The Enchantment of Emma Fletcher

by L. D. Crichton

  “Nothing.”

  I don’t believe her. Everyone is afraid of something. Her life so far hasn’t been easy. Her own mother, the very person who is supposed to cherish her, to show her how to trust, to love, was an epic failure, even if she’s trying to make up for it now. Maybe that’s why Emma keeps her distance, but something tells me there is more to it than that.

  “If you’re not scared,” I whisper, “prove it.”

  I can hear her swallow. “What do you mean?”

  “Come closer,” I tell her. “I’m not made of glass, Emma—you can touch me.”

  Her body moves not more than an inch to my side of the bed. I reach for her, pulling her so her head rests on my chest, supported by the crook of my arm.

  “Relax,” I say as softly as I can.

  “I don’t think I can.”

  My fingers find her hair, winding the strands through my fingers. She lets out the smallest sigh. “You can,” I tell her. “You just need to practice a little bit.”

  She doesn’t respond to that, but I feel each muscle in her body loosen and her breath slows.

  “Good night, Emma Fletcher.”

  “Night, Tristan Banks.”

  As her body gives in to sleep, I use the opportunity to analyze her. Her arm is stretched across my stomach. She’s got two freckles, one on her forearm and one about a centimeter above the elbow. Her hair is draped across my arm and feels like silk. Her mouth is open slightly, her lips parted, and she’s got the smallest crease in her brow, like even in her sleep, she’s thinking hard about something.

  Emma

  It’s been years since I slept that well. Tristan’s body is its own little furnace. I don’t even want to move to go for my morning run. His heart thrums in a steady beat in my ear, the sound enough to lull me back to sleep.

  He’s flat on his back with his eyes closed, but his fingertips trace featherweight touches on my shoulders, down my spine, and to the small of my back before repeating the trail. No man has touched me since it happened, and frankly I’m surprised that the contact doesn’t physically revolt me, causing my stomach to churn. Instead it makes me crave more. I close my eyes too, enjoying the closeness of him.

  A voice in my head is begging me to stop before it goes any farther, but I can’t. I want to be normal.

  I feel him turn his head, so I open my eyes to see a small smile on his face. “What are you thinkin’ about so hard, Peaches?”

  “I like this,” I say boldly.

  His eyes open wide beneath long, dark lashes and he turns his entire body so we are face-to-face. He says nothing at first, tucking a wayward strand of hair behind my ear. “I like it too, Emma,” he says. His voice is low and deep with sleep, but the way it curves around my name causes the hair on the back of my neck to stand straight up. Such a strange thing it is to be frozen in a moment, unmoving while my heart races in a marathon, trying to break through the walls of my chest. Tristan brings his fingertips to my face, stroking down the bridge of my nose and the side of my cheek.

  “Your skin is perfection,” he says.

  He brings his hand back up and traces the shape of my eyebrow. “Your eyes,” he whispers, “they try to hide something but I can see it. I can see the stories you won’t tell in them.”

  I can’t bring myself to say a word.

  He brings the very tip of his pointer finger down, drawing a line across my lips. “And your mouth. It’s quite possibly the most delicate, beautiful mouth I’ve ever laid eyes on and every time I look at it, I want to kiss it.”

  I suck in a breath this time before I tentatively bring my fingertips to his mouth too.

  I want him to kiss me. More than anything in this moment, I want his mouth on mine, to surrender to the desire to be with someone after suppressing it for so long.

  “I’m going to kiss you, Emma Fletcher. You have about ten seconds to stop me. One . . .”

  I stare at him blankly, my toes already curled in anticipation.

  “Two . . . three . . . four . . .” He continues counting, his face inching closer to mine.

  Stop him! Stop him! Stop him!

  No.

  “Five . . . six . . . seven . . . eight . . .”

  Stop. Him.

  “Nine . . .”

  His lips are so close to my mouth, I feel little breaths when he speaks, and each time he inhales, he draws me into him. “Ten . . .”

