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I watched Will’s expression soften into a relaxed victory, made complete when he slid his hand into mine and squeezed it, a gesture so intimate it made me feel faint. Will wasn’t taking his eyes off mine. Winning became him, I decided.
Pierre laughed and shook his head, as though Will had greatly misunderstood something important.
“Nice guys do finish last,” Will said, looking only at me.
“Who said we were finished?” Pierre replied.
After a lingering look at me, and a cocky smile, Pierre disappeared into the crowd, his bodyguard trying to keep up with him. I was glad to see him go.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Will said, pulling me through the crowd.
As we passed Matilda and Kit’s table, they both shook their wrists at me. I shook back. Then I spotted Angela, prancing back to the stage. She, too, turned and gave me a shake, her charms dazzling in the spotlight.
“Hey, she has the same bracelet as you,” Will said.
“She does.”
A hand reached for my arm. It was that of a squat, middle-aged woman wearing an oversize They Do Everything Better in New Orleans T-shirt. “Where can I buy a brac
elet like that?” she asked, or rather, demanded. Her accent was New England; Massachusetts or Maine.
“It’s a gift from a friend,” I said. But before I could pull my wrist away, she had one of my charms pinched between her thumb and forefinger.
“I’ve got to have one!” she screeched.
“You can’t buy it!” I said, easing my wrist out of her grasp. “You have to earn it.”
Will pried me away from her and led me past the clog of spectators still at the door. Outside in the brisk winter’s night, he threw his coat around my bare shoulders, then pressed my back against the window of Three Muses, unable to wait any longer to kiss me. And kiss me he did. He kissed me deeply, wholeheartedly, stopping every once in a while as if to see if it was actually me who stood in front of him shivering in his embrace. I wasn’t cold. I was waking up, my body shuddering to life in his arms. It is one thing to be gazed upon by a man you desire, quite another by one you love. But—I had to ask, even though I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer.
“Will … about you and Tracina …?”
“It’s over. It’s been over for a while. It’s you and me, Cassie. It should always have been you and me.”
We let some tourists pass while I took in this heart-stopping information. You and me. We walked a few steps farther and Will stopped me again, this time pressing me up against the redbrick wall of The Praline Connection, where a couple of the wait staff inside raised their eyebrows. Will Foret and Cassie Robichaud? they must have been thinking. Kissing? On Frenchmen?
Will’s hands, his smell, his mouth, the love I thought I saw in his eyes, all made such sense. I wanted him, all of him. He was already in my head and heart and now my body wanted him too. When he stopped me in the street again and held my head in his warm hands, searching my eyes for an answer to his unspoken question, I knew he heard my wordless yes. We practically sprinted the remaining half-block back to Café Rose, where Will’s hands shook so much he couldn’t unlock the door without dropping the keys, twice.
How was it possible he was more nervous than me? How come I wasn’t nervous at all?
The Steps.
They cascaded in my mind. I could surrender, finally, to this man I had resisted from the beginning. I felt fearless, brave, generous and confident enough to accept him. I trusted Will, which gave me courage to face whatever our future held. And I was so wildly curious to find out what this man was like in bed, what we would be like together. A new feeling rose inside me, exuberance, the ultimate promise of Step Nine. We were joy in action.
We stumbled into the restaurant, laughing and kissing, tripping over the shoes we kicked off in our rush up the stairs, Will frantically untying the back of my bodice, me helping him off with his T-shirt, in a room that would never feel lonely again.
He was far from the timid lover I had imagined him to be. He was ferocious and gentle all at once, and I reached to match him. I pulled him, kissing him with full force, leaving no mistake about my longing. This man was mine. Standing above me, shirtless, his beautiful arms and chest on display, he whipped off his belt. Then he threw his jeans and underwear across the room.
“Shit,” he muttered, something dawning on him. He bolted to retrieve the tossed jeans, shaking them to release a wallet, which he then savaged for a condom. A man had never secured one so fast in his life, I thought, watching him slide it on. Returning to the mattress, he knelt and opened my legs. His eyes took in the length of me, and he shook his head as though he could not have imagined the moment more perfectly. Then he hovered over me, showering me with kisses, gentle, then more deliberate, beginning an achingly slow trail from my neck, down to my clavicle, and lingering at my breasts. I couldn’t contain my giggles as he inched his way down me, his stubble tickling my skin. He stopped every once in a while to gaze back up at my face, his eyes searching mine, making me beg for him. I am about to have sex with Will Foret, my boss, my friend, my man.
My breathing turned shallow and my back arched as he glided into me. What is it called when you yearn for someone and yet they’re right there with you, giving you exactly what you want? What do you call something that stirs your heart, head and body at the same time? With the other men, I had been fully there physically, but my heart was never fully awakened. With Will, every part of me was alive beneath him. My head was saying yes, my body was saying now, and my heart was near to bursting with the wonder of it all. Is that what it is to love? Yes, I thought, this is love., I realized. Here is my love, my young old man, my Will.
“You’re so beautiful like this,” he whispered, the words catching in his throat a little.
“Oh, Will.” It was hard to believe this was possible, this feeling of ecstasy. I writhed beneath him, mad with desire. I wanted to come, I had to, and yet I wanted to stop, to freeze this feeling of liquid joy inside of me.
“I’ve wanted to do this since the day we met,” he said.
He moved up to kiss my face. His slow, deep movements elicited a thousand surrenders from me. His elbows rested on either side of my head, as he smoothed back my hair, his eyes searching my face. And then he began to hunger for something he had only begun to taste. I could see it in his expression. In a single smooth motion, he flipped me on top of him.
