by Nicole Casey
My kisses were urgent now as if the lack of time we faced was like the end of days upon us.
Eva moaned softly as I scooped her into my arms, laying her onto the king-sized bed. I stopped to stare at her, not wanting to rush the moment I had longed for but the tugging in my pants was trying to guide me, my flesh prickling deliciously as our flesh met.
Eva seemed more fevered than me, pulling the white cashmere sweater above her head to expose her braless breasts, nipples taut and waiting for attention.
I could not resist any longer, burying my face into her bosom, licking and sucking as her fingers entwined in my hair.
Lower my mouth journeyed, across the tight skin of her flat stomach, inhaling the scent of her.
I ripped off my own shirt, wanting us to be as close to each other as possible, knowing that it was likely the only time we would be together so intimately.
Down to the zipper of her pants, my hands encircling the firm rear of her buttocks as my teeth worked off the fastens.
She raised her legs to allow me access and in seconds, I was nuzzling the wetness of her core, one palms massaging her breast, the other pushing her thighs apart.
She cried out as my tongue delved into her middle, lapping up the juice of her excitement.
Upward she bucked, my lips drawing every drop of moisture as her mewls grew louder and more intense.
I could feel her back tense against me, her body begin to tremble and suddenly there was a whoosh of warmth against my chin.
Unable to stand another second, I propped myself up, positioning myself between her legs and again met her eyes.
Her expression was almost trance-like, her jade eyes glassy with passion as she bit on her lower lip, nodding slightly as if to approve my entry.
Sighing, I embraced her, kissing her full lips gently as my hardness slipped into her opening.
She screamed out and I froze, ready to withdraw but she shook her head.
“No!” she whispered. “Don’t stop.”
I was not sure I would have been able to stop, the need to possess her too great.
Forward I plunged, Eva arching her slim hips beneath me, her calves locking over my waist as she drew me in harder and harder.
Soon we were both a gasping, grunting, sweating pile as Eva began to climax again, her nails digging into the base of my back.
I could hold on no longer and I joined her release with my own, long, hot streams of nectar filling her as I groaned.
Quivering, we lay, unspeaking for a long moment and I suddenly felt a stab of panic.
Does she regret this?
I propped myself up to peer into her face, my heart thumping with trepidation but instantly, the feeling subsided.
Eva lay with a small smile on her face shaking her head as if trying to regain a sense of reality.
When she opened her eyes, she bit on her lower lip.
“I am in love with you,” she told me, and I felt a flush of relief so great, my arms buckled again.
I kissed her sweetly on the lips.
“I am in love with you,” I told her. “And I never want to let you go.”
“You have to,” she whispered, and I felt like she stabbed me in the heart.
“What the hell is this?”
The roar of Matthew’s voice startled us both out of the fleeting peace we had found in each other’s arms.
Her brother stood enraged at his bedroom door, his mouth twitching as we scrambled to cover ourselves.
“Matt,” Eva groaned. “It’s not as bad as it looks!”
But Matthew was hearing nothing of reason, fire emanating from his green eyes.
“Get out!” he screamed at me. “Get the hell out of my house!”
And I knew that Eva and I were going to have just one more obstacle to overcome.
6
Eva
There was nowhere to go after that but back to Russia.
Matthew could not look at me and I couldn’t dare ask Nick to stay with him. We both knew that I was bound to return to Moscow and I didn’t want to prolong the trip knowing that it would only lead to more heartache.
“I knew he was up to something, but I didn’t think he was banging my sister!” my brother choked furiously, watching me as I backed up my meager belongings.
“Matt, I am a grown woman. I don’t answer to you and neither does Nick,” I told him hotly, but I felt terrible that Matt had learned about our relationship like that. It was not what I wanted.
I didn’t want Matt to know about Nick and me at all.
After all, it wasn’t meant to last.
“I don’t know why you came back in the first place,” Matthew growled at me and I didn’t know how to answer him. “He’s already letting the company go to hell and you being here didn’t help anything.”
“You can’t hold this against Nick,” I told him.
“You don’t get to tell me who to be angry at!” Matthew spat. “Just go back to Europe and take your vows before you get yourself into even more trouble.”
I had never been more conflicted than when I boarded that plane.
The cell which Nick had given me was left behind, chiming incessantly as he tried to unravel what was happening.
I didn’t say goodbye; it would only complicate an already complicated situation.
As the Bowing 747 taxied down the runway, I stared at the check in my hands, willing myself not to cry.
After all, I had gotten what I had come for; the donation would enable our work as we had hoped.
The children need you, I told myself. The children need you more than a billionaire in Seattle.
I wondered what I needed.
The answer seemed obvious but so selfish.
Sighing, I lay my head back and closed my eyes.
Whatever Nick and I had shared had run its course. We had known from the start that we could not be together.
