Hard to believe that, only days ago, I didn’t know her at all.
And now…
“Ash,” I say again, desperately summoning my inner Fairy Godmother, wishing so hard that, if I had a wishing muscle, it would be severely, irreparably sprained, “this is all my fault. If anyone messed up, it was me, for not being completely honest with you about—”
“Molly, you had no obligation to—”
“Listen, please.” I squeeze my eyes shut, forcing back tears, but when I open them again, Ash is watching me with such tenderness that I can’t help myself: I cry silently before her, drawing in quick, steadying breaths.
“I’m listening,” she says softly, and she lets go of my hand to catch my tears, pressing her warm palm against my face. “Go on.”
“O…okay.” Her touch startles me as much as it comforts me. I’m made of contradictions: excited and encouraged; terrified and full of doubt. But when I meet Ash’s calm gaze, fixed so unwaveringly upon my hot, tear-streaked face, I find my balance—and, at last, my voice.
“I love you.”
She falters a little on her feet, taking a half-step back. Her hand falls from my cheek to my shoulder, lies motionless there. “You—”
“I love you. I realize it’s sudden. It happened so quickly. Maybe too quickly. I mean, we haven’t even dated; we haven’t even…” A blush burns my cheeks, and I cough sheepishly, unbutton my collar, loosen my tie. “But I think I knew it from that first moment, right after…well, right after I ran you over with my car.”
“Molly, you didn’t really—”
“I know, I know, I didn’t really run you over, but, as cheesy as it sounds, you ran me over…” My heart hovers, buoyant and afloat, in my chest. I press a hand against my breast, feel the trembling beats in my fingertips. “With that smile of yours.” I lightly, hesitantly, graze her lips with my thumb. “With your…your openness, your warmth. Your beauty.” I look at her, wish I could look at her forever, would give up all other sights for this vision of her face. “I was in a coma when we met, Ash. A waking coma, but…I’d resigned myself to a future of automation, of working, eating, sleeping. Never dreaming.” I wince and shake my head, allowing my hair to fall forward, concealing my brimming eyes. “Never, ever wishing.”
She moves closer, gliding both of her hands along my arms and down to my waist, where her fingers grip my belt loops loosely. The pressure of her hands is light, but I feel it everywhere…and everywhere, I feel alive.
Overheated, I take slow, measured breaths and envision myself stepping into an ice-cold shower… I have to stay calm, have to maintain my composure long enough to say what must be said. But my hormones smirk at the cliché, stubborn, unconvinced. So I summon a bathtub full of ice cubes, a polar bear plunge into a frozen lake, a naked snowball fight with a flock of angry penguins.
When none of my frigid fantasies do the trick, I imagine my body frozen solid in a one of those cryogenics labs: all of my warm parts too cold to touch, too frosty to feel…
But then Ash tugs a little harder at my belt loops, and her hip jars against mine; all hopes of turning off what’s already on evaporate. I stop fighting the flood of feeling: my heart gushes, irrevocably undammed.
“I love you,” I say again, and I want to say it a hundred times, a thousand times, but there are other words that I have to say, other truths that I have to speak aloud first. “Ash, knowing you gave me the permission to know myself. To figure out what I want, what I don’t want…and to realize what matters most to me.”
Her hooded eyes lift, silver as swords; they pierce me through, the most pleasurable pain... “What do you want, Molly?” Ash asks huskily, tongue moistening her lips. Her chin rises; her gaze challenges me, dares me. “Tell me what you want.”
I stare at her mouth, inhale her heady scent, bask in the waves of heat radiating from her body, and, head tilted, simply whisper, “You.”
Everything can change in a moment, a breath, a single, mad thrust of courage.
One moment, there is a space between us—only a little space, but large or small, it amounts to the same reality, the same emptiness. This void could span galaxies, universes, because we aren’t touching, Ash and me. We’re separate, apart, bound to our own particular orbits.
But the next moment, the word space loses all meaning; it, in fact, ceases to be. And separation becomes a madman’s dream.
Ash pulls me against her, her hot, lean form bearing down hard against mine—and then she’s kissing me, and the fervor of her kisses sends me reeling, stumbling, until my back collides—loudly—with the closed office door, head banging against the sharp beveled wood.