  When I don’t object, his lips find mine, and he parts my mouth with his tongue, forcing me to open for him. I do. My leg wraps up and over so it rests on top of his, and as he continues to explore my mouth, I can feel the hardness between his legs, pressing against me.

  I freeze for a fraction of a second before my mind snaps back to the present. It’s Tristan. Tristan, who is safe and warm and wonderful, and to have him pressed against me, kissing me, his hands gently caressing my thighs, daring to move north—God, it all feels so good.

  He deepens the kiss and I lose myself long enough to slip up. It happens so fast, there is nothing I can do to stop it. His hand slides underneath both of the shirts I’m wearing and directly over the raised scar that’s there. I break the kiss, jumping and putting as much space as I can between us without falling off the bed.

  It’s too late. He felt it. Tristan pulls back, confused, his gaze swinging down to my belly. I move to pull the shirts down, but it’s no use—he’s seen it. Worse, he reaches across the bed and stops me from hiding it, his hand holding the shirt up, his eyes examining the ugly mark.

  “What happened to you?”

  Fuck. I scramble to stand, but Tristan wraps his fingers around my wrist and pulls me back toward him.

  Tears pool in my eyes, burning them and blurring my sight and even so, I can see a perfect combination of horror and sympathy cross his face.

  I try again to tug the shirts down, but he pushes my hand aside and gently nudges my shoulders so that I’m lying on my back. He rests over me for a moment, before licking his lips and gently rolling the hems of the shirts. As his eyes burn into mine, I feel like I don’t have a stitch of clothing on. Like seeing that scar means he’s exposed the secrets to my soul, and I feel vulnerable. He’s looking at me to stop him and part of me thinks I should, but I don’t.

  There, exposed for his scrutiny, is the jagged, nasty scar that begins at my belly button and snakes down the bottom half of my stomach. My reminder.

  His face gives nothing away as his fingertips trace it slowly. The sensation is strange, my having lost much of the nerve function there. I can feel him touching me yet I don’t quite feel it. He places his lips there and trails little kisses along the zigzagged line.

  He raises his eyes to mine again before his palm presses to my stomach, his fingers splaying across it. He pauses for the briefest of moments. Maybe he thinks I’ll stop him again.

  But I can’t. He has already seen the most horrid part of myself that I always try to hide.

  With his free hand, he tugs the elastic of my pajamas down.

  His voice is soft. “I want to taste you.”

  Once again, I do not object, and Tristan takes this as permission to continue. His fingers wrap just inside the waistband on either side of my hips. He pulls, and I raise myself slightly off the bed. His movements are fluid, and my bottoms are suddenly gone, discarded on the floor. I sit up so he can pull the two layers of shirts off, but when I try to do the same for him, he stops me.

  “No,” he says. “This is just for you.”

  “But—” I try to protest, but he cuts me off.

  “Let me take care of you. Lie back.”

  I do as he says and wait.

  He moves up again and grabs my bottom lip in his teeth and gives a slight nibble. His finger traces a path from my temple, down my cheek, to beside my earlobe, then down my neck before his hand unclasps the front of my bra and h
e cups my breast.

  I gasp.

  “You’re so beautiful, Emma,” he says. “Especially when you make noises like that for me.”

  Jesus.

  This isn’t going to last very long if he keeps talking like that.

  He slides his hand down my stomach so his palm rests on the most sensitive part of my body. I involuntarily arch my back and push against him.

  He smiles. “You like that?”

  Oh. My. God.

  “Yes. I like it.”

  He slips his finger inside and I’m pretty sure I am going to die. “Mmmm,” he whispers. “I think you do like it.”

  I can’t believe my body is reacting this way to him. I thought dark memories would consume me forever. I thought the need to run would be present whenever anyone got close, but not now. I want this. I want him.

  “Tristan!” I gasp. “Tristan.” I repeat his name, having no idea what I’m trying to say.

  “Spread your legs for me.”

  I do.

