MEANT TO BE MARRIED

by Ruth Wind

  What a day, she thought absently. The wine was smoky and rich on her tongue. The rain pounded so fiercely at the windows that it was a long moment before she realized there was the sound of a knock buried in it. With a little jolt of worry she glanced at the door, hoping it wasn't her parents, come back already. She didn't want to deal with it.

  With a faint sigh she put the wine down, padded across the room in her bare feet and opened the door.

  It was Eli who stood there, his hair dripping, his face wet. The white cotton shirt stuck to his chest and arms, transparent against his dark skin, and his eyes burned as he stared at her.

  A bolt of pure, undiluted hunger filled her, rushing through every cell, making her body ache. She might even have made a little sound, part fear, part need.

  Without a word, he came in, put his cold hands on her face and kissed her.

  Sarah made a soft, mewling cry. His mouth carried the flavor of rain and a decade of yearning, and Sarah reached for him to brace herself, keep herself from falling as she met the raging hunger of that kiss, those lips, the tongue that plunged into her mouth. She caught his upper arms, and felt the tenseness of muscles there beneath wet cotton.

  He backed her against the wall and pressed his body into hers, kissing her face, her chin, her throat, her mouth again. The sound of rain, the smell of it on clay walls and hot earth, came in through the open door, and with it a wind bearing raindrops that sprayed over her face and her hair. His clothes were wet, but they warmed as he pressed into her, warmed with the heat of his flesh and the heat of her own, and Sarah arched into him, put her arms around him, pulled him closer, overwhelmed at her need to absorb the taste of Elias, remembered and not remembered, darker than it had been, seasoned with years and lost dreams and a thousand moments of yearning.

  She gasped and pulled him tighter, a blinding, dizzy hunger in her, a thirst so deep that the more she drank the more she wanted. She clasped him tight, drinking of that fierce flavor, and slid her hands down his back and over his buttocks in a gesture that would have been too aggressive for a sixteen-year-old, and pulled him tightly against her, feeling the crush of his chest and the thrust of his arousal, and her own agonizing need to somehow meld with him. Their breath came in tearing gasps, gathered like a swimmer's bid for air, without halting the rhythm.

  Eli, she thought. And a dozen images pushed into her mind, of times between their last kiss in the car, with police lights flashing their red doom, and now, when she would have given a limb to be in his arms this way. She felt tears on her cheeks, and a faint fine trembling in her arms.

  She slid her tongue against his and remembered lying in a narrow cot, aching for him. She arched her body closer to his and remembered awakening – for years – in a strange bed and realizing anew that Eli was gone. His long, graceful hands gripped her, and she remembered the long fingers of her daughter—

  All at once, Sarah shattered. Her weeping was no longer a soft, silent thing, but great gulping sobs that ripped through her chest and throat. The fine trembling in her fingers and wrists turned to bone-cracking shivers that rocked her limbs and her spine.

  As if he knew, as if he understood, Eli only gathered her into him, wrapped his long arms around her and enfolded her completely, his head bent into her neck while she buried her face against his wet chest and wept. Twice she tried to raise her head, tried to find some trick to pull herself back under control, and twice he simply held her more lightly, stroking her hair, her back, his face close against her neck.

  She wept as if she were grieving, wept in a way she had not since she was a small child.

  And when she was finally hiccuping to a stop, Eli settled with her on the floor and pulled an afghan from the couch. He kicked the door closed and leaned against the wall, pulling her close into the cradle of his arms and holding her while the rain fell and darkness began to gather.

  Safe in the circle of his embrace, Sarah simply rested, listening to his heart and his breath, smelling the familiar scent of his skin. She closed her eyes and let go of a shuddering breath.

  She didn't know how long it was till she finally stirred. She thought she might have fallen into a stupefied doze, lying against him that way. Her body had begun to protest the position with an ache in her hip and a stiffness in her shoulder. She raised her head. "You must be frozen, Eli."

  His eyes, those fathomless, bottomless, beautiful eyes, were liquid. "No," he whispered, and brushed hair from her face.

