Gateway to Heaven

by BETH KERY

  For a few seconds, reality sobered him. He sunk his head into the juncture of her neck and shoulder and breathed like he’d just crossed the finish line of a sprint.

  “I should have taken you to bed. I’m sorry.” He felt her hands on his hips and buttocks and he groaned. “Megan, stop…just give me a second to—“

  “I don’t want to stop. Come inside me now, Christian.”

  She met his stare when he raised his head slowly. His need tore at him.

  He raised himself to his knees and lifted her lower body. When he did, it allowed her freedom to move her feet and calf over the back of the couch. She instinctively opened her thighs further to accommodate him. When she nudged her sex next to him with an erotic shift of her hips, Christian gritted his teeth. Their gazes melded as he entered her with painstaking slowness. When he saw her face tense, he paused, utilizing as yet untried resources of willpower. She squeezed around him in a tight, pitiless grip.

  “Don’t stop, Christian. Please,” she whispered.

  He studied her face, memorized it. Her features were damp with perspiration. Her facial muscles were pulled tightly, but Christian suspected it was with arousal, not fear or pain.

  He gripped her hips tightly and sunk into her completely in one stroke.

  The sensation of being fully inside of her ripped at the very limits of his consciousness. The groan that tore through his throat was both emotionally and physically rendered. In a searing moment of realization, his eyes opened wide. The full awareness of what he was doing struck like an electric jolt.

  When the ability to breathe returned to him, he heard Megan whisper.

  “It feels…odd.”

  “I should…stop…should I stop?” he asked disjointedly in a strangled voice. God in heaven, please let her say no.

  She shook her head at the same time that she shifted her hips, accommodating him completely. Christian bit his lip to stifle a groan at the same time that an aroused cry spilled over Megan’s lips.

  “It’s starting to feel nice,” she admitted as she experimentally ducked her hips. The stroke made his eyes go wide in desperation.

  “Ah, Christ, Megan. You feel so… I have to…”

  “Yes…please.”

  With those sweet, generous words, he lost himself in her.

  * * * *

  Megan’s mouth fell open in wonder at the sensation of him loving her without doubt or restraint. He wasn’t gentle with her. He seemed to know instinctively what she needed to build the mounting pressure within her ever higher. He never broke his rhythm, even when he bent over and kissed the stunned expression from her mouth.

  “I’ll never be able to tell you how good you feel.”

  “I think I’m starting to guess,” she murmured next to his cheek before she gasped at his next powerful stroke.

  “Megan…shift up, so… ah, God…like that. You’re warm and sweet and tight,” he whispered harshly in her ear. “I could lose myself in you.”

  She made a high, breathy sound of arousal as he continued to praise her and prompt her and love her so deeply that her mind became a fuzz of blending sensations. She tasted his murmured love words, felt them run thickly down her throat like honey. She saw their mating bodies as if from a distance, knew in her bones how beautiful and right they were together. She heard Christian’s hesitation, his longing to prolong the inevitable climax, even though he never spoke a word of it.

  He paused on an inward stroke and leaned down far enough to tongue her tight nipple. She chanted his name mindlessly when he suckled her greedily at first, then with so much gentleness, tears squeezed past her tightly clenched eyelids. She quivered in incipient release. She felt his eyes on her face when he lifted his head.

  “I told you how much I wanted to do that while I was deep inside of you. It was a thousand times better than I imagined.”

  “Christian, don’t…you’re killing me.”

  “Then let’s die together, honey.”

  He never removed his eyes from her face as he thrust into her again and again. She sensed the reins on his restraint stretching tight, felt him waiting for her with wild anticipation. She strained for release… from a friction that was so glorious it was unbearable.

  “Come for me, Megan,” he mouthed.

  She did. He let go then as well, plunging into the flames with her with a final hard stroke and a loud roar.

  She’d been right. Christian’s desire did have the power to transform her.

