AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“And us?”
She became suddenly sad, as though all she had confessed had left her devastated. Her eyes were like empty sockets. “He asked me whether I missed him. He taunted me about the sex, the way he had wanted me to act in his bed.”
Blake took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He felt a wave of light-headed relief wash over him. She had not betrayed him. Nothing else mattered.
She had not betrayed him.
“I see,” he said thickly. “Why didn’t you tell me this?”
“Because I thought it was the past,” Connie said earnestly. “When I went back to New York and gave Duncan the painting, I thought he was out of my life forever. It was a time I am not proud of, Blake. Something that I wanted to bury and forget. I didn’t call him – somehow he got my new number from the nursing home.”
There was a long silence. They stared at each other across the room. The tension had gone, replaced by relief, sadness, and tenuous uncertainty. Neither of them moved. Connie smudged the tears from her cheeks and looked at Blake with damaged, despairing eyes.
“I should have told you,” she admitted. “You shared your pain and tragedy with me… I should have told you, but I swear, I didn’t think my past would affect our future.”
“So you don’t want the paintings?”
Connie shook her head slowly from side to side and her eyes welled, making them glisten. A single tear spilled down her cheek, and then suddenly she began to weep uncontrollably again. “No,” she said in a tremulous whisper. “I just want you.”
She took a tentative step towards him, and then another. Blake felt his feet moving, and without consciously realizing it, suddenly they were in each other’s arms in the middle of the studio, clinging to each other like desperate survivors of some perilous tragedy that had almost torn apart their lives.
40.
They made love that night with the wounds of their ordeal still fresh between them, so that they clung together with a frantic passion that was borne of their desperate need to re-connect and to heal. Beyond the physical, it was intensely emotional, transforming each touch and caress, each kiss and taste, into a re-discovery that left them ragged and gasping, exhausted in the tangled sheets, but ultimately with the bond of their relationship restored.
It was after midnight, but they still lay entwined, Connie with her head contentedly pillowed on Blake’s chest, his arm draped around her naked waist. The bedroom window was open and the breeze filtered in the lulling sounds of the ocean. Connie exhaled with a deep breath of relief and serenity.
“I thought I had lost you today,” she murmured sleepily, her eyes closed, listening to Blake’s slow steady breathing. “It terrified me. The look on your face… the pain in your eyes. It made me realize how fragile life is, and how precarious happiness can be. I never understood before, maybe because I have never truly been happy until now.”
One of his hands was by his side. She reached out for it and wrapped their fingers together. “I don’t ever want to feel like that again, and I don’t ever want you to have reason to doubt me.”
For a long moment there was silence and she thought perhaps Blake had drifted to sleep, until she heard the rumble of his words as they vibrated in her ear. “Trust takes time,” he admitted. “For me anyhow. I carried my secrets with me for five long years, Connie. And then suddenly you came into my life. But I’m not going to lie – it took a lot for me to open up – to confide in you.”
She lifted her head, turned and looked up into his face. He was staring at the ceiling with his eyes wide open.
“Do you regret it, Blake?” she asked, and suddenly she had to know the answer. “Are you sorry for letting me in?”
He shook his head. “No,” he said after a moment of reflection. “I feel better. I feel like the burden of sadness has been lifted. Maybe I should have sought professional help years ago. Perhaps I should have found some way to assuage my guilt and pain… but I didn’t. I did the opposite, in fact, but it only made the agony deeper, the wounds harder to heal because I never gave them a chance to close.”
Connie nodded gravely. “And I should have done the same,” she lamented. “I realize that now. I should have told you about Duncan and about my past with him, so you would understand.”
She was twisted, leaning against him with her head raised, so that her breast grazed against his chest and the nipple hardened in reaction. Connie draped a long leg over Blake’s thigh and then rolled on top of him, her body still hot from their lovemaking. Their eyes were just inches apart, and her breath on his lips was warm.
“Never again,” she vowed.
Blake frowned. His hands went to her tiny waist and then drifted across the small of her back, but Connie was gazing at him, too earnest it seemed, to take notice.
“No more secrets between us,” she pledged. “No more hiding the truth from each other. Do you agree?”
“I agree,” Blake murmured.
“Swear it to me.”
“I swear.” He meant it.
One of his hands had drifted to the tantalizing cleft of Connie’s bottom and he felt her squirm deliciously against him. Blake lifted an eyebrow in a question.
Connie lowered her face to his, and kissed him with the simmering force of her commitment. When she broke from the kiss, the taste of her was still wet and warm on Blake’s lips. “Okay,” she muttered, satisfied at last with their agreement. Then she rolled onto her back beside him and the look on her face became a sultry invitation. “Now you can have your fun, mister,” she said in a soft throaty husk.
A long time afterwards, when the world was at its lowest ebb and the night was at its darkest, Blake was still awake. Beside him Connie was curled up into a tight little ball, her knees drawn up to her chest, and her cheek resting peacefully in her hand as she slept. He lay in the silence watching her – the dreamy soft smile on her lips and the slow steady sound of her breathing. There was a wisp of dark hair across her brow and he drew it away from her face with a delicate touch of his fingers.
“I love you,” Blake whispered, on
ly faintly surprised that the words would come so easily from his lips, that they did not leave him feeling vulnerable. “I didn’t want to, but I do.”
And then he rolled onto his back and prayed that she would never break his heart.
41.
The next morning at breakfast, Blake declared the painting finished, and then disappeared into the studio with the door closed for forty minutes. Connie could hear the scrape of the easel and the movement of furniture and she smiled at the small vanity. Blake was re-arranging everything in order to show the finished work in the best possible light – from the most advantageous position. She spent the waiting time on her phone, organizing an express courier to pick up her old paintings from the Cartwright gallery and brought north to Maine.
When Blake emerged from the end of the hallway with a blindfold in his hand, Connie’s eyes grew wide with a giggle of wicked mischief.
“My goodness!” she made her eyes wide and innocent. “I didn’t know you were interested in the kinky things – and especially this early in the morning.”
Blake gave her a dry smile. “Do you want to see the painting, or not?”
He led her down the hallway, with Ned trailing behind. Connie walked in short uncertain steps, her hands out before her. Blake guided her through the studio doorway, and then nudged her towards the window with gentle pressure until she was in position, in front of the finished canvas.
“I’m proud of this painting,” he said. “When I started, I knew the kind of image I wanted to create, and I feel the end result is as good as I could ever have hoped for. I think –”
“Blake!” Connie cut across him with bubbling impatience. “Just take the blindfold off and save the speeches. I already know how brilliant you are.”
Blake fell silent, tugged at the knot, and then drew the mask aside. It took an instant for Connie to orientate herself.
And then her gaze fell upon the painting.