  "I'm sorry," she said. "I don't know—"

  "Shh. It doesn't matter."

  She put her hands on his face, as she'd longed to do all day. She opened her palm to feel his jaw, the coarseness of male flesh, and spread her fingers over his high, slanted cheekbones. She looked at his mouth, and very softly kissed it, closing her eyes as the firm, rich mouth touched hers. "Thank you," she whispered.

  He swallowed. "I came here to make love to you," he said roughly.

  She nodded.

  "But that would be too much for us now, I think. Will you give me a cup of tea instead?"

  Sarah smiled. "I happen to have some very fine tea here. Santiago Farms."

  "Good." Gently he stood up, and helped Sarah to her feet. "I'm sorry I upset you."

  Sarah just shook her head, sensing the emotional storm could all too easily circle back with the slightest encouragement. "Let me get you some tea." She frowned, looking at his clothes. "You're so wet. Go in there and take off those clothes and wrap yourself in a blanket. I'll put them in the dryer."

  He cut her a wicked glance, waggling his eyebrows. "If you wanted me naked, all you had to do was say so. I aim to please."

  Sarah laughed, thankful that he could make a joke to ease the tension between them. It made her remember, suddenly, the long, heated struggle they had faced to keep their passions under control when they were young. For months they'd hovered on the precipice, afraid to jump, but aching for it. More often than not, it had been Eli who had pulled them back before they went too far, and often it had been with a joke. "Go," she said.

  She put water in a heavy blue teakettle and set it to boil, then took cups and spoons and tea from the cupboard, wondering what else she had to go with it, suddenly wishing she had the cooking skills to whip up the pitiful ingredients of her cupboard into some nourishing, gorgeous creation. There was a half sleeve of saltines, a jar of peanut butter, two cans of soup. One cookie at the bottom of a bag.

  As she tossed the bag into the trash, Eli came out, carrying his clothes. He'd wrapped the bedspread around him, awkwardly, leaving one gleaming brown shoulder and arm free. A fist of new desire struck her.

  "I'll just put the clothes in the dryer," she said.

  "That's what I thought we were doing."

  Sarah took the jeans and shirt, hurrying away so she wouldn't have to look at that delectable shoulder. After she tossed the clothes into the dryer, she scurried back to the center of the kitchen, and promptly forgot what she was doing.

  "Tea," Eli said, settling on a stool by the counter.

  "Right." She blushed, even though she tried not to, tried to act as if she'd had attractive men in her rooms a million times. Which she had. Well, at least half a dozen.

  But none of them had been Eli, half-naked and tempting as a river god as he leaned on the counter and tucked the blanket around his waist. "Aren't you cold?" she asked, thinking she would fetch the afghan for him.

  "Not at all," he said evenly, but Sarah caught the wickedness glittering in his eyes.

  She put her hands on her hips. "You're teasing me."

  "Me?" He put one long dark hand against his chest, that chest that was no longer boyishly thin. This was a man's chest, with dark hair lightly scattered from one nipple to the other, and muscle-sculpted, lean, hard curves. "Is it working?"

  She met his laughing eyes. "You've grown up, Elias."

  His gaze traveled over her. "So have you, Sarita."

  The teakettle whistled and, relieved, Sarah rescued it. "I was just
looking for something to go with the tea, but I'm afraid the pickings are very lean." She put the mugs on the table and poured hot water into them. "That cooking thing again."

  "Career women," he snorted in mock disgust.

  "New York living," she corrected him. "Who needs to cook when there's food on every corner?"

  "Did you like it, Sarah? Living in the big city, traveling all over the world?"

  She stirred sugar into her tea and settled on a stool opposite him. "I did," she said. "It was exciting, at least at first. There's so much movement, so many people, all of them so different. It's amazing."

  "I can see that it would be. This—" he gestured, as if to include Taos "—must seem very slow in comparison."

  "It is," she said, and frowned. "But I missed it, that feeling of a day lasting forever. And as small towns go, you have to admit Taos is more cosmopolitan than most."

