Total pages in book: 123
Estimated words: 115468 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 577(@200wpm)___ 462(@250wpm)___ 385(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 115468 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 577(@200wpm)___ 462(@250wpm)___ 385(@300wpm)
Or maybe it wasn’t. Maybe I’d been pretending. Going through the motions.
Existing.
Living out someone else’s dream.
She considered me again for a few moments. “Do you want to come in—”
“Yes.” I moved toward her and she opened the door wider so we could both enter. I followed her through Faith’s house. “Is Faith out?”
“Yes. She went to Kennebunkport with Jarrett for the holiday. They’ll be back tomorrow.”
“Oh. Okay.”
I followed her down a hall, to a closed door at the end. Rory turned suddenly, taking me off guard, and causing me to step back. “Can you stay there for just a minute?”
“Uh, sure.”
She gave a nod, opened the door and squeezed through a crack, and then shut it quickly. I heard her scurrying around, probably picking up clothes, and sprucing it up. When she opened the door a few minutes later, I smiled. “Rory, I don’t care if your room’s a mess.”
She gave a small laugh as she stepped aside so I could enter. “I didn’t expect company,” she said. “I don’t want you to think I’m a slob.”
I looked around. She’d obviously put forth some effort to straighten up the room, but the bed was still half made, and I could see clothes sticking from beneath the closet door where she’d obviously haphazardly stuffed them. The tops of the nightstands were laden with water bottles and jewelry, some makeup, and a jumble of other items. But she’d propped her father’s paintings up on the dresser directly across from her bed, and her mother’s diary, and the napkin drawing sat neatly beneath them next to her purse as if she’d removed them both just now and set them back in their place of honor. Something about the whole scene made tenderness well up inside of me. It was just her. Messy and sentimental and flighty and…passionate. “I don’t think you’re a slob,” I said, which was far too inadequate but the best I could currently do.
I moved to where she stood, stepping right up to her and inhaling. Her scent calmed me and made the confusion die down to a simmer. She gazed up at me, looking slightly wary. I didn’t want her to look that way, not when she was with me. “I missed you,” I admitted.
Her gaze moved over my face and I saw the questions in her eyes, the confusion, and finally, some form of resignation. Whatever thoughts and doubts had flitted through her head and crossed her mind to speak, she finally settled on, “I missed you too.” It sounded like a concession, and a relief.
So many barriers between us. I wanted her, and that wasn’t fair. She made me spin, and she provided calm. I reached out and slid the strap of her top off her shoulder and then kissed the small spot it’d covered.
“I can breathe when I’m with you.” I sighed. Even to my ears, the statement had sounded sad. I supposed it was because I’d be without her soon and part of me understood that I’d never truly breathe again.
I ran my lips over her collarbone and then leaned up. She took my face in her hands, rubbing her thumbs over my cheekbones for a moment as she looked in my eyes. “I could bottle up some Rory air and send it with you to London.”
I smiled, but that felt sad too. “I’ll take it.”
She set her forehead on mine and for a moment we simply breathed together, sharing that air that somehow felt vital to me, but that I’d have to manage to do without. Rory brought her lips to the corner of my mouth, kissing me sweetly, and then moving to my eyelids and my nose, and finally back to my mouth.
We undressed slowly, my blood temperature rising as every inch of her naked body was revealed to me. “You are a goddess,” I said. She was. A work of art. From her dainty toes to those stunning canary blue eyes. I thought distantly about how I’d wondered why some art affected one person in a particular way and not another. A touch of preference and a trace of magic. Maybe attraction was like that too. This woman, this beautiful creation, struck at the very heart of me when I gazed upon her.
She led me to the bed and we lay down, exploring under the soft glow of the bedside lamp. And our lovemaking felt both beautiful and crushing in some way I could not define, and perhaps didn’t want to while she was still in my arms. Maybe we’d been ill-fated from the start, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to soak in every blissful moment of her while I still could.
I’d gazed upon fireworks earlier in the night, but brighter ones sizzled and rattled now, sparks flaring as our breath came short, hands gripping the sheets as we raced toward that dizzying crescendo where exploding stars would shimmer and crackle and rain bliss through our nerve endings and straight to our toes. Light eclipsed the inner darkness, but only for a few dwindling moments before the sparkling colors slowly faded to nothing at all.