He came to me, filling the doorway with a solid presence my panic soaked up with sudden relief. I gathered myself and made to stand, but he came to my side and offered a strong arm to help me to my feet before I could complete the move on my own.
I didn’t pull away.
He was warm and steady and oh so real in that moment. I should have distanced myself right away from his tall, lean form. I should have been as afraid of him as I was this purple room from my nightmares with its squeaky rocking chair and its wakening doll.
I wasn’t.
The magnet he had woken in me was in full effect. From our thighs to our chest, we came together and the press completely replaced my fear with another form of adrenaline. At the edges of my perception, I noted that the chair had stilled and the porcelain doll slept once more. But, by far, the balance of my attention was on La Croix. His wide solid chest was against my breasts. His muscular arms held me close.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he said and it was a rumbling murmur that sent answering vibrations down my spine.
I didn’t know if he meant “here” in this room or “here” at Belle Aimée. I thought maybe both.
“There is nowhere else,” I replied.
I didn’t remember other places and I’d been told he was legally my guardian until I could prove my competence. I couldn’t imagine doing that until my memory returned or I could distance myself from the painting that consumed my days. But the magnet that pulled me to him insisted that there was nowhere else but here, now, in the circle of his arms with our hearts beating fast and close together and his face tilting down close to mine, there was nowhere else to be. This past year—all my struggles, my painting, and the nightmares—had led me back to this room and his trembling touch.
Because he did shake.
I could feel contained emotion in his hands when he brought them up to touch my face. I resisted, afraid of what he might see in my eyes, but he was firm, tilting my chin with the press of his fingers against my jaw.
“I thought I’d lost you,” he said.
His words might have made sense to another me I no longer knew, a Chloe whose desire for the full sensual touch of the masculine lips so close to her own wasn’t tinged with fear and confusion. His warm breath teased across my mouth and his eyes searched mine as if he was still looking for the woman I searched for too.
“I am lost,” I said.
My voice matched his fingers, firm, but held there by force of will when tremulous tried to happen.
“No. I have you. I won’t let you go,” Jonathan murmured.
I lifted my hands and placed them over his on either side of my face. It should have been a defensive move. His intensity frightened me, but there was also a warmth rising up in me to meet his fingertips, telling me I was somehow fiercely glad that he wouldn’t let me go.
When he dipped his head to take the lips he held in place for his to meet, I tightened my grip on his hands, but not to push them away. I held on. I had him as much as he had me.
“Jonathan,” I breathed out on a sigh when the first press of his lips eased so he could draw back a millimeter to see… my reaction? My eyes?
His widened at the sound of his name spoken intimate and low because my utterance had been airy, but also eager.
He moved his hands back to thread into my hair. In the process, he cradled the back of my head and my neck, but he also held as if he was afraid I would pull away too soon. My hands ended up against his chest when he pulled my lips to his again. My arms were no barrier between us especially when one of my palms ended up over the heavy beat of his heart.
His mouth slid across mine. I didn’t struggle when he urged my movements—to tilt, to open to his questing tongue—because I wanted to tilt, to open. Oh God, I wanted to open.
My tongue met his and the beat of his heart pulsed beneath my hand, increasing until I felt its rhythm transferring itself through my fingers to every part of me. He moaned into my mouth and that too seemed to enter and flow and join with a marrow-deep vibration his touch and taste set off in me.
We were in my nightmare room, but it didn’t seem to matter. The rocking chair could begin to sway. The doll could lift its lids. A body could appear on the floor at our feet, but our visceral connection—skin to skin, lips to lips, tongue to tongue—and his heartbeat held in the palm of my hand was even more raw and powerful than any of those horrible things.
Finally, when I’d made the decision that oxygen was no longer necessary and that my starved lungs could explode before I gave up his mouth, Jonathan eased back.
“No,” I protested against his retreating lips. I didn’t want the kiss to end because I somehow remembered all I needed to know for our mouths to join. Like painting, the kiss was pure instinct. I was consumed; therefore, strengthened and whole in a way I wasn’t when my fingers were clean and my lips were alone.
“Not here,” Jonathan said, but his heart under my fingers said darker, hungrier things like ‘anywhere’ and ‘now’.
I let him lead me from the room. I stood behind him, seeing the purple walls, stilled chair and sleeping doll when he began to close the door. The dolls eyes were closed, but its body had slumped and fallen to the side. I was glad when the door clicked closed and Jonathan turned the key in the lock.
He pressed his palm against the door’s heavy panels with his head bowed for several seconds as if he willed it and all its contents to stay dormant and stale.
Then, he turned back to me in the darkened hallway.
“I won’t apologize. I’m not sorry. It would be a lie,” he said.
I looked up at his shadowed face. His eyes were light in the darkness, but they looked hollow as if I had taken something from him when I hadn’t fought the kiss.
I wasn’t as hollow as I’d been. The butterfly over my brow was replicated now inside my mind as if thousands of synopses fluttered and wakened and tried to fly. I couldn’t catch them. They were too flighty and light and quick. But they seemed to tickle long forgotten memories to life.
I had kissed Jonathan before.
“Don’t,” I said. I didn’t want him to lie. I didn’t want him to apologize. I was filled with enough regret for both of us. It ate at my insides with dull hungry teeth. I wasn’t sorry that we had kissed.
I was sorry that the kiss had to end.