  A shadow crossed his eyes, and he ducked his head. "In some ways."

  And finally, here was the opening. The right moment to bring a little more of this out of the shadows. "It's hard to imagine how even my father pulled locking you up for eight weeks."

  A bitterness touched his mouth for a moment, then was gone. "Not so hard when you think of how much he wanted me out of the way, so he could separate us." He snapped his fingers. "He had friends on the bench, friends all over. Eight weeks was more than enough time."

  "I hate the idea of that happening to you," she said, thinking of him sitting in jail, all alone. "Did you know he'd sent me away?" she asked suddenly. "Or did you think I had deserted you?"

  His face went still. "At first I waited for you to come, somehow. I knew you would be watched. I knew it would be hard, but every day I thought there would be a letter or something. Maybe you would send a friend to tell me you couldn't come." He took a breath. "But you were gone. I didn't know until I got out."

  "Someone in your family had to have known what happened"

  He lifted a shoulder. "Probably. But they are no more blameless than your father."

  She gave him a wry grin. "No one in your family had me falsely arrested."

  "No, your father did that, didn't he?" He touched her hand, his expression a little lighter, but still sober.

  "Yes." She wanted to add more, wanted to tell him – what? That day by day her heart had tightened a little more, and a little more, and a little more until it was as black and dry as a grape that had lain too long in the sun to even be a raisin. No life in it at all. "Yes," she repeated quietly.

  His hand fell upon hers. "I'm sorry."

  "Even if you had wanted to find me, you wouldn't have been able to. He wanted us apart, and he won." She thought of her father, trying now to make that right with her. "Now he wants to bring it all out in the open. He wants my forgiveness for making me give up the baby."

  The baby. It was the first time she'd said it out loud in context, ever, and a strange twist pinched her heart.

  But Eli said only, "And have you granted it?"

  She met his gaze squarely. "I might be able to make peace with him," she said firmly. "But I won't forgive him. I can't."

  "Neither can I," he said, his thumb moving on her fingers.

  Sarah looked at their joined hands, and realized she had turned hers to hold his fingers against her palm, instinctively seeking comfort. His hand felt right. He felt right to her, sitting in her kitchen, even all these years later. "Eli," she said quietly, "are we starting again?"

  "I don't know."

  "Maybe it's only nostalgia."

  "Maybe." He looked at her gravely. "Maybe we only need to say goodbye in the right way – finish it on our own terms."

  "It scares me," she whispered.

  "It should," he said without humor, "My family hates you. Your father still hates me. Nothing has changed."

  "Except us," she said, feeling a weaving of hope and despair. "We've changed."

  "Have we?" His smile was sad. "If we were different, would our families matter so much to us?"

  The dryer buzzed suddenly, loud and annoying. "There are your clothes," she said. "I'll get them for you."

  There was something intimate about taking the shirt and jeans from the dryer, still redolent with the scent of his skin. The smell made her want to bury her face in the clothes, inhale it deeply, but of course she did not. She shook them efficiently, remembering when she had longed to do such mundane tasks for him. It made her smile as she gave the clothes to him.

  "What?" he asked.

  Sarah grinned. "I was remembering when I couldn't wait to make a home for you. Cook for you and wash your clothes, be there waiting when you came home. Somehow, the fantasy has lost some of its appeal."

  He stood up to take the clothes, affording her a full view of that naked chest, and a rush of hunger pushed through her. A rush of need, to feel him, touch him; explore him.

  What would it hurt? A voice whispered in her mind, and she nearly reached out to put her palm against that bare flesh, against the hair lying silkily across it, then clenched her fists.

  "Sarah," he said in a low voice. "Come here."

  * * *

  Chapter 9

  «^»

  She simply stared at him like a wild creature, half starved, half wary. Her big gray eyes shone nearly silver in the quiet, rain-tinted light coming from the windows, and he saw her catch her breath.

  "Come here," he said again, coaxing her closer, holding out one hand.

