Having Faith (6 page)

He took a larger swallow from his glass.

"That's 'cause you're Jack's girl. You've always been offlimits to me, so I look at you other ways. I know how intelligent and creative and honest and fun you are to be with."

She sent him a glowing smile.

"You are my favorite man." She slipped an arm around his waist and raised the other, glass in hand.

"To you," she declared.

"To me," he echoed.

They both drank deeply of the champagne. Sawyer slipped from her side.

"Hold still. Don't move." He half-walked, half-ran back to the kitchen, scooped up the champagne bottle and was back.

"Maybe we shouldn't," Faith whispered as she watched him refill their glasses.

"I'm hungry."

"Me, too, but we haven't finished with the toasts." Setting the bottle on the floor, he sat beside her again and raised his glass.

"To Jack and Joanna."

"Why are we toasting them?"

"Because they're not here to toast themselves."

"But why do they have to be toasted?"

"Because they're good sports. They put up with us." He chuckled, then pulled a straight face.

"To Jack and Joanna."

He chinked his glass to hers.

"To Jack and Joanna," Faith said and took a drink. Since there were two people in the toast--and since Sawyer seemed to be doing it--she took a second drink on the heels of the first.

"Sawyer?"

"Umm?"

"Maybe we should fix them up."

"Jack and Joanna? Nah. Wouldn't work. Joanna's too maternal."

"Jack's paternal. It would be great."

"Only if they had a kid, but they'd never make it in the sack."

"That's an awful thing to say. Sawyer!"

He considered that for a minute.

"Yes. I'm sorry." He looked at Faith.

She looked at him.

"You're not sorry at all."

"No."

They laughed. This time it was Sawyer who slipped an arm around Faith's waist.

"I can tell you anything. Do you know how nice that is?" He tugged her close to give her a hug, but somehow they lost hold of their perch on the back of the sofa and half-slid, half-fell to the floor. That made them laugh harder.

"Ahhh," Sawyer groaned through his laughter.

"Are you okay. Faith?"

"I'm down, but not out," she declared with mock pomposity. More humbly, she said, "Something spattered on my sweatshirt. Am I bleeding?"

"That was champagne. Com'ere." He helped rearrange her body so they were tucked snugly against the sofa and each other, facing the world beyond the glass sliders.

Taking only a minute to replenish their glasses of any champagne they may have lost in the fall, he picked up where he'd left off.

"You're special. I don't know any other woman I can do this with. I really can tell you anything. Anything."

From time to time, one word slurred into the next, but it was subtle, too subtle for Faith, in her own less- than-sober state, to notice.

"Tell me something," she said. She tapped his chest with her finger.

"Tell me something you wouldn't tell anyone else."

He lowered his voice to a whisper. "Joanna was a lousy kisser." "A lousy kisser? But she was a nurse. What about all that mouth-to-mouth" -They burst into hysterics, leaning over one another in laughter.

Sawyer was the first to recover.

"Honest to God, I don't know how she ever did that. When it came time to kiss, she didn't open her mouth. I couldn't get her to open her mouth."

"And I'm sure you were persuasive."

"I tried. She didn't like the feel of it. So I stopped trying after a while." He looked down at her face in the darkness. "Was Jack persuasive?"

"No. He was punctual."

"Punctual? What's punctual got to do with kissing?"

"Jack was a systematic lover. Certain things were to be done certain ways at certain times, and that was that. Kisses were a meeting of the mouth. They started out as pecks. After seventy-seven seconds of that, they became smooches, and after two minutes and ten seconds of that, they got wet.

They stopped completely when he began to pant. "

"Sounds like a dog," Sawyer observed, and they broke up again. This time when they sobered, Faith set her wine glass aside. Levering herself up with a hand on his chest, she faced him.

"Show me," she ordered.

"Show me how you kissed her."

Something in the back of Sawyer's hazy mind told him that would be wrong.

"I can't. I've forgotten."

"Then show me how you kiss, period. I'll bet you're good. I want to know what a good kiss is like."

"So do I."

She cupped his face with her hands.

"Kiss me, Sawyer. Show me how you do it. Please?"

Sawyer looked at her upturned face, so dimly lit as they sat on the floor behind the sofa. He looked out at the city, where thousands and thousands of people were enjoying each other, and he wanted to enjoy himself, too. He was enjoying himself.

But he wanted to kiss Faith.

For a long moment he thought, or tried to think of the reasons why he shouldn't. But he was high. He couldn't come up with a single one.

Flow I kiss," he said softly. He raised both hands and slid them into her hair so that he could frame her head and tip it up.

"The first touch isn't much more than a token. It's kind of like a hello."

"Is this what you used to do when you walked in from work?"

"No. That wasn't much more than a peck on the cheek, and sometimes it wasn't even that. I thought you wanted to know what a kiss kiss was like."

"I do." "A sex kiss?" he asked, daring it because the wine had loosened his tongue.

"Mmm."

"Okay. First, there's this." He lowered his head, put his lips on hers and moved them just a little before lifting his head again.

"It's a way of me finding out if you want to be kissed. Sometimes Joanna didn't. Sometimes she'd turn her head. No way I could miss that message. You, on the other hand " he gave a skewed grin " didn't pull away, so I can guess that you want more."

Faith did.

"That little thing was just a teaser."

"That's what it was supposed to be. It's supposed to make you want more."

"The first step in persuasion? Okay. So what do you do next?"

