His brows drew together in a little frown of worry. "Everyone's fragile," he said.
If he ends up hurting me, at least he'll feel bad about it, she decided. It was such small comfort, but it was all she had.
She lifted her chin and, with her eyes closed, parted her mouth slightly for the kiss she knew would come. When he kissed her this time, there was a solemnity about it, as if they'd made a pact. But a pact to do what? To hide in the bedroom together?
He released her. "We've come full circle," he said softly. "This is where we met."
She remembered it well. She had been upside down and covered in plaster dust when she first set eyes on him. Even then, she must have known that he was the one. The day she met him was the day the magic began. The day the magic began was the day she met him. "Full circle," she repeated, awed by the mystery of it all.
They went into her bedroom then, and Liz turned on a little rose-shaded lamp and sat on the foot of her bed, and Jack looked around as if he were in a make-believe room of a child's playhouse.
She didn't mind: he looked so beguiled by the humble, crowded coziness of it all. The small-print wallpaper; the painted shutters; the rag rug and the vase of black-eyed Susans edging the lamp off the nightstand—all of it seemed to charm him, all of it seemed to please. He peered out at the view of the harbor, its navigation lights blinking in reassuring harmony on the calm black water.
Liz jumped up from the bed and said, "But it's so much better in the daytime! You can see ships trafficking up and down the bay. You can see sailboats—"
"I've seen enough boats to last me a lifetime," he said, closing the shutters on the scene. He turned to her. The warmth in his look was unmistakable. He reached out his hand and trailed his fingers lightly on the wide-scooped neck of her cotton top.
She was thinking, This would have been much easier if he'd just taken me on the kitchen table.
"I'm sorry about the bed," she said, bursting into another round of babble. "It's not a king—"
"Neither am I."
"It's not even a queen—"
"Neither are you."
"That's right, I forgot. I'm a princess."
No response.
"Porcupine?" she corrected meekly.
He gave her a wry smile and said, "If the quill fits ...."
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she moaned, all but wringing her hands. "It's been so long. Maybe I need a sexual therapist."
"Let's see what we can do on our own first." He sat down on the bed and patted the space next to him; Liz, feeling like the last kid to show up for the sex-ed class, sat down beside him.
"Now. Since I seem to have a bit more experience than you," he said in a mind-bending understatement, "I'll make a few suggestions. The first is —"
He kissed her lightly and then touched his finger to her lips. "—don't talk. The second suggestion — and mind you, it's only a suggestion — is, maybe you'd like to close your eyes and pretend that mine are closed, too."
"All right," she said, and did as he said. He was being just whimsical enough to arouse her curiosity. It remained to be seen whether the rest of her would follow.
Her lips were slightly apart with concentration; she felt him press his mouth to hers, then run his tongue along the shape of her lips, moistening them. It was a delicately erotic act, suggestive without being overbearing. More to come, it promised.
Eyes closed, she waited.
She felt him shift his attention to her ear, nibbling the lobe, tugging it gently. She held her breath as he trailed a gossamer line of kisses along the curve of her neck, murmuring her name, stringing out the syllables like pearls on a necklace. She felt him slide her cotton top down from one shoulder, exposing cool, unkissed flesh. He dropped soft kisses there, while she remembered finally to breathe, letting out the air in a rush.
After that, he surprised her by cupping her chin in his hands, then tracing the curves and hollows of her face with his fingertips. It was the act of a sightless person; it made her wonder whether he really was keeping his eyes closed.
If so, it added another, intriguing dimension to their homemade therapy session.
I love the way he touches me, she thought. As if my cheeks were made of butterflies' wings. She found herself sliding under his spell: more relaxed, and at the same time, more expectant. Impulsively she lifted her own hands to his face, skimming his high cheekbones, his wiry eyebrows, the first stubble of a beard.
It will scratch, she thought. But not so much. The thought made her cheeks warm with anticipation. She took a deep breath and was filled with the indefinable scent that made him Jack Eastman and no one else. No cologne, no hair treatment: just salt and sea air, a rugged all-male, all-Jack smell.
