AT FIRST, MIA COULDN’T get her bearings. Was it the moonlight that awakened her? It poured through her bedroom window in a silver-white pool, so bright that she had to turn her head away when she opened her eyes.
It took her a moment to realize that Jeff was beside her. He’d still been at the warehouse when she went to bed, but he was here with her now. He had pushed her nightshirt up to her hips, and his thigh was planted firmly between hers.
“Jeff?”
“Shh.” He quieted her with his lips and his tongue, his kiss so deep and long and breathless that she felt herself rising up, floating above the bed, still half in sleep. Was she dreaming? Or maybe it was actually morning. Maybe the moon was the sun.
She could see the clock on her dresser. Ten-twenty-eight. He kissed her again, and when she closed her eyes, the green digits of the clock still floated in front of her. When he drew back, she ran her fingers over his face—over his chin, his cheekbones, his temples, as if he were clay—and there was the satisfaction that what she felt beneath her fingers was identical to what she had created in miniature.
His hands slipped under her nightshirt. There was an impatience in him; his usual gentleness was missing. If she hadn’t known him, if she hadn’t trusted him, she might have been afraid. The heat and the moonlight and his hunger made her restless herself. She threw the covers off, not even thinking of how her chest would look in the bright pool of light from the window. When he began nuzzling her breast, she arched her back, straining against his thigh where it pinned her to the bed, struggling to move, to bring him closer.
“Please,” she said.
He shifted on the bed until he could slip inside her, thrusting into her with a groan. She moved with him, running her hands over his shoulders, the small of his back, his hips. She couldn’t lose the ethereal feeling of this lovemaking, as though they were touching each other in their sleep, as though when she woke up she would be alone, with just a hazy, not-quite-real memory of his closeness.
Afterward, she shut her eyes and saw the white disc of the moon behind her eyelids. Jeff started to lift himself from her, but she closed her arms around him to keep him there. Against her ribs, she felt both their heartbeats; she couldn’t separate his from hers, and she was nearly lulled back to sleep by their rhythm. It was only when the coyotes began to howl that she sprang fully awake, the world outside her bed suddenly real and intrusive. She felt the entire length of Jeff’s body stiffen above her, and she knew then. She understood the reason for his rushed and wordless lovemaking, for the urgency in his kisses and the desperation in his touch.
“No, Jeff,“ She’d planned to be strong for him. She had gone over and over in her mind how she would handle it when he told her he was leaving, and in her lucid, waking moments, she could see herself reacting bravely, supporting him wholly in what he needed to do. But she had expected him to tell her in words, not this way. Not in some dream-like rush that left her drained and defenseless. She swung her head from side to side on the pillow. “No, no, no.”
He raised himself to his hands and slipped out of her, then sat next to her on the bed, stroking her cheek with one warm hand.
“She knows, Mia. I have to go.”
She pressed his hand tightly to her cheek with her own fingers.
He gave her his old half-smile. “Have you finally figured out that you are a very desirable woman, and that there will be other men for you?”
“I don’t want other men,” she said, but she knew he was right. There could be others if she wanted them. For a moment she couldn’t even remember why she thought there wouldn’t be.
“And when you meet one you want, wear the damn chemise for him, okay? You’re alive now, Mia. You’ll look great in it.”
“Shh.” She pressed her fingertips to his lips.
“I brought the cat over.” He nodded toward the window where she could see the slender dark silhouette of his still nameless feline. “You’ll take care of him for me?”
“If you’ll stay till morning,” she bargained.
He shook his head. “If I leave now, I can be a few hundred miles away by daybreak.”
A few hundred miles! She clutched his arm, the reality of his leaving suddenly hitting her. “In which direction? Please, just give me an idea of where you’re headed. At least give me the comfort of being able to picture you someplace.”
He shook his head again. “No, Mia.”
She sighed and bit her lip.
“Do you know how strong you are?” he asked.
She shrugged. She didn’t feel strong at the moment.
“You’re one of the strongest people I’ve ever met,” he said.
“Then why do I feel like I’m five years old and I’ve gotten separated from my parents at the zoo and all the animals are about to be let out of their cages?”
“And they haven’t been fed in weeks?”
“Right.”
“It’s temporary,” he said. “A temporary setback. A normal reaction. In a day or two your resilience will take over, and you’ll be fine.” He lay down next to her. “I’ll stay until you fall asleep, all right?”
“Then I won’t sleep at all.”
“Yes,” he said. “You’ll sleep.”
And although she fought the lure of her dreams, when she next opened her eyes, the overcast light of a rainy day filled her room. She had wrapped her arms around Jeff in such a way that she thought he could never get free, but he was gone. She was alone. Only the cat keeping watch at the window let her know he had ever been there at all.