“Are you all right?” Ash asks, her mouth on my mouth, kissing, kissing...
I can’t speak, can only nod and breathe and moan, reaching for her, trying to pull her closer, closer still…
But then Ash draws my arms away from my sides, lifts them up and presses my wrists against the door, pinning me beneath her as she melds against me, curve to curve.
“I love you, too, Molly,” she says, lips grazing my collarbone, and then she says it again at my ear, and before she claims my mouth, “I love you, I love you… I’m crazy for you.”
Ash presses her knee between my legs and pushes gently as she licks the length of my neck, her tongue circling my ear; exhalations of hot breath set my skin on fire. “I came back for you,” she whispers, panting, sighing. “I couldn’t stay away. I couldn’t give you up, Molly, not without a fight.”
I gasp, leaning against her. “What…what did you say?”
“I.” She kisses my forehead. “Want.” Her lips glide over my cheek. “To fight.” Her mouth lingers before mine, lips brushing lips. “For you.” Our mouths, tongues, hearts crash together. Tearing away from the kiss, she begins to unbutton my shirt, and her lips trail slow, confident love-bites over my chest, over the heaving rise of my breast…
I know that Molly is worth fighting for, Martian Ash told Martian Juliette. I despaired of ever experiencing such high-flung, romantic sentiments on earthly soil.
But now Ash—real Ash—is telling me I want to fight for you, and it’s too much, too extraordinary; my heart is poised to combust. Ash still thinks I cheated on her, and yet she wants to fight for me…
I’m ablaze.
I’m burning up with love.
I want to breathe, taste, feel this moment for an infinity—longer.
But I can’t permit Ash to believe a lie; I can’t let her think I chose Juliette over her.
Her hands have unbuttoned my shirt top to bottom, and now they connect hotly with the bare skin of my hips, my waist, stealing upward, tracing the line of my belly, the bottom edge of my bra… My very not-sexy bra, the one with the comic book-style Wonder Woman logos on the cups. I feel Ash’s mouth smile against me as her eyes take in my cartoon-clad breasts, as her fingers gently tug at my sleeves and at my bra straps, sliding them down past my bared shoulders...
“Ash,” I whisper, inwardly wincing as I squeeze her arms above the elbows and draw her gaze up to my own, putting our passion on pause.
She straightens, blinks at me, face flushed and lips parted, downturned. “Is something wrong?” And those eyes, dark as a winter sky, cloud with concern.
I smile faintly at her. “No. I mean, yes, but… No, there’s nothing wrong with this. With you… With us. It’s just—”
She tilts up my chin, kisses me so lightly, so teasingly, that I barely feel it. Then her hands clutch the tie at my neck and tug me closer. A small, sly grin plays over her lips as she gazes at me. “You have a confession to make, Molly Mason?”
“Um, kind of.” I squirm uncomfortably against the door, desperate to kiss her again, to touch her, to tear off that bowtie and singing telegram jacket and fall on top of her on the cool office floor…
But instead I take her blue lapels in my hands and, with a wink, turn her around; her back is now pressed against the door, and I move my fingers to her hips, pulling them hard ag
ainst mine.
“Ash.”
Her mouth slides into an easy, eager smile. “Wonder Woman.”
I laugh unguardedly and slip my hands behind her waist. But then I inhale, shake my head and narrow my brows. “No, this is serious. I… I think you came back…to me…under false pretenses.”
Her face sobers; the smile fades, replaced by a small, grim line. “Have I?”
“No, don’t—I didn’t—it’s not what you’re thinking. Or…I don’t even know what you’re thinking, but the truth is…” I pull her closer, fall into her sad, dark eyes. “Ash, I never slept with Juliette. There’s nothing between us. We’re over. Whatever she told you… She was just trying to hurt me, or win me back, or chase you away… I don’t know. But it wasn’t true. I didn’t have sex with her. She lied to you. You don’t have to fight for me. I’m…I’m already yours.”
Ash’s lips part, but she doesn’t move, doesn’t speak. Her breaths, though, come louder, faster, and something flickers in the depth of her gaze: a small fire, a newly kindled light.