She felt him take her wrist and gently kiss the open palm of her hand, a gesture as courtly as it was romantic. No one had ever kissed the palm of her hand before.
For someone who's not a virgin, she thought, amazed, I sure have lots of virgin territory.
He laid his hands on her hips, then eased the knit fabric of her top upward, his hands echoing the line of her torso. She felt curves she never knew she had, simply through his touch. Automatically her arms went up as he peeled away the top; she heard it land on the floor in a hush. After that, she folded her hands in her lap and waited for the next step in his gentle, tantalizing disrobing of her.
She heard the snap of plastic as her bra fell away in the front, and she felt cool air wash over her unbound breasts.
"You are beautiful," he murmured, breaking the silence at last.
She sucked in her breath as she felt his fingers lightly circle the tip of her breast, and then, irrepressibly, she said, "How can you tell? Your eyes are closed, remember?"
"Ah ... right," he said. "I forgot." She sensed his head lowering. "And anyway," he murmured, the words muffled in a wet stroking caress of her nipple, "You're not supposed to talk."
"Ah-h-h ... right," she said, putting one arm on the white quilt to brace herself. "I forgot." The touch of his tongue was absolutely electric: her breath began coming in small, tight gasps, and her head began to droop, bringing the scent of him closer. She threaded the fingers of her free hand lightly through his hair, encouraging him as he moved from one breast to the other, wondering how it was she could've gone so long without this, without him.
He paused — she made a low, whimpering protest — and eased her back down on the coverlet. The bed was still made from two nights ago; she hadn't pulled the covers back on the previous night, the night she'd wrapped herself in the paisley shawl, the night of the apparition.
Lying full length, one knee up, she permitted herself to open her eyes for a peek.
"Wow," she said softly. "That was nice."
He was sliding one hand idly up and down the curve of her torso and was studying her intently, as if he'd just seen her across a crowded room and was trying to place her face.
"Shhh," he told her with a small, crooked smile. "Do you want to break the spell?"
She shook her head slowly, then closed her eyes again, trying to control a kind of giddy fear that it might not go on. What if this, too, were all a dream?
The next barricade to fall was her skirt, a cotton drift of summer pastels that she'd sewn herself. It had hooks and eyes at the waist instead of a button; the buttonhole attachment on her machine had been broken at the time she'd made the outfit. She began to warn him, but he knew all about hooks and eyes.
He knows too much, she thought, suddenly dismayed. He 's undressed too many women.
But then he slid the skirt, and her panties, off in one fluid motion, leaving her skin rippling with goosebumps, and she found that the other women — however many there were — were as irrelevant as her ex-husband. What did it matter, really, how much experience he had or how little she had? He was a man; she was a woman. It didn't get much simpler than that.
Still, she felt obliged to state the obvious. She opened her eyes and gave him a steady look.
"Before you, there was only
Keith," she confessed as he was about to kiss her. It was so embarrassing: only one man in thirty-six years. In her mind, it explained everything.
The look on Jack's face was heartachingly tender. "In that case, I feel sorry for every other male on earth right now."
She fingered the top button of his shirt and indulged in a tiny naked shrug. "I just wanted you to know."
"And now I do," he said, kissing her on her brow. "And I don't care." His mouth came to rest on hers — more to shut her up, she thought, than anything else — and his tongue sought hers in a taunting kiss that soon turned into a deeper, hungrier probe than anything before it. She hadn't been kissed like that since — well, she'd never been kissed like that.
He left her moaning, sighing, arching her hips skyward as he trailed a hot blaze of kisses up and down her body, coming back to her breasts again and again, each time ratcheting up the heat; each time, leaving her more fever-struck.
Secret places she never knew she had — inside her elbow, and halfway between her belly button and the downy clump of hair below it — these places were thoroughly mapped out and explored. She had never in her life been the focus of such relentless, attentive, concentrated stimulation.
She was on fire.
