Fringe Benefits

by Christine Pope

For a few seconds he looked blank. Then he said, “I see Max has been talking.”

  “He might have mentioned it.”

  “Would it surprise you to learn that it was no one?”

  It was my turn to be nonplussed. “No one?”

  “I went alone, Katherine. I believe the common phrase is ‘trying to get my head screwed on straight.’”

  The wave of relief that passed over me was so great it made me feel dizzy. Or maybe it was just the half glass of wine on top of the Madeira I’d drunk at his home earlier. Whatever the case, at least now I knew there had been no unknown blonde on his arm that weekend. We hadn’t had anything remotely resembling a relationship at that point, but it had still felt somehow like cheating to me.

  His mouth twitched. “If we’re playing at questions and answers, perhaps you have one for me.”

  “Yes?” I tried to tell myself I had nothing to hide. Whatever he asked couldn’t be that difficult to answer.

  That little glint returned to his eyes. “What was the real reason for Jonah Freeman’s rather…precipitous…departure from your apartment the other day? I caught a glimpse of him taking off at speeds I’m quite certain the designers of his peculiar vehicle had never intended.”

  Well, that one was easy. “I threw a bag of ice at his head. Oh, and I called him a putz.”

  He chuckled and lifted his glass of wine toward me in a sort of half-salute. “Then it appears my feelings of intense jealousy on that score were entirely misplaced.”

  It took a few seconds for that comment to sink in. Then I began to piece together the cause and effect of those crazy few days. So Pieter had kissed me because he had seen Jonah at my apartment and had gotten the wrong impression?

  “Entirely misplaced,” I repeated. “I spent weeks trying to get rid of him. And then he just showed up on my doorstep. But maybe that’s turned out to be a good thing. Would you have kissed me that day if you hadn’t thought something was going on between Jonah and me?”

  “I don’t know,” he said frankly. “At some point I’m sure I would have been driven to it. You have a very distracting mouth.”

  Once again I found myself thanking God for dim restaurant lighting. Maybe Pieter wouldn’t see the flush that spread over my cheeks after his remark.

  I was saved from having to make a reply by the arrival of the waiter with our entrées. Mine was some sort of chop, and it smelled amazing.

  “I guessed that you weren’t a vegan, based on your previous food choices,” he said.

  “Not even close,” I said. “We don’t have a lot of that in Billings.”

  “I thought as much.”

  I’ll leave the food descriptions for the restaurant reviewers. Everything was amazing, from that succulent chop to the molten chocolate cake that finished the meal. I probably shouldn’t have eaten it, but I was feeling bold and just a little bit reckless. Maybe it was just the knowledge that somehow, miraculously, Pieter returned my feelings.

  The cab ride home felt equally dreamlike. I rested my head on his shoulder the whole way, the fine cotton of his shirt smooth against my cheek, the muscles underneath hard, reassuring.

  When we reached the house, he paid off the cab driver, then turned to me. “I want you to stay.”

  I didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “I want to stay.”

  “You are different, Katherine. I want you to understand that. I can wait if I must.”

  I wrapped my arms around him and then tilted my head so I stared directly up into his face. “But I don’t want to wait.”

  He didn’t answer, but merely bent and lifted me up in his arms. I’d known he was strong. I just hadn’t realized quite how strong. Apparently that comment he’d made about carrying me up the stairs to my apartment when my knee was injured hadn’t been an idle one.

  Because he did the same thing now, taking me through the foyer and up the elegant curved staircase at its far end. Now the breeze that blew through the house was cooler, although I thought I could still smell distant traces of gardenia. A light burned low on a side table in the upstairs hall, guiding our way.

  His bedroom was at the end of the corridor. The only light in there was the dim reflection of street lamps almost a block away. Somehow the darkness made it more immediate—the strength of those arms around me, the sudden unexpected softness of the bed beneath me once he set me down. I felt him remove my jacket, then reach out to pull my blouse over my head.

  Then it was his hands on my bare skin, fingers finding the front closure of my bra and deftly undoing it. I supposed he had a lot of practice.

