed, controlled.
“It means a lot,” I said, “for you to be here with me.”
“You couldn’t possibly understand.”
I opened my mouth to ask what that meant. Then his fingertips brushed along the skin just below my ear, and my words lost their path.
I watched him as he continued to caress my skin, as his gaze followed his fingers. His chin tilted, and his lips parted.
And then he took his hand away and lay his head down on the pillow.
“You don’t look tired,” I said.
“You should sleep.”
We looked at each other for a few minutes. The details of the room around us blurred in the darkness. His eyes were deeply shadowed, just like his thoughts, like the image of himself that he showed the outside world.
I touched his tense jaw with my fingertips. “Relax, baby.”
“That’s very difficult for me.”
“I know.” I rested my hand across his temple and cheek. “Always so much going on in your mind, so many thoughts and speculations, plans and strategies.” I brushed my thumb along his cheekbone. “And such tight control.”
He said nothing.
“You need to relax,” I said.
“I can’t.”
“But you need to.”
His jaw tightened even more, up his temple.
I rolled closer and lightly touched my lips to his jaw.
He lay very still.
His scent fogged through my head. I kissed down his neck, and my hand rested on his chest, the hard curves of him.
Then my hand slid lower, down his rippled stomach. The tip of my tongue caressed his Adam’s apple. I moved closer and rolled him to lie on his back, lips still against his neck, his flushed skin.
“Adriane,” he said. I couldn’t tell if he was trying to stop me or if it was more of a sigh.
He laid a hand on my upper arm, maybe to push me back, maybe to pull me closer.
I pressed my lips under his jaw and whispered, “Alec.”
Then I was on my back, and he was kissing me. His tongue slid along my lips, and I opened my mouth farther. The kiss deepened. I felt like we were falling down a pit in the earth, never ending. The rush of the fall took my breath away.
I gripped at the hem of his shirt, and he shifted enough to let me pull it off. Then he pressed himself against me, his hand at my waist holding me to him, maintaining pressure. He slowly rubbed against my hip. I could feel him, his excitement, his erection. His hand slipped from my waist under my shirt, over my warm skin. His fingers smoothed over my breast.
My head rolled back into the pillow.
He moved his mouth to my throat. His breath was hot and thick against my skin.
His palm rubbed up my thigh, pushing my shorts out of the way, and his thumb caressed my hip, and then slid along the crease at the top of my inner thigh.
My breath stopped.
He trailed his lips over to my ear. His voice was low. “Breathe.”
My breath shook.
His lips trailed down my neck.
I bent my knee, allowing his hand to continue. His thumb just barely slid under my panties.
“Alec,” I sighed.
His lips curved against my skin, and his hand paused, as if to give me time to handle what he was doing, what we were about to do.
Then I shifted slightly, sliding my hand down his glistening chest and stomach, to the front of his pants. I knew it was referred to as hard when men were stimulated, but I hadn’t expected it to be quite like this. I trailed my fingers along him.
His mouth on my skin, he moaned.
I turned my head to find his lips. He kissed me deeply, like a starving man.
Managing it one-handed, I unbuttoned his pants. And then the faint yet remarkable sound of his zipper…
He grabbed my hand.
He rested his forehead on my shoulder, chest heaving and body strained.
I removed my hand from his gentle grip and touched his neck. I whispered in his ear, “It’s okay, baby.”
A pause.
He swallowed hard. “No, I can’t do this.” He rolled to his back, closed his eyes, and lifted his hands to his head, fingers combing through his hair.