  That’s the last thing he says before he puts his mouth on me.

  It doesn’t last long. When I come, my legs try to snap shut but he forces them open, keeping his mouth pressed to me. I cry out so loud, I’m sure if my mother is home, I’ve just given her reason to be mortified.

  When it’s over, Tristan rests on his elbows over me and brushes tangled hair from my face while I wait for my heart rate to return to normal.

  “Thank you,” I tell him. “For everything.”

  “Thank you,” he says. “For reminding me what it feels like to be alive.”

  THIRTEEN

  Tristan

  She tasted as good as I imagined she would and when she came for me and her fingers pulled at my hair, I thought I was going to come undone too. I’m not sure how that all happened, and I sure as hell don’t know what put that scar there, but the mark that snakes its way across Emma’s belly isn’t from run-of-the-mill stitches. It looks like someone tried to divest her of her intestines. She hasn’t volunteered any information at this point, and since I feel like the events of this morning were some kind of major breakthrough for her, I didn’t push it further.

  The shop is closed today, so I won’t see her. She did let me kiss her good-bye, though, and soon enough, we’re both going to be forced to endure the Marley-and-Mateo love story, so it’s not like we’ll have to wait long to see each other again, something I sense we are both okay with.

  Around dinnertime, Mateo is in my living room, drinking a beer, going on and on about Marley and how hot she was last night. “At the fair next week,” Mateo says, “I’m going to seal the deal and make that girl mine.”

  “You think?” I open the fridge and grab a beer of my own before flopping on the couch across from him.

  “Sí,” he says. “I know so. After you and Emma left, after I won, when I drove her home, there was a spark there.”

  “A spark, huh?”

  He nods.

  “Did you kiss her?” I ask.

  “No,” Mateo says, “but it’s only a matter of time.” He brings his arm up to look at his watch. “I see a Ferris wheel and a kiss.”

  “Wait. Did you watch The Notebook too?”

  “The what, now?”

  “The Notebook. That’s how the guy in the movie convinces the chick to go out with him, by pulling some lame-ass stunt on a Ferris wheel.”

  “What lame-ass stunt?”

  “Oh my God. Have you never seen that movie? It’s like a fucking aphrodisiac for most women. The guy, Noah, is trying to convince this stuck-up chick, Allie, to go out with him. He ends up hanging off a Ferris wheel by one hand until she agrees.”

  Mateo takes a huge swig of his beer. “That’s brilliant. Guy sounds like a genius.”

  “Are you kidding me? That’s the dumbest idea ever. What a freak.”

  “Does he get the girl in the end?” Mat asks.

  “Well, yeah.”

  “See? Brilliant.”

  I point my finger at him. “I see you hanging off any Ferris wheels and we’re friends-off.”

  “We will never be friends-off, amigo—you can’t live without me.”

  The thing is, he’s probably right. I mean, sure, I could live, as in physically continue to eat and sleep and breathe, but without Mateo in my life, things would be pretty boring.

  “I kissed Emma,” I say. The smallest part of me wants to tell him more, but I don’t. I don’t because doing so will somehow tarnish the intimacy of the moment.

  Mateo straightens up in the chair. “Come again?”

  “I kissed Emma.”

  “Last night?”

  “This morning.”

  “As in you spent the night with her?”

  I nod. “I did.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing. I kissed her this morning.”

  “So are you two like a thing now?”

  It’s a good question. “I don’t know.”

  “But you want to be?”

  “Yes,” I say. “I think maybe I do.”

  “A wise man once told me to chase my dreams.”

  “I feel like I’m turning my back on her,” I finally admit.

  “On Emma?”

  “No, dumb-ass, on Katie.”

  “Did you tell Emma about Katie?”

  “No.”

  He looks sad for a second, running his finger along the brim of the bottle. “You’re not turning your back on her, Tristan. You’re moving forward. With all due respect, it’s time.”

  He’s right, but the thought of putting that in my past once and for all is like closing a book I can never read again.