  I didn’t have much time for rational thought after that. His mouth closed around my nipple and I gasped, my hands reaching for his head, my fingers closing in his crisp, short hair. I think I remember undoing the buttons of his dress shirt. At any rate, it was gone suddenly, and I felt the hard muscles of his chest press against my breasts. He reached down and unhooked my belt buckle, and then the button of my jeans.

  Then his fingers moved down to stroke me, coaxing little ripples of pleasure that seemed to travel from the tips of my toes right up to the top of my head. I moaned, pushing myself more closely against him. Had it ever felt this good before? Somehow I didn’t think so.

  But I didn’t want him to think I’d been neglecting him. My fingers hooked around the elastic waistband of his underwear and yanked it down. In the darkness I touched him, feeling him hard and ready under my fingertips. I stroked him slowly up and down, the rhythm of my movements matching his.

  His breathing came to me hoarse in the dark. It somehow increased my own pleasure even further, that I was able to evoke such a response from him. I heard him utter a small moan, and then he moved away, pushing me up against the pillows. From underneath I felt him yank the heavy brocade comforter out of the way. Then his breath hot against my stomach, trailing downward, until his tongue touched between my legs.

  I cried out and arched against him. Heat was flowing through me in waves, centering in that one perfect spot, in the center of every pleasure I had ever known—

  The orgasm hit with the force of a tidal wave. I bucked up against him. I think I cried out his name. I fell back against the pillows, gasping, as the darkness swirled red in front of my eyes.

  He moved up to lie next to me. His breath came hot against my neck as he spoke. “A moment.”

  A moment? When I was lying there convulsed in the aftermath of the best orgasm I’d ever had?

  A second later I understood the reason for the delay. He reached in the nightstand, and I heard the crackle of foil as he drew out a condom. “This would have been safe,” he said. “I have always been careful. But I did not want you to think I would take any risks with you.”

  I lifted my head and kissed him, kissed the taste of my passion on his lips. “I love you, Pieter. But I want you in me. Like, right now.”

  A throaty chuckle. He slid on the condom, and then entered me. I locked my legs around him, feeling the powerful muscles in his thighs move as we rocked back and forth together. Pieter, in the center of me. Pieter, filling all the empty spaces I’d never known existed until then.

  There was no counting the minutes that passed by in the dark. I could feel the pressure building within me, coming from deeper inside this time. His breathing grew faster. My fingers dug into his arms. And then I thrust against him, crying out as I came, the heat flooding through every cell in my body. A few seconds later he moaned as well, spasming as the orgasm overtook him.

  We remained locked together for a few seconds, the only sound in the room our hoarse breaths mingling. Then, ever so gently, he lifted himself from me and fell over on his back onto the bed. I felt him reach out and lace my fingers in his.

  He spoke. “My Katherine.”

  I leaned over then, my mouth finding his in the darkness. Our tongues met, an echo of the fusion we’d just experienced. He pulled me against him, even as he broke off the kiss and reached down to pull the covers over me.

  Maybe I s
hould have made an effort to get up. But the bed felt so inviting, and Pieter’s body was so warm next to mine. Every muscle in my body told me I should stay right where I was. If I just closed my eyes for a second—

  And the darkness came up and took me.

  “Sleep well?”

  I rolled over to see a fully dressed Pieter smiling down at me from the side of the bed. Bright morning sunlight poured through the window at the east end of the room.

  “I guess so,” I replied.

  My mouth felt sticky, along with other parts of me. God knows what I must have looked like, with my makeup of the day before probably smeared across my face.

  “I’m sorry I passed out on you—”

  “I’m glad you did.” He reached down and cupped my cheek, then pushed my hair away from my face. Apparently he didn’t seem to think I looked like an escapee from the Chamber of Horrors. He added, “There’s coffee downstairs.”

