Tempted (39 page)

Even pleasure can hurt if it’s unrelenting. Every nerve in my body ached and sizzled with tension. Each kiss and touch sent shudders through me. The universe had become Alex’s mouth and hands and cock.

He moved. I opened for him. He slid against me, the head of his erection slick from my wetness. He stopped, licking his mouth and taking a deep breath. His arms trembled as he held himself up. I shifted, tilting my hips to ease his way.

He pushed inside me one inch at a time instead of one full thrust. We were looking into each other’s eyes when he’d seated himself all the way. I saw myself reflected there.

It wasn’t fair how fast I came. I felt cheated. My body betrayed me by responding too quickly to the pressure of his pubic bone on my clit and the thrust of him inside me. His mouth captured every cry I made. I unraveled from the pleasure, and his kisses wove me back together so I could come apart again.

I didn’t count the number of times I came. It might have been once or a dozen times, so sensitized had I become to Alex moving within me. We made love forever, which didn’t seem long enough but was all the time we had.

He slowed at the end, taking twice as long with each push and pull, in and out. He licked my mouth. Our bodies glued to each other. I wrapped my legs and arms around him, keeping him as close to me as I could. If I could have melded our bodies into one, I’d have done it just then, when pleasure filled me again and he shuddered with his own climax.

We came together at the end, in one of those times when everything works out right and nothing could ever be wrong. It was magic, ecstatic, electric.

Perfect.

After, we lay side by side in the big hotel bed and stared at the ceiling. Our hands linked at our sides. From outside I heard the rattle and clank of the roller-coaster train reaching the top of the hill, the moment of silence, and the rush and roar and screams of its descent.

It couldn’t last forever. It wasn’t meant to. So at last I rolled onto my side to face him. I let myself drink in the lines and curves of his face.

There were things we could have said, but it was enough for me to kiss him one last time. I didn’t ask permission to use his shower, just did anyway. I rinsed him off my body.

He hadn’t moved when I came out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel. I dried myself and found my clothes. I put them on. Alex watched me without saying anything. I was glad for his silence. It made leaving easier.

Dressed, I pulled my fingers through my curls and used my reflection in his mirror to pull it into a semblance of order. I pulled powder, mascara and lipstick from my purse and gave myself the face of someone else. I smoothed my clothes. I stepped away.

I looked at him, and he hadn’t moved.

“Goodbye, Alex,” I said at last. “I hope you’ll be happy.”

He didn’t answer. I wanted him to say goodbye. Say something. But he was a rugged rascal even at the end. He gave me a half nod and a half smile and left me wondering if I had risked everything for a few hours of useless lust. If that’s all it had ever been. If I’d made a mistake in going there.

“Anne,” he said when my hand reached the doorknob.

I stopped but didn’t turn.

“When I said Jamie was the only one who’d ever made me understand how it could be to love someone…”

I turned and looked at him for the very last time.

“…he wasn’t the only one.”

I have only one regret about that day, and it’s that my last vision of Alex was blurred by tears.

I closed the door behind me and stood in the hall outside as I caught my breath. Then I straightened my back and wiped my face. The beach outside was bigger and cleaner than the one by my house, but the water was the same. Cold and choppy, it darkened my skirt up to my knees. I’d gone to say goodbye, and I had done that. I had gone to let him go, and I’d done that, too. It was not a happy ending of the sort in fairy tales, but it was the only one we had.

“Be happy,” I whispered to the water.

Perfection is too high a goal to strive for. Sometimes working hard brings more satisfaction in the end. We appreciate what we’ve almost lost more than what we’ve never doubted. James waited for me at home. I had a life there with him. With our children, if we had them. It was not a perfect life, but it would be a good one, if we both worked hard to make it so. My husband waited for me, and I would go to him in time.

For that moment, just then, I stood in the water with the wind blowing in my face, and I no longer feared I’d drown.

ISBN: 978-1-4268-1084-8

Copyright © 2008 by Megan Hart.

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