"More of the same." Lowering his head again, he did just that. One light touch after another, each gentle but enchanting, none lasting long enough to provide any deep satisfaction.

Faith liked the way his lips could be firm but still gentle. She liked the warmth of his breath and the faint smell of wine. She liked the feeling of leisure. "Mmm. This is nice. Jack would have already moved on. He had to keep on schedule. But this is nice."

Sawyer agreed. He continued to dole out those fetching kisses, because they were captivating even him. In between, he talked.

"Schedules don't work when it comes to sex." He brushed the upper bow of her mouth.

"The thing is that sometimes after that first hello you want it hard and fast." He sampled the corner of her mouth.

"Other times you want it slow. Sometimes," he said, pausing to kiss her chin, "you want to widen your focus a little. Sometimes a woman's mouth makes you curious about how other parts of her taste." He slid his mouth up to her cheek, then her eye, kissing each lightly. He came down the gentle slope of her nose in an inevitable return to her mouth.

"Sometimes," he whispered, "you even want to taste with your tongue." He did that, tracing the curve of her mouth, then sucking in a shallow breath.

"Mmm, Faith. You taste very good."

Faith's eyes were closed. She felt as though she were floating, no doubt, she reasoned, on the champagne bubbles that shimmered inside her.

"Jack never told me that," she said. Her words were wispy and seemed to overlap.

"He never talked when he touched me. He was letting his body do the speaking, only I could never hear the words. Why was that?"

"Maybe because you were concentrating on what was going to happen next. That's what Joanna always did. She didn't want to linger. Move right along, folks. Come on, keep going. She wanted to get on with it and get done as soon as possible. She wanted to get it over with."

"I didn't want that," Faith protested, then hesitated. "Well, maybe I did. There was nothing inspiring about what was happening. I never enjoyed Jack's kisses. Certainly not the way I'm enjoying yours. Go on. Sawyer. Kiss me more. I liked what you were doing."

So Sawyer kissed her more, still those same first- stage kisses that he was finding so pleasurable. He knew that the wine had put a glowing sheen on his awareness of the world. He also knew that Faith was a friend, not a sex partner, but that didn't stop him from enjoying the scent of her skin and the dewiness of her mouth. Her lips were soft and pliant, just as a woman's should be. She wasn't reticent, as Joanna had been. Nor was she aggressive, as some other women could be.

She let him set the pace, and she responded to it. She seemed very much in tune with him. He liked that.

When he caught a soft sigh slipping from her lips, he opened his mouth to catch it. Her sigh became a gasp, and he quickly pulled back.

"You don't like that?"

"I do." She laughed.

"I do. It surprised me, that's all. Do it again.

I'll be ready this time. "

She tried to be, still she wasn't prepared for what happened when Sawyer opened his mouth on hers and gave her the kind of kiss he was primed for. The soft hellos and gently foraging smooches gave way to deeper curiosity. But he didn't have to force her mouth open. It moved with his, reacting to his in all the ways that seemed perfectly natural and utterly right. So he kissed her more deeply, then more deeply again. His tongue found hers, went beyond and around it, swept through the inside of her mouth in a journey that took his breath away.

He gasped for air and tried to steady the fine tremor that shook his arms.

"Whew. That's never happened to me before."

"What?" she whispered. She was taking small, short breaths.

"Getting caught up like that."

"You didn't get caught up with Joanna? I always thought men had to get caught up if they were going to be able to complete the sex act."

"Right," he said, "but at different times and levels. Was Jack always ready at the start?"

"Hard, you mean?"

"Hard, I mean."

"Yes. Jack made up his mind that it was time to make love and, bingo, he was hard. I sometimes wondered whether he needed me at all. It could have been anyone under him."

"That's not true. He loved you." "In his way, but that kind of love had little to do with the sex we had. I'm telling you. It was preprogrammed sex. Nothing like what we're doing now." Her voice dropped to a whisper.

"What do we do next?"

Sawyer was still too aware of her taste on his tongue. Taking his hands from her hair, he sat against the sofa back.

"Next we take a break."

"Why?"

"Because I need to catch my breath." It was more than that, he knew.

It was a tiny voice inside telling him that something was going to get out of hand if he didn't slow down. He was feeling too good. Whether it was the wine or Faith, he didn't know, but his blood was pumping a little too warmly through his veins. And that last, deep, tongue-twisting kiss had done something to his groin. Things were beginning to feel tight down there. He needed a break.

Reaching for his wine glass, he took a swallow.

Faith was sitting up, eyeing him through the darkness.

"You didn't like it," she whispered, and even in spite of the non-sound of her voice, he caught bits of accusation and hurt.

He put a hand to her cheek.

"I liked it too well." Slipping his hand down, he caught one of hers and flattened it over his heart.

"Feel that? Is that the feel of something I don't like?"

"Could be," she said, pouting. She'd never pouted before in her life. She hated people who pouted and would have hated herself--if she'd known.

"People's hearts bang when they're upset or afraid. Could be that you don't want to be doing this, but you feel you have to since I asked. Is that it?"

"No way! If I didn't want to be doing this, I'd get up off the rug and walk away. Do you see me doing that?"

"Maybe you're too tired."

"I'm not too tired."

"Or drunk. Maybe your legs won't work."

He set the wine glass aside. "They work just fine. And I am not drunk," he insisted. He tried to put separate emphasis on each word, but they slurred together. Pulling her across his lap and into his arms, he declared, "I liked what I was doing. I'm going to do it again."