As bitter a pill it was to swallow, I had to accept it and move on with what I was fated to do; take my vows and continue with my missionary work.
Christmas came and went but I didn’t hear from Matthew, despite my endless emails to him.
He seemed determined to forget he had a sister, especially one who would bed his best friend.
I debated whether to message Nick, but I knew I wasn’t strong enough to resist the temptation of running back to him.
I prayed that over time, I would simply forget about him, that the pain of losing the only man I had ever loved would diminish.
Yet I could not stop my mind from playing and replaying the afternoon we had spent together as if it had only happened the day before.
In March, Matthew finally returned an email. He had met a woman and was thinking about marriage.
I congratulated him, fighting off the urge to ask if Nick has moved on also. I didn’t want to know the answer, not really.
In June, Matthew video called me.
“I’m getting married at Christmas,” he told me. “Do you think you can make it back?”
I swallowed my tears and shook my head.
“No,” I whispered. “I don’t think I can.”
His face contorted in concern.
“Why are you so upset?” he demanded but I couldn’t answer him honestly, not yet.
In September, I “met” my future sister-in-law via Skype.
She was a lovely, pert brunette with dancing brown eyes and a quick, easy smile. I knew she would be a great wife to my headstrong brother and a great mom.
“I can’t wait to meet you, Eva,” Terra told me. “Your brother has told me so much about you!”
I grinned.
“Don’t believe everything he says,” I warned. “I’m not that bad.”
She lowered her voice and glanced over her shoulder to ensure that Matthew was not listening.
“His business partner sold his shares in the company secretly,” she whispered. “He basically up and left without a word to anyone.”
I was shocked at the
news.
“What?” I gasped. “Nick?”
Terra nodded, shrugging.
“I think it all got to be a little bit too much for him. He did it without warning, but Matt says he’s been unravelling for months.”
My hand flew to my mouth as my eyes filled with tears.
“Where is Nick now?” I breathed, willing myself to remain calm but to my horror, Terra only shrugged her shoulders.
“No one knows,” she sighed. “He’s gone AWOL. No one has heard from him in a month. His emails go unanswered and his phone is disconnected.”
Shock filled my body as the reality of her words sunk into my bones.
No! I screamed silently. No! This can’t be!
I signed off the computer as quickly as I could without arousing her suspicion but as soon as I logged off, the tears fell fast and furiously.
I had waited too long, procrastinating through fear and uncertainty and now Nick was gone.
“Why are you crying, Eva?” Sister Kate asked as she caught glimpse of my face.
I rose from the scarred table we used for our meals and writing to shake my head, feeling her warm embrace.
I couldn’t speak.
“Eva, what is it?” the nun asked urgently. “What has happened?”
I dried my tears, drawing back from her to expose my swollen belly.
“I am pregnant,” I murmured, choking on the words. “And I have to find a home for my baby.”
7
Nick
After Eva left, my life seemed to stop altogether. Any interest I had in anything else no longer existed.
I was almost like a man obsessed with the image of the angelic blonde who had stolen my heart in seconds it seemed, seeing her around every corner, catching a whiff of her scent in every store.
I wanted to move on with my life, but I just couldn’t do it. I had no idea which way to turn.
I couldn’t reconcile that she had simply up and left without saying goodbye as if I had meant so little that I wasn’t even worthy of a kiss to see her off.
The pain of losing her when I had only just found her was the worst withdrawal imaginable to man.
Sleep was out of the question, food was often forced down my throat by George. I tried to throw myself into work but there was no focus.
Matthew did nothing to explain where she had gone no matter how much I pushed the issue and while I knew she was somewhere in Moscow, I had nothing on which to base a search.
I considered hiring a private investigator to find her but when the weeks passed by and she made no effort to reach out, I knew that she had put a solid period to the end of our chapter.
It was a nauseating reality but there was nothing I could do about it.
I suppose I had always known she was going to leave me behind.
I had just secretly hoped for a different outcome, a future together.
My relationship with Matthew grew strained to the point where we barely spoke unless it was absolutely necessary.
He and I communicated via email a lot, but he could see that my head wasn’t in the company anymore and I could not stifle the resentment I felt toward him even though I knew that Eva leaving had little to do with him in the end.
In the new year, I realized that the company was not what I wanted.
I began taking steps to ensure its future.
As angry as I was with Matthew, I didn’t want him to fail. He had been my best friend for years after all and we had built Kinetic Designs together from nothing.
It took me months to prepare for the sale, a secret I kept to myself, knowing it would only cause more friction between me and Matt.
I didn’t want to talk to anyone about it but when August came, I quietly sold my shares and walked away from Kinetic.
It didn’t take a genius to figure out that Matthew was furious, but I didn’t know how to deal with him.
Eva had shown me that there was something bigger out there than myself and I wanted a hand in it. It was the only way I could think of to get a piece of Eva back, even if she didn’t want me.