  Coffee sounded like a great idea. As did a shower and a change of underwear. Too bad I hadn’t been thinking ahead the day before. I could have thrown a “morning after” kit into my purse. Never mind that back then I would have put the odds of my sleeping with Pieter Van Rijn roughly on a par with my winning the Nobel peace prize.

  “I took the liberty of putting your things through a quick wash this morning,” he said. “I didn’t think you had anything to change into.”

  If the sex hadn’t been enough to convince me, that would have done it right there. He was definitely a keeper. “Thank you, Pieter. Do you mind if I take a quick shower before I come down for coffee?”

  He bent and kissed me, a quick, strong kiss that tasted of French roast. Really good French roast. “That doorway there.”

  The shower was almost as divine as the sex. I gave myself a quick scrubbing and borrowed some of Pieter’s shampoo. I couldn’t help belting out Etta James’ “At Last” while I was at it. I doubted the neighbors could hear me. His house sat on an awfully big lot.

  But he had heard. When I padded down in my bare feet to the kitchen, he smiled at me and said, “It appears Jonah Freeman was right about one thing. You do have a marvelous voice.”

  His comment made me feel all warm inside. Why did his approval seem so much more important than anyone else’s? “Well, I’ll come sing in your shower any time.”

  Those blue eyes sent me a look that could have melted the polar ice caps. “Why not sing in my shower every day?”

  The words didn’t sink in at first. “What?”

  “Come stay with me, Katherine. Share my life. I want you here in this house with me.” His expression abruptly sobered. “I didn’t realize until last night how empty it really was.”

  I still couldn’t quite process what he’d said. Oh, I knew now that he cared about me, that I wasn’t just another notch on that mighty fine bedpost of his, but to go from that to asking me to move in?

  I couldn’t quite keep the disbelief from my tone. “You want to live together?”

  “You misunderstand me.”

  He came over to me then and pressed a mug of coffee into my hands. I wrapped my suddenly icy fingers around it, grateful for its warmth.

  “By ‘share my life,’ Katherine, I mean that I want you to marry me. I see no reason to dance around the issue, to play at courtship when we both know what we truly want.”

  I’d never bought into the idea of being struck speechless before, but this statement startled me so much that I just stood there, staring at him. He couldn’t really be serious, could he?

  Oh, I’d had a few hazy fantasies where he asked me to marry him—you know, once we got past that whole “Pieter Van Rijn doesn’t have serious relationships” thing. But I’d never really expected those fantasies to become reality.

  “Just like that?” I said at last. With a shaking hand I lifted the mug to my lips and sipped at the coffee inside. It tasted even better than it smelled.

  His gaze didn’t waver. “Just like that. An engagement whose duration you may choose, if that would suit you better. I suppose you may even stay in that shoebox of an apartment for a time if you think I’m rushing things.

  Rushing things? I supposed most people would see it that way. After all, we’d known each other barely a month. But there was a precedent for this sort of thing in my own family—my father’s parents had met each other at the county fair, fell in love somewhere between the saltwater taffy and the ring toss, and had gotten married three weeks afterward. They were still going strong almost sixty years later.

  One could argue those were simpler times, or that Pieter and I were very different people. One could make all sorts of arguments, I supposed. But when you came right down to it, I loved him, and he, miracle of miracles, had come to love me back. Everything else was just logistics.

  I smiled. “Actually, I was just thinking it’s a good thing I’m on a month-to-month rental agreement at that apartment and not an actual lease.”

  A quick, flashing smile. He reached out for me, then paused long enough to pluck the coffee mug from my hand and set it down on the granite countertop. He pulled me close, and I felt his lips brush the top of my head.

  “I take it that’s a yes.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Yes.”

  And he lifted my face to his and kissed me, over and over again, until my knees started to feel a little wobbly. I could blame my shakiness on the caffeine, but I knew better.

  I smiled. “I have a feeling it’s going to be a very short engagement.”

  His blue eyes laughed into mine. “Good.”

  Another kiss then, a promise of days and nights together, exploring each other, exploring everything our shared lives could be.

  A thousand miles from where I was born, I realized I had finally come home.

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