I press one hand against her chest, toying with the button on her jacket, and I smooth my other hand through her hair, then trace a fingernail over the planes of her face. “I didn’t know what she’d told you until it was too late, until you’d already gone, and you wouldn’t take my calls, and I figured I’d never see you again, that I would never be able to explain, and you would always think—”
She grasps both of my wrists and stills me, pierces me, with the intensity of her startled stare. “You don’t have feelings for Juliette?”
“No, I don’t—”
“You aren’t in love with her? You don’t want to patch things up with her?”
“Ash.” I loose my wrists and press my palms to the back of her head, drawing her mouth down to meet mine. It’s a hard kiss—an urgent, gasping, teeth-clattering, fire-alarm kiss. It’s the kind of kiss that you only read about in books: books that you hide under your mattress, or in the back of your sock drawer, or in a shoebox in the closet.
Yeah, those books.
It’s a kiss to rival all kisses, because it’s mine, and it’s hers, and there’s no more space between us, no more lies. I feel Ash’s heart beating against my chest, and I feel her pulse beneath my hand, and I wonder what it is, this mystical force that draws two people together, that surmounts the boundaries of brains and bodies, that urges separate beings to meld, surrendering their oneness in favor of usness.
It can’t be a simple matter of biology. It can’t be a random collection of circumstances: this plus this equals this. What I feel for Ash is different than what I felt for Juliette, or for anyone else I’ve ever known.
“Told you,” Ash smiles against my mouth.
“What did you tell me?” I kiss her throat, my fingers working feverishly to unknot her bowtie.
Ash stills my hands, pulls the tie off with one quick flick of her wrist. “Clip-on,” she grins, letting it fall to the floor. Then her hands slide behind my back, and I feel her fingertips nudging at the hooks of my bra. “Well,” she says, then, kissing me lightly, “I’m an idiot. I always suspected it. But now it’s a proven fact.”
“You’re not an—”
“It’s sweet of you to defend me, darling”—my bra, unhooked, falls loose upon my chest—“but you’ve got to call a dog a dog. And I’m a dog. Er, idiot. You know what I mean.”
I try to focus on her words, but it’s hard to focus on anything but her fingers…expertly relieving me of my shirt and my ridiculous, primary-colored bra. Both items whoosh softly to the floor, and I stand half-naked before Ash, blushing but not at all shy, and when she takes my nipple into her mouth, when I moan against her neck—I hardly even hear the faint knocking at the door.
Granted, it’s a soft knock: uncertain, hesitant.
But it’s a knock, nonetheless, and though I’m determined to ignore it, Ash straightens, gapes at me, brows lifted as high as her hairline. Hastily, she bends down to gather up my discarded clothes, but I brush them aside, drawing her arms around me from behind. Then I tilt my head toward the door and clear my throat, call out, “Who is it?” in the most normal-sounding voice I can cough up, given the circumstances: a bizarre cross between a soprano’s highest note and an adolescent frog’s embarrassed croak.
“Um, it’s Georgie? I thought… You’ve been in there for…a while. I was waiting. You know, with the garbage bag and the weed killer—”
“Oh! Yeah. Sorry.” I bite back a sigh as Ash’s fingers gently, but quite skillfully, squeeze… “Um, changed my mind, but…thanks, anyway.”
“What?” Georgie sounds unconvinced. “You mean, you’re keeping the flowers? And the…singing telegram girl? She’s still in there, isn’t—”
“Long song,” I gasp, arching; Ash’s lips claim the back of my neck, glide over my trembling shoulders. “She’s, um…still singing.”
“Really? I can’t hear her.”
“Mm, can’t you? Oh, you know… Aren’t these walls soundproofed?”
“No. Duh. I can hear you through the—”
“Um, is that all you wanted to ask, Georgie?”
I don’t have to see her to know that she’s pouting. “Well, Terry called and told me he’ll arrive really soon—five, ten minutes. He’s stuck in traffic but got your message. About some artist named Rosenburg dropping out of the gala? He wants to have a meeting when he gets in.”
“Five minutes?” I wince, turning around to draw Ash against my chest, pulling her forehead down to touch mine. “He’ll be here in five minutes?”