I told myself the reason I had met her was to show me love on a grander scale than anything out there.
Eva was selfless and kind. She was beautiful and brave.
And even thought I wanted to believe that she had simply walked away from us, I knew that it was not so black and white.
Our love could never have survived, not how things were.
I spent most of August and September on a drunken bender.
At one point I brought home a girl I had picked up at a seedy bar in the International District because she looked like Eva.
Or at least I thought she did after six double vodka tonics and three shots of scotch.
But as the woman disrobed before me, her long blonde hair covering sweet, small breasts, I realized that she looked nothing like the woman who had forever stolen my heart.
And apparently Eva had also stolen my libido.
I couldn’t perform sexually, despite the workings of warm hands and a hot, relentless mouth, spouting filthy words. It was nothing that had ever happened to me before and I knew then that I would never be free of the bond I had with Eva.
After an hour of trying, the blonde left my house, furious, while I was ashamed and confused, cursing at the universe for being so damned unfair.
I realized that I could spend the rest of my life floating around looking for meaning in the bottom of a bottle, angry at everyone or I could do something about my situation.
I sobered up.
I put my house on the market and sold my Mercedes.
By October, I had liquidated all my assets and was sitting on an obscene pile of money while living out of a suite at the Fairmont, planning my next move.
I knew what I had to do but I wasn’t sure if I was ready.
Or if it was ready for me.
8
Eva
It felt strange being home again, twice in one year, no less. I recalled how nervously excited I had been last year, stepping off the plane.
This time, I felt no nervousness nor excitement.
It was only numbness tingling through my body as Terra led me to the conference room by the arm.
I wanted to rip it back and run away screaming but I couldn’t, of course.
There was no escaping this.
Time seemed to have frozen, the Christmas decorations still the same as they had been last year, wreaths laced in amongst the desks, brightly lit trees in almost every corner.
A grotesquely cheerful plastic Santa sat waving from the lobby as we passed through and I could hear carols playing gently through the intercom but there was no one in sight.
Matthew sent everyone home, I realized, gulping back the lump in my throat.
“You’re doing the right thing,” Terra told me softly. “I know how hard this is for you, Eva but Matthew and I…”
She trailed off as I jerked my head up to look at her, my eyes hollow of emotion.
In my arms, the baby cooed in her sleep, barely three months old but sleeping through the night.
Terra opened the conference room door and I walked inside but I didn’t feel like I was there.
I had floated somewhere else, somewhere high above my brother and the adoption attorney who waited for me to sit down.
I saw Matthew trying not to look at my baby daughter but in spite of himself, he strained to glimpse her small face.
Suddenly I was finding it very difficult to breathe.
“Sit down, Miss Jameson,” the lawyer offered kindly as if sensing my intense desire to flee. “We’re all friends here.”
I glanced at my brother, wondering if that was truth but he seemed determined to avoid all eye contact with me.
I had disappointed him. Nick had disappointed him and now he was being charged with the care of the product of the that disappointment.
Tentatively, I sat on the edge of my chair, waiting for my nerves to snap, rocking the child in my arms.
I refused to name her, knowing that whatever I chose would be vetoed by Matthew anyway.
The nuns called her Hope which broke my heart again.
“You just have some papers to sign, Eva,” the lawyer continued, sliding a folder toward me. “Of course, I am here to so that you understand everything you’re signing.”
Terra reached out for my daughter cautiously.
“I can take her while you sign, Eva,” she told me. I could see she was expecting me to lash out.
Instead, I silently handed baby Hope over to her new mom.
I had half expected to feel another wave of sickness or despair as I did it, but it was as if I was emotionally depleted.
I had nothing left.
The attorney talked me through the concept of open-adoption and I barely heard anything he said.
I wanted Matthew to look at me, but his gaze remained fixated on the table.
“Do you have any questions, Eva?” he asked me as I scrawled my name on the last sheet of paper.
“Matthew?” I whispered, and he grunted to acknowledge he had heard me. “Will you tell her about me?”
As if I had flicked a switch, his face turned crimson and he glared at me in fury.
“Are you out of your mind?” he yelled.
“Matthew!” Terra chided, her brow furrowing as she gestured at the baby, but Matt did not seem to notice.
“You are to walk out of this building and never look back, Eva. I don’t want to hear from you ever again, do you hear me? That’s the deal. If you want to ensure your baby gets the best future, you stay the hell away from all of us!”
I don’t know what else I was expecting but the words cut me physically.
“Please,” I whispered. “Don’t cut me off from my baby.”
Hard and cold, he pointed at the door.
“If I hear from you again, Eva, I will have you arrested for harassment. Get out of here before I change my mind about taking your daughter.”
Unsteadily, I rose to my feet, blinded by tears and stumbled toward the door, pulling it open.