  We watch a football game and order chicken wings from the pub a block away.

  Emma

  For a short, curvy girl, Marley can sure take up a lot of space on the bed. She’s applying a second coat of cobalt-blue nail polish to her ring finger while the rest of her nails are black. I don’t get the trend, and I don’t pretend to understand it, but she thinks it looks great.

  “I can’t believe he slept here and you didn’t tell me,” she says.

  “What was I supposed to do, ask him to wait while I called you for permission?”

  She laughs. “No. But a text would have been nice. I was worried about you and your pansy weakness for blood.”

  I don’t give her comment any merit by offering a reply to it. “What about you, huh? You said Mateo didn’t take you straight home. Where’d you stop?”

  “We went for victory bacon cheeseburgers,” she says. “He ate four burgers and one beer. I had one burger and four beers.”

  “Anything else?”

  The left side of her lip twitches—it’s like a flashing neon sign that tells me there is more, so I bolt straight up. “Mar, what happened?”

  “Nothing,” she says, but she almost sings the word.

  Two can play her little game. I lie back down beside her. “Fine, I guess I won’t tell you the part about Tristan’s mouth.”

  Her head whips to the side and she stops brushing the blue coat across her nail. “You’re a liar.”

  I shrug. “Maybe, but then again, maybe not.”

  Her eyes shrink into a squint. She’s trying to analyze me. She probably does think I’m lying. Goose bumps rise on the surface of my skin and my heart races excitedly at the memory. He had made me feel so good and I wanted it to happen again, despite my best efforts to distance myself.

  “Okay, I’ll bite,” she finally says.

  I smile, satisfied that I got my way. “You go first.”

  She screws the brush back onto the top of the polish container. “Fine. And for the record, yours sounds way more exciting, but whatever . . . He is the perfect gentleman. When we stopped for burgers, he opened the door for me and I accidently b
rushed my body across his chest. I was ready to drop my panties right then and there because his body is so scorching that it melts my core,” Marley continues, “but because he is a perfect gentleman, when he dropped me off, he leaned across the seat and kissed my cheek.”

  “And?”

  “And that’s it, bitch. There’s sadly no more to tell. Obviously he was raised too well by Mrs. Cruz because hell, he could have taken full advantage of me last night.” Her eyes dart to mine again. “I do mean full, and I would have been perfectly, delightfully willing.”

  “It’ll happen,” I say.

  Marley stops to analyze me. “You’re awfully positive in your forward-thinking this morning.” She pauses, leaning closer to me before her mouth drops. “Oh my God, you have the I’ve-just-been-fucked glow.”

  I bite back a smile. “I do not.”

  “Do too,” she says. “Did you sleep with Tristan?”

  “I already told you he slept here,” I counter, “therefore technically yes, I did sleep with him.”

  “Emma, are you really going to make me beg for details? C’mon. I haven’t had sex in five months and I have to live vicariously through you.”

  “We didn’t have sex, as in intercourse.”

  Her brow darts skyward. “Okay, but you did do something?”

  I nod.

  “Dish,” she demands.

  I feel heat rush through every inch of my body. “He may have . . .” I pause, unable to actually finish.

  “He may have?”

  “Had breakfast,” I volunteer.

  Marley’s eyes go wide. “Tristan Banks went down on you?”

  I nod.

  “You lucky, lucky bitch,” she says. “I’d ask how it was, but judging from the fact that your skin is glowing like the sun, I’m going to guess it was good.”

  “It was amazing.” The physical aspect of it no doubt, but more amazing was the fact that I didn’t run. I stayed for him. I stayed because I wanted to be with him. Not so long ago, I wouldn’t have thought that would be possible. I don’t bother telling her about my moment of terror right before it happened. I don’t tell her anything, because she doesn’t know. I’m determined to keep it that way. Marley is sunshine in human form, and to burden her with the horrific details of my ordeal is like stealing the sun and locking the world away in perpetual darkness.