“That’s what he said.”
Exhaling miserably, I offer Ash an apologetic smile; she presses her cheek against mine, plants a sweet kiss at the corner of my eye. “Okay, Georgie. Thanks.”
“No problem. You’re really going to keep those flowers?”
“Um…” From the moment I followed Ash into my office, I haven’t spared a thought for flowers, but now my eyes skip to the chair pushed against the wall: there, an overflowing bouquet of wildflowers—sunflowers and Quinacridone Red poppies—bursts from an artful newspaper wrapping, the lush bundle tied up smartly with a single loop of twine.
Ash brought me flowers.
Gorgeous, glowing, gold-and-scarlet flowers.
And—thank God—there’s not a lily in the bunch.
I kiss her softly, pressing my length against her in a long, hot, luxurious embrace.
Then, “Yeah, I’m keeping the flowers,” I tell Georgie hoarsely, and I hear her sigh, listen as her kitten-heeled footsteps recede, headed back toward the lobby and her messy, lonely desk.
“I thought the flowers were from Juliette,” I explain to Ash with an awkward shrug, running my fingers through her short, soft hair. “Hence the garbage bag.”
“Ah.” She bites her lip and gazes into my eyes so deeply that I realize I can feel her inside of me, inhabiting every dusty corner of my heart. “Molly, I know we don’t have a lot of time—”
“But maybe later—”
“Definitely later.” Her mouth curves into a wide, wolfish grin as her fingers tease me, grazing my arms with a maddening feather-light touch. “All right if I wait for you in the cottage?”
“I’ll die if you don’t.” I slip my hand into my pants pocket and detach the cottage key, pressing it into her hand.
“It’s a date, then.” She bends her head to kiss me, but when she draws back, her expression is pained, serious. “Before I go, I just want to tell you… I’m sorry. For believing Juliette. I shouldn’t have. I don’t know why I did. She was convincing, but—”
“Actresses,” I sigh.
“I should have trusted you. I should have talked to you, tried to understand. I’m so sorry—”
“You’re here now.” I rest my head against her shoulder and breathe in her cool, summer-garden scent. Despite our kisses, despite the curves of Ash’s body melding hotly, now, against mine, the surreal, this-can’t-be-happening feeling hasn’t left me yet. But maybe
that’s only because I’ve never experienced something so…right before. I’ve fumbled through life, crashing haphazardly from one relationship to the next, but somehow, despite our haphazard crash of a first encounter, what I’ve found with Ash feels anything but random or accidental.
It feels, truly, meant to be.
Ash brings my hand to her lips. “Until tonight?” she asks, grey gaze bright, soft mouth smiling.
“I’m going to be useless all day…”
“Hey, where’s that museum curator spirit? You’ve got art heists to foil, long-lost masterpieces to discover…”
“Multinational art counterfeiting rings to expose.” I nod, feigning a begrudging smile. “I guess you’re right. After all, the fate of the whole art world rests on my—currently unclothed—shoulders.”
“And what lovely shoulders they are.” Ash kisses my shoulders slowly, warm mouth lingering. “But I think,” she whispers against the base of my neck, “that our five minutes are almost up.”
“Time flies when you’re… Hmm.” I smile thoughtfully, tilting my head to the side. “What is it that we’re doing?”
Ash pulls me against her for a lingering kiss; my toes curl inside of my faux leather flats. Then she meets my gaze, smoothing my mussed hair before placing her hands on either side of my face. “Surrendering to destiny?”
My heart quickens. Destiny… This feels like destiny. But surrender isn’t the word I would choose… I surrendered to Juliette all throughout our relationship, gave in to her whims and foot-stomping demands, gave up my own wants in order to please her—though I never could, not completely.
Ash wouldn’t ever ask that sort of self-sacrifice of me, I know. And my being with her isn’t about giving in, about surrender; it’s about recognizing what I want, what she wants, what we want together, and, well, taking it.
“How about we call it seizing destiny, instead?” I lift a brow at her, my mouth slanting up, as I begin to dress, clumsily fastening my Wonder Woman bra. “It’s a good word—seize—don’t you think?”
Drawn to You Page 20