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“You look really lovely,” I told her as she followed me into the house. Was this the first time I had seen her in a dress? I couldn’t remember. But I sure as hell could remember how amazing she looked tonight—the skirt skimming her long legs, showing off a few inches of her smooth, tanned skin. Her hair was loose over her shoulders, and a little damp. I wanted to run my fingers through it, but I kept them firmly at my sides. No point letting myself get distracted when I was here to talk.
“Thank you,” she replied, smiling sweetly. Did I see a little pink on her cheeks? Maybe I was reading too much into this. She had brought me here to talk, that’s what she’d said to me.
I’d left Celeste back at the clinic, though she had seemed rather annoyed to be spending another night there. There wasn’t much I could do about it. I just wanted to get Ellie on her own—selfish, I knew, but I had to talk to her to find out what was going on.
Besides, after the day or so she’d had, she deserved some respite. The house was filled with the scent of garlic and rich tomato, and I inhaled deeply, closing my eyes as I took it in. Damn, it smelled good.
“I’ve been cooking some dinner,” she told me when she noticed my reaction to the scents permeating the room. “If you’re hungry.”
“Starving,” I replied, realizing I’d hardly had time to eat that day, I’d been so busy with everything. I needed to get better at taking care of myself, but sometimes, it was hard to focus on me when there was so much else to do.
“And I hope you’re up for some wine,” she remarked, a smile curling up her lips. “Mom has a bunch, and I think we need to get rid of some of it before she gets back.”
“Red?”
“Of course,” she replied. “Can you grab the glasses from the cabinet? They’re just behind you...”
I pulled them out, and she took them from me, pouring us both a generous helping. After everything that had happened, I felt as though we deserved it. My doctorly opinion, of course.
“Thank you,” I told her as I touched the edge of my glass to hers before we both took a long sip. Our eyes locked for a moment, and I felt a heat rising inside of me. I tried to quell it quickly. The last thing I wanted was to get the wrong idea in my head about the way all of this was going. She had brought me here to talk, nothing else, and I refused to be the guy who took things too far before I knew for sure exactly what she was looking for.
She served up some food—pasta, with a generous helping of garlic bread on the side. She led me through to the living room, which was starting to look a little more normal again. The light was still flickering slightly, but I couldn’t pay much attention to it when she was right in front of me.
We ate and chatted—not about what had happened, but rather, just little things. Something to keep us both distracted before we faced up to reality. There was so much unspoken between us, I didn’t even really know where to start, and I tried my best to figure out a way for her to feel comfortable enough to talk with me about everything.
By the time we finished the meal—and a second glass of wine—I was starting to relax, and it seemed as though she was, too.
I watched her as she glanced to the window, her eyes lingering on the dark outside for a moment.
“You know, when I first came back here,” she began, a little hesitantly, “the first thing I noticed was how much quieter it was than back in the city.”
“Me too,” I replied. “And darker. Just feels like life is a bit slower, right?”
“Yeah, exactly,” she agreed. “I used to think it was a bad thing, but now...I’m not so sure. Maybe there’s something to be said for it.”
“You think?”
She nodded. “I really do,” she admitted. “And trust me, if you’d told me I’d be talking like this five years ago, I’d have said you were crazy. I never saw a good reason to come back here, but now I’m in Maple Valley again...”
She trailed off. I knew what she meant. She didn’t need to say it out loud. I had experienced the same thing since I had come here, this strange feeling of belonging, as though this was somewhere I had been searching for a long time.
“I guess when you start getting a little older, the slower pace suits you more,” she mused. “I guess that’s why so many people come back here even after they’ve been away for a while.”
“You ever thought you’d return?”
“No,” she admitted. “In fact, I was actively avoiding it, to be honest. I didn’t like the thought of coming back here, not after...”
She paused again. This was clearly tough for her to talk about, and I didn’t blame her. I wanted to reach out and take her hand, but I didn’t know if she was the kind of person who would respond to touch. There was still so much I had to learn about her, what she preferred.
“Not after what happened with my sister.”
She spoke the words clearly, concisely, as though she had been waiting a long-ass time to get them out. I wondered how many years it had been since she had even acknowledged her sister out loud. Did the people in her other life know about her? Judging by the way she’d reacted to the pictures, I imagined it had been at least a little while. She was still getting used to this. Working out how she felt about it.
“Do you want to talk about it?” I asked her as gently as I could. I didn’t want to put too much pressure on her, but it might have been good for her to get some of this off of her chest instead of pinning it inside like she seemed to have been doing for so long. She paused for a moment, pondering, and then shook her head.