  When she became lucid again, she was holding Christian’s head against her breast. She trailed her fingertips through his soft hair and massaged his scalp languorously. He responded by softly kissing and tonguing her sensitized nipple. After a moment, she felt him tenderly caress her other breast with the paradoxically lazy but intense focus that she had come to associate with Christian.

  She smiled.

  A minute passed, and then two. Megan didn’t know when it started, but she became slowly aware by degrees of a tension building in his muscles.

  “Christian?” she asked uncertainly.

  He shifted his hips, drawing out of her. He winced at the deprivation of her warm, sweet embrace. He levered himself off the couch in almost the same motion. Megan had likely noticed that he had become completely hard again buried inside her. His body had been ready and eager to go another round, then and there.

  God, he was an animal.

  His kept his expression neutral as he stood and grabbed for his jeans. He willed himself not to look at Megan’s face, but what his eyes didn’t see, he filled in the blanks masochistically with his imagination.

  When he’d pulled on his jeans, he glanced at her uneasily.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “Yes.” She began to sit up. Her nakedness plagued him in more ways than one. He reached for a throw that was folded at the end of the couch, unfolded it partially, and draped it across her.

  “What’s wrong?” Megan asked.

  “Nothing.” He bent for his shirt and pulled it on. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “I’m fine. What is it, Christian?”

  He opened his mouth to speak and then closed it. He kept envisioning what he’d just done. He’d pictured making love to Megan an uncountable number of times at this point and never had it involved the raw, uncontrolled lust and need he’d just experienced.

  In his imagination, it’d been tender and restrained.

  What had just transpired had been impulsive and wild. He couldn’t bear to look into her face.

  He turned and walked out of her loft.

  Chapter 12

  Megan fought with a heavy sense of depression the next morning, but finally rose early to go to church. She had lain sleepless for most of the night, wracked with anger and sadness.

  Why had he done it? Christian obviously regretted their impulsive, impassioned lovemaking. That he could have wished something so beautiful had never happened made her furious.

  Or maybe he hadn’t regretted the sex itself. Maybe he just hadn’t wanted to deal with her after their passion had been spent.

  Even as she considered it, she knew it wasn’t true. It was clear to her now that her verbal attacks on him were more a result of her own feelings of vulnerability than being associated with any deep faults in Christian’s character. If anything, he was probably trying to maneuver through the awkwardness of her situation as best as he could. It was true that he often hadn’t been forthright with her. But in fairness to him, Megan admitted she that couldn’t imagine what it would be like to live in the public’s eye for so many years. He had undoubtedly been burned in personal relationships as a result of lies and insinuations about his character. His career as a rock star already had a slew of stereotypes and prejudices associated with it.

  Megan blushed when she recalled his biting sarcasm when she’d accused him indirectly of enjoying having the young girl take off her shirt for him. With the morning light came honesty. Megan realized that she’d deserved his s
corn. She herself had been guilty of being swept up by those prejudices as she’d watched him up on that stage last night. Those stereotypes had fueled her personal insecurities.

  She showered and dressed with a leaden heart. While she was pulling on a white cotton skirt that would keep her cool on another hot day, her eyes suddenly widened in panic. She had told Caroline Lasher that she would meet her this morning at the library for their first piano lesson. How could she face Christian’s mother after what had happened between her and her son last night? She thought of trying to contact Mrs. Lasher to cancel, but had already struck down the thought before it was fully formed. It was too rude to cancel this late. Besides, she didn’t have her number. And Megan would be damned if she was going to call Christian for any reason after he’d walked out on her last night.

  Later in church, Megan tried to focus on Father Gregory’s sermon, but her mind kept wandering to thoughts and images of Christian. She flushed hotly as she unintentionally replayed moments of their lovemaking last night. As she sat in the holy confines of St. Catherine’s, surely some of the things that Christian had whispered so hotly in her ear last night should seem irreverent and sinful.

  But they didn’t. Christian’s words only seemed honest and wrenched straight from his soul.