And she wanted Jack to catch up. When she said that to him, he laughed out loud in a kind of groaning whoop of sheer male enthusiasm. "I'm ready!" he said. "Willing! Bursting, my love!"
Whether he was bursting or not, Liz loved the "my love" part. Between them they had already fumbled through the buttons of his shirt and peeled it away. Now she shrugged off his T-shirt, and he yanked off his trousers and then his shorts and tossed them on the floor.
She watched him undress with furtive curiosity. He was solid and fit, but hardly the washboard-of-muscles type: his strength had a more natural look than that. She couldn't imagine him displaying himself in a volleyball game at Easton's Beach, any more than she could picture herself Rollerblading down Thames Street in short shorts and a tube top.
He went back, suddenly, to retrieve his pants: bending over to pick them up, he slipped his wallet out from a back pocket. With a sheepish look he opened the wallet and said, "My emergency stash — something tells me you don't have a drawer full of these."
Protection! She'd forgotten all about it! Somehow the knowledge that she couldn't get pregnant, not to mention the fact that she'd been out of circulation for the past hundred years ... she hadn't seen a condom this close up since her senior year in high school. The packet looked almost quaint.
She sat up. "Wait," she said, after he tore off the top of the foil. She bit her lower lip. "Are you planning to stay the night?" she ventured to ask.
"If you let me," he said. He gave her a quizzical look.
"And you only have one of these?"
"This is it," he said, more tentative than ever.
"Then I suggest," she said with a demure half-smile, "that we get a little creative."
He quirked one eyebrow upward. "What, pray, did you have in mind?"
Without a word, she took the half-opened foil from him and tossed it on the bedside stand. "Hmm. Well, it's been a while," she said with a considering frown. "But it seems to me that if I do ... this," she said, trailing her fingers lightly across his very male, very responsive member, "yes ... that's what I recall used to happen. And then, if I do ... this," she murmured, stroking him more boldly now, "—yep. I guess men are all the same."
He was standing next to her, hands on his hips, completely at ease in his nakedness — but maybe not so at ease as when he first undressed. "Witch," he said in a sexy, shaky voice. "If you think I'm going to stand idly by — you're absolutely right."
She increased the pace, surprised at the ease with which she'd taken control from him, thrilled to be giving him pleasure. His breathing came more deeply now; she looked up and saw his face, tense with concentration, and thought, How can I make him stay? I don't want him ever to leave.
Suddenly he took her by the wrist and shook his head. "No ... dammit, no," he said hoarsely. "I want us together. We'll worry about later, later."
He sat on the side of the bed, took up the packet, and sheathed himself. She opened her arms to him, and he came on top of her, supporting his weight above her on his forearms.
"My eyes are open, as you can tell," he said softly, his voice slurred with desire, "and I was right the first time: you're very beautiful, Elizabeth."
"Shhh," she said, because it was impossible for her to believe he could find her beautiful.
She slid her arms around him. She realized in a profound way that he was broader, heavier, an altogether different person from the one she'd been with for a decade. He smelled different, he kissed different, he sighed different. I have a new man in my life, she thought, dizzy with wonder as she parted herself to him. It truly is like being a virgin. Only better.
He was gentle and slow coming into her. She'd been so long without someone; and yet in one slow wave of entry, it seemed as if she'd never been without at all. Full circle, she thought. I have come full circle.
They lay motionless for a long, long moment, savoring the heat, unwilling, after all this, for it to end. He threaded both of his hands through her hair, burying his face in it, taking deep, hungry breaths of her. "I'm crazy about you, Elizabeth. You know that," he said in an aching voice.
The words seemed to echo like a drumbeat through the chambers of her heart. "And I ... am crazy, too," she murmured in response. What she wanted to say was: I love you with all my heart, and I would do anything to spend the rest of my days on earth with you. I would do anything to be your wife.