  The rain made the only music, pattering on the roof and windows, thunder rumbling through, low and distant, like drums. And still Sarah only stood there, holding his clothes next to her chest, poised between running away and coming closer.

  Her eyes never wavered as she took a step, then another, stopping to put one hand on his chest, lightly. He forced himself to be still, wait for her to make the next move. All day he had been aching for this. All day. All year. All decade.

  Sarah, touching him.

  "Eli," she whispered, imploring.

  He stepped closer, took the clothes from her hands. She resisted a little, then let go of the material. He heaped the clothes on the stool and reached for her. Gently. Only his hands on her shoulders, close to her neck. He brushed his thumbs over the shelf of her collarbone. "Do you remember when we first kissed?"

  A little of the fear bled away from her eyes, and a hint of a smile brushed her lips. "Yes."

  "In the gym," he said quietly. "Some kind of dance after school."

  "The Halloween dance."

  "Really?" He grinned. "It took us two months?"

  "It was forever." Her lids fell a little, and he saw her gaze on his chest. With one finger she brushed his chest hair, and it was an erotic siren on his nerves. He forced himself not to react. "I remember holding hands with you, but I was really nervous and my hands were sweating, and I was afraid you would be so grossed out you wouldn't ever want to hold my hand again."

  Her finger drew a circle over his chest, small, then wider. Eli dared move his hands a little, stroking her shoulders. "I liked holding your hand."

  She lifted her face, meeting his gaze, and he saw again the charcoal band around her irises. "Your hair was so long then. I wanted to put my hands in it so badly."

  He dared to inch a step closer, let his hands slide down her back until they rested in the dip of her spine. "What I remember is daring myself. Standing there wanting to kiss you, trying to get my courage up." He grinned. "I'd get so close, then get scared."

  She grinned. "And in the end, I kissed you."

  "Yes. I was glad." He bent a little closer. "This time you can be afraid and I'll be bold. It will be another kind of first kiss."

  Worry flooded back into her face. "Eli," she said, "I don't think it's a good—"

  He closed the distance between them and took the rest of the words from her lips. Earlier, he had acted without thinking, like a starving man eating too much too fast. Now he could lean in gently, capture those soft, vulnerable lips. Now he could taste them slowly,
remembering the texture, the pleasure, the slide and slant and fit of their mouths together. It was a chaste and simple kiss, one he did not prolong, but it made him a little giddy, and he laughed.

  She pulled a little away. "Are you laughing at me?"

  "No." He slid his hands under her shirt in back, so he could touch her skin. It was smooth and surprisingly muscled under his palms. When she didn't object to that, he slid his palms around to her waist, letting his thumbs glide over her stomach, right in the hollow of her belly button.

  In return, she lifted both hands to his chest and spread her fingers over it. "You didn't have chest hair when I knew you."

  "I was a boy then." Her slow exploration made his body hum, and his voice was a little ragged. "Now I'm a man."

  "Am I bothering you?" she asked in a hushed voice.

  "No." Daring a little more, he bent to kiss her again, this time more hungrily, opening his mouth, drawing her in. It was a slow, narcotic kiss this time, deep and then shallow, tongue to tongue, then tongue to lip, then lip to lip and over again. Her hands slid over his torso, up and down, then over his arms, growing more restless, but he did not move his own hands for a long time, simply let them rest there, on her belly and sides, while he kissed her. When he heard the slight hurried harshness of her breath, he circled her navel, dipped inside, angled his hands till he could feel the ridges of her ribs.

  She did not bolt, only lifted her arms to his shoulders, giving implicit permission. He pulled the shirt up slowly, eased it upward. She pulled away from the kiss to let him pull it over her head, and as he closed his eyes he saw the dazed, drugged look in her eyes before she moved in, taking his face in her hands to pull him into another kiss.

  There was an aggressive, needful edge to the kiss now, more urgency. A gilded dizziness hazed his mind as he lifted his hands and cupped her breasts, letting go of a groan as she sighed against his mouth. He stroked her nipples with his thumbs, and then he could not be slow anymore, and sought the clasp, front or back, that would get rid of the barriers between them.