  An unsettling prickle on her bared neck made Megan turn to the back of the church. Her eyes were drawn to him as surely as a magnet would unerringly find one piece of iron in a pile of wood. He was staring at her through heavily-lidded eyes from the last empty pew in the church.

  Megan’s first reaction was concern. Christian wore a casual light blue button-down shirt that gave the impression of being thrown on over his nakedness before he’d stalked restlessly out of his loft. His hair was tousled and finger combed, at best. One strong arm was draped carelessly over the back of the pew. His expression was hard, impenetrable. But Megan sensed his exhaustion even from this distance. She recalled his statement about being unable to sleep without her. Surely he had just been exaggerating about that to make an excuse for his outlandish midnight raids.

  Hadn’t he?

  One thing was for sure. His church attendance was an anomaly. Christian may have attended St. Catherine’s regularly as a child, but she knew for a fact that he hadn’t returned for a service in years, probably for more than a decade.

  She turned around distractedly when her fellow parishioners stood. Her lips and tongue formed the words of the hymn clumsily. As she sat down again after an excruciating wait of several minutes, Megan glanced over her shoulder. But the last pew was empty.

  She dreaded seeing Caroline Lasher later that morning. When she saw her warm smile of greeting as she waited for Megan in the lobby of the library, however, some of her heaviness drifted away naturally. Caroline was a lovely, generous woman who Megan would have been appreciative to know under any circumstances. She returned the older woman’s hug.

  Caroline and Christian shared the same eyes, with the one exception being that Caroline’s gaze was gentler, less incising than her son’s. But as Caroline bade Megan to sit down on the piano bench in the private music room and sat next to her in a chair, Megan realized that she saw every bit as clearly as Christian.

  “Something is wrong, isn’t it, Megan?”

  Megan opened her mouth to form the automatic denial that had been entrenched into her response repertoire since she was three years old. But when her eyes met Caroline’s compassionate gaze, her lower lip trembled. Something in Caroline’s eyes seemed to grant her permission to speak the truth instead of carrying an unspoken plea for assurance that everything was just fine.

  Megan was horrified to feel tears flood her eyes. When she saw Caroline’s calm acceptance of them, though, she muttered brokenly through a storm of emotion that crashed over her.

  “Christian and I…he’s…I didn’t know about his career with Lasher Down until last night. I knew he was a musician, but…saw him unexpectedly at the concert last night, and…accused him of being a liar and being manipulative, and even worse things…and afterwards…”

  Much to her mortification, Megan sobbed uncontrollably with grief. She grasped at Caroline’s outstretched hand like it was a life preserver thrown to her in a choppy sea.

  “I know you know about what happened to me…about Henry Nightingale. Christian told me you know. It’s not all that I am, Caroline. I can’t even remember it. But it’s formed me, too. It’s left me unsure about men…inexperienced…awkward. And you know Christian…he’s everything I’m not. It won’t work out between him and me. It’s just too…”

  “Too what?” Caroline prompted patiently when Megan’s voice broke.

  “Unlikely. Strange…”

  “And?”

  “Right,” Megan whispered as fresh tears spilled over her cheeks.

  Caroline transferred over to the piano bench next to Megan. She hugged her.

  “Some of the most beautiful things in existence are strange and unlikely,” Caroline said with a small smile a moment later. “That’s what makes them so beautiful, because they’re rare, something to be cherished.”

  She looked up into Caroline’s compassionate gaze. She understood exactly what the older woman meant…and that brought a new dread.

  “I made him so angry. When I found out that he knew about my past, I felt so vulnerable…and mad, too. Mad that he was starting to treat me like everyone else, like I would shatter at the wrong word. Last night, I accused him of things that I didn’t even believe, just to stop him from looking at me like I was a fragile child…”

  She paused as the reality of her words crashed into her awareness. She’d made Christian look at her with something other than concern, all right. She’d baited him until his anger and desire snuffed out his caution. Had that been her unconscious desire all along?