But she knew, after Keith, that talk like that scared men, and so she simply repeated, in her own soft echo of despair, "Crazy ... crazy ... crazy," as he pulled slowly back, and then began an easy, rhythmic ripple through her. She lifted herself to meet the rhythm, moved by him, moving him, she hardly knew which. It was all so right, so new, so old.
It seemed to her that they began to be surrounded by a kind of ringing lightness: and then, in the final, frenetic thrusts, the lightness around them entered into her soul, filling her, driving out despair, flooding her with a crazy hope that Jack wanted a wife, and not merely someone to bear his heirs. Crazy ... crazy ... crazy.
She heard Jack groan and felt his climax, and then she felt herself shudder in an overwhelming release. Marveling, she thought: Both of us, at the same time. It never happens at the same time.
Jack sank onto her breast; she held him close, cherishing him, and sighed heavily, feeling his weight rise and fall with the act. And then, in a slowly dissipating haze of passion, she opened her eyes and saw: Christopher Eastman.
Chapter 17
He was standing in front of the shuttered window, an artist's palette in one hand, a paintbrush in the other. An easel — an easel, for pity's sake! — was now standing alongside the wicker chair in front of the window. Perched on the easel was a large canvas, apparently a work in progress.
The apparition was wearing his paint-dabbed smock; his face had the same fierce frown of concentration that she'd seen in her vision the night before. He seemed more substantial than ever.
Liz absorbed it all in half a second and caught her breath in a sharp gasp of panic.
"What?" Jack said quickly. "Am I hurting you? Pinching somewhere?" He began to lift himself off her.
"No!" she cried. "Don't move." She yanked him back down over her and held him fast. Ghost or no ghost, she was naked and not taking any chances.
Jack nuzzled her neck and said, "Hey, love — these things aren't reusable, you know."
"Don't be silly," she said, distracted. "My husband could be back in business in two minutes when he wanted to."
"Not that thing," Jack said with a chuckle. "The condom. Unless.. . do you want me to run out to the drugstore—?"
"No! Stay right over me!"
"That's an odd way to put it, but—"
"Oh, God — I must be going crazy. I have gone crazy."<
br />
In the meantime Jack's great-great-grandfather, younger than Jack and just as handsome, had turned his attention back to his canvas and was laying down a brushstroke or two. He seemed to have settled in nicely. God only knew what he was painting.
Liz, utterly paralyzed by this turn of events, stared at the apparition in wide-eyed horror.
"My God, Liz — what's wrong?" Jack said, swiveling his head to see what she was seeing.
"Never mind, never mind!" she said, turning him to face her. "Nothing's wrong. I — I remembered something, that's all. I left the sink on. I mean, the stove."
Jack untangled her hand from his hair and began lifting himself off her. "We didn't use the stove. But I'll check—"
She grabbed his arm. "No! Dammit! Why won't you stay where you're told?"
He stared coolly at her hand gripping his arm, then gave her a level look. "Aren't you mixing me up with your five-year-old?"
"No, I'm sorry, never mind, yes, check the stove, please, yes, while I—well! Will you just go away?" she demanded, turning her attention back to the apparition.
Jack practically leaped out of the bed, which made her say, "Please, please don't go."
"Liz, for chrissake — this isn't funny! What's wrong with you?"
I knew it. I knew it. He thinks I'm Glenn Close.
"Absolutely nothing's wrong with me. This is not a Fatal Attraction. Get out of here!" she said, interrupting herself to yell at the artist.
Christopher Eastman was frowning thoughtfully as he glanced first at her, then at his canvas, apparently checking the likeness. Then he stuck the end of the paintbrush in his mouth, switched a small spatula from his palette hand to his right, and began blending two blobs of paint together on the flat surface. He seemed thoroughly unbothered by the chaos he was creating, perfectly content to be part of the weird ménage à trois.
Very gently, Jack said, "You know what I think? I think a nice cup of tea—"
"Oh, right!" said Liz, furious that the apparition wouldn't evaporate the way it had the other times. "As if a cup of tea can bring an end to this — this nonsense," she said, waving her arms in the direction of the easel.
Time After Time Page 24