“Maybe some other time,” she replied, looking over at me and managing a smile. “But I just...I want it to just be us tonight. Is that okay?”
“More than okay,” I murmured back. I couldn’t take my eyes off of her. The wine seemed to have loosened me up a little and made the desire I felt for this woman become a whole lot more pressing. Did she feel it, too? I wanted to ask her outright, but I wasn’t sure if she would be into it. After everything that had happened, I didn’t want to overstep my mark and ruin this by hurrying it.
I was willing to take all the time in the world, if that’s what made her happy. I loved spending time with her, and just getting to have her to myself this evening was all I really needed. I didn’t care what happened tonight, what we talked about, as long as we were together, it was that simple.
I shifted the conversation carefully, wanting to move toward something a little lighter.
“What about some music?” I suggested.
“Why, you bring your records over?” she joked, and I shook my head, laughing.
“You’re spared those for now,” I replied. “But I think we could use some music, don’t you?”
“I have some speakers upstairs, want me to bring them down?”
“Sounds like a great idea.”
She vanished upstairs, and my eyes lingered on her in the doorway for a second before she left—the way the dress seemed to skim against her body, as though it had been made just for her. She was strikingly beautiful, had been from the moment I had met her, but I felt as though I couldn’t hide it any longer. She must have been able to see the way I looked at her. Did she feel the same about me? Or was I nothing more than a distraction to keep her busy on a long night she would have otherwise spent alone?
She returned with the speakers and helped me hook up my phone so I could play some music. I picked some gentle jazz, something soft and easy.
“I didn’t know you listened to stuff like this,” she remarked as she settled back into her seat. “You said you were into heavy metal...”
“I have varied tastes,” I replied, with a shrug. “Lots of stuff interests me.”
“Good,” she replied, and she picked up the stem of her wine glass again and brought it to her lips. As she looked at me, I was almost sure she could see what I was thinking, the desire inside of me. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted her to or not, but I didn’t have a choice. She just seemed to cut to the chase within me and make me hers, whether I wanted to be or not.
“Do you dance?” she asked suddenly as she rose to her feet, carefully putting down the wine glass on the small table next to her chair.
“Dance?”
“Yeah, dance,” she replied, holding out her hand to me.
“I’m not good at it,” I warned her, but she shrugged.
“You want to try anyway?”
I hesitated. I wasn’t sure if I was about to make a major fool of myself right now, but the way she was looking at me, I knew I couldn’t turn her down. I didn’t want to. The thought of being close to her right now was far too exciting to deny myself the sweetness of her touch. I rose to my feet and took her hand.
“Guess I can try,” I murmured, and she smiled as she slipped her arms around my shoulders. I let my hands fall to her waist. It was the closest I had ever been to her, and the need for more was almost overwhelming, but I managed to hold it in. I knew I had to stay in control here. I couldn’t let my desire get the better of me.
She swayed with me in time to the music, and the warmth of her body seemed to flood through me in a way I couldn’t control. Damn, she felt good. I could smell her hair, coconut and something more exotic, could see the flawlessness of her skin on her shoulders where the dress fell away just enough for me to catch a glimpse. Did she know how beautiful she looked right now? Did she know how badly I wanted her?
Her eyes slowly lifted to meet mine, and I felt a shock of electricity run through my body. They were soft, darker than before, as though she was pondering on something we had never spoken out loud until this moment.
I found my gaze drawn to her lips—full, slightly parted, as though there was something she wanted to say to me. I knew how she felt. There was so much I wanted to put into words for her, but I didn’t know where to start.
So I would have to rely on showing her instead. Slowly, slowly, giving her time to pull away if it wasn’t what she truly wanted, I lowered my lips down to hers and kissed her for the first time.
Our mouths met, and it was as though someone had let off fireworks inside my body. I couldn’t control it, all the want I had for her, the desire which had been building since the first moment I had seen her. Her kiss was soft, sweet at first, but as she pulled in closer to me, she parted her lips to deepen it. I gripped tighter to her waist and pulled her in to me.
I needed her. There was no other way for me to say it. I needed her, more intensely than I had ever needed anyone before in my life, the urge to have her more than I could make sense of even if I tried. I teased my tongue against hers, and she moaned into my mouth, telling me everything I needed to know.
I pulled back for a moment, giving myself an instant to catch my breath. I needed this to be perfect. If we were going to do this, I wanted it to be as perfect as I had imagined it when I had been thinking of her, alone in my bed, before.
“Can we go upstairs?” I asked her, and she nodded, reaching up to trace her fingers over my face. Her smile was warm and wanting, the same as mine.
“Yeah,” she replied. “We can.”