  And she had accused him of being manipulative?

  “Megan, what did Christian tell you about Henry Nightingale?”

  She blinked in surprise at the question. “He didn’t tell me anything about it, except that my sister Hilary had cornered him and forced him to listen to the whole story. Christian didn’t know about my past before my sister did that.”

  Caroline shook her head thoughtfully. “He may not have known specifically about you, but I’d swear that he has some memories of Henry Nightingale. Maybe he couldn’t recall the details or the names until Hilary mentioned them, but part of him knew the truth. There was just too much of an emotional aura…an upheaval in the whole community for Christian to have been left completely ignorant.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to imply that families like mine suffered to the degree that yours did,” Caroline continued. “But such a crime sent shock waves into the parish, and they must have struck at the children hard, undoubtedly in ways that a child couldn’t fully understand or articulate. Henry Nightingale likely came to equate danger and evil in many a neighborhood child’s mind during that time period—quite literally the monster under the bed.”

  He gaze was apologetic when she realized how her words might sound to Megan, of all people.

  “It’s okay, Caroline. Really. Go on.”

  “Christian was maybe ten years old when it happened. He was always an energetic, happy child. Sometimes too energetic, trust me,” Caroline added with a laugh. Her smile faded. “But I recall that during Henry Nightingale’s trial, Christian became quieter than usual, moody, and withdrawn. When he had a nightmare one night—something that was a rarity for Christian—I remember associating his unrest with Nightingale. I planned to talk to him about it, but in the next few days, he seemed to rebound. I should have still addressed it with him, but…he seemed so happy again. I suppose such painful things are easier sometimes for a parent to ignore than tackle, especially when the results seem so temporary.”

  Caroline sighed. “Who knew that it would come back to haunt me in such a strange way?”

  ”Don’t, Caroline. You’re a wonderful mother. Christian adores you.”

  Caroline
smiled and patted her hand. “Don’t worry. Christian is one of the strongest people I’ve ever encountered. I’m not likely to feel guilty about any aspects of his upbringing for long. I only brought it up so that you might understand him a little better and forgive him if his reaction seemed extreme.”

  “You’re right to tell me,” she murmured. “It’s something I’ve never considered…that Christian was a child in the neighborhood at the time, that how Nightingale would have affected him.”

  “There’s something else I want you to know. Christian has reacted so strongly about it because he feels so strongly about you.”

  “Why do you say that?” Megan murmured without meeting Caroline’s eyes.

  “Some things a mother knows without being told. I always could read Christian like a book, much to his regret. When he was little he could be one of the devil’s own when the mood struck him. But there wasn’t a time after he misbehaved, even when he was in his early twenties, that he didn’t communicate to me in some way—usually indirectly—his regret. He’s one of the most honest individuals I know. He feels his own perceived shortcomings deeply—“

  “Why, Caroline?” Megan asked. It was a part of Christian that she’d never fully understood; his extreme defensiveness when it came to misperceptions about him. Surely such defensiveness wasn’t just rooted in others’ jaded ideas. Christian seemed too mature to know that he couldn’t change most people’s opinions. Surely his edginess had to do with his own self-doubts, too.

  Caroline sighed and glanced up at the ceiling thoughtfully. “He’s done things he regretted, Megan. He’s far, far from being what the tabloids made him out to be, but I suppose there was a kernel of truth to a few of those lies rooted in some of his wild behavior when he was younger, when he first knew success with the band. After what happened to his wife—”

  “Cecilia,” Megan inserted.

  Caroline nodded. “She was a beautiful girl. But she wasn’t strong like Christian. It wasn’t just her sudden illness that made her that way, either. She didn’t have the strength to persevere, to believe in their relationship through hardship…to believe in Christian. Of course, that’s just a mother’s opinion. It can’t be easy for any woman to hear that her husband has been unfaithful.”