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THIRTY
True to his promise, that first time we made love was long and deliciously—almost maddeningly—slow. By the end I felt he had touched every millimeter of my body with his mouth or fingers—and I often couldn’t tell which had touched me where. But what I remember best about that night was waking up in my bed and finding him watching me, his body carved marble in the moonlight, his eyes silver. As soon as my eyes opened he slid inside me and came immediately, as if he’d been carrying that excess sum of desire from the first time we’d made love and had to spend it now.
He never did that again. He was always the most thoughtful and generous of lovers, always giving me pleasure first, always holding himself back until I came. But whenever I recalled that swift second coupling, wherever I was—standing in front of a class or walking down a grocery aisle—my knees went watery at the memory of his desire for me. It was the moment that sealed us, and the only time he acted without putting my pleasure first.
When we awoke the next morning he was already thinking of ways to please me. He’d sneaked into the Hart Brake Inn—where he was staying alone since Diana had gone to Liz’s house to take care of her—and brought back supplies to make a huge breakfast of banana pancakes, fresh fruit, eggs, and coffee. He brought it all to me on a tray with a single rose.
“Did you steal the rose, too?” I asked.
“Ah, that I found in an enchanted wood, the last rose growing in the garden of a ruined castle.”
“Hm,” I said, sniffing the rose. It didn’t smell like a hothouse flower—it smelled of summer. “Just like inBeauty and the Beast. I love that Cocteau version, too…” I stopped, embarrassed that I’d finally given away my Internet sleuthing.
He grinned. “Iknowyou do—it’s listed on your favorites, too. Let’s watch it later.”
I’d been afraid to mention “later,” not wanting to assume we’d be spending ourlatertogether, but Liam made no pretense about wanting to spend every minute he could with me. We spent that first day in bed, letting the still-raging blizzard serve as our excuse for not budging, although in truth I think that even if the sun had been shining we would have found an excuse to stay in bed that first day. But the next day I awoke to a bed empty except for long swaths of cold sunlight twisted in the sheets. I felt a pang of loss as sharp as the crystalline light reflected off the icicles hanging from my bedroom windows, and for a moment I wondered if I’d dreamed the last day and a half. It felt like a dream, more incredible than the nights I’d spent with the incubus. Maybe the incubus had been real and Liam was the dream…
But then I heard a scraping noise coming from the front of the house. I went to one of the front bedrooms and, looking out the window, found Liam shoveling the front path. He looked up at the sound of the sash opening and waved, his cheeks glowing pink from the cold and exercise, a puff of condensed air hanging above his head. How could I have thought he was a dream? He looked more real than anything I could ever imagine.
I made breakfast that day and later we put on heavy boots and hiked down the hill to meet AAA at my car. It turned out that the tow truck was owned by Brock’s cousin Alf, and that when he heard I had made a service call Brock had insisted on coming along to help. He looked a little surprised to see Liam there, but Liam explained that he’d seen me walking down the hill to the car and offered to stay with me while I waited for thetow truck. Brock squinted suspiciously at Liam, and kept looking back and forth between us, as if he suspected that Liam was holding me captive.
“I thought he was going to tackle me,” Liam admitted after the car had been winched out of the gully and towed away.
“He’s just being protective,” I told him. But I too wondered why Brock had seemed so wary of Liam.
Since we didn’t have a car we hiked to the Stop & Shop, the only store open in town, and bought groceries. Later we borrowed two pairs of cross-country skis from the inn and skied through the woods, making new tracks in the deep virgin snow. The woods still scared me a little after being attacked by the giant crow, but with Liam blazing the trail ahead of me I told myself that nothing bad would happen—and nothing did. The woods were silent, hushed by the deep mantle of snow. Whatever creatures had stirred free through the door between the worlds, they had all gone to ground now.
As did we. For the next few days—in the still time between Christmas and New Year’s—we marooned ourselves in Honeysuckle House. Outside the snow fell steadily, dropping a thick white curtain between us and the rest of the world. The heat we made steamed the bedroom windows and then the steam froze, sealing us in.
“It feels like the ice age has come and we’re the only two people left in the world,” I said one night as we lay in bed, my head pillowed on his chest, watching the snow fall through the almost opaque windows.
“Would that be so bad?” Liam asked.
I laughed and looked up to see whether he was serious, but he was looking toward the window and his face, a white profile against the shadows, had no more emotion than a bust carved out of marble. “We can’t go on like this forever,” I said, trying to make my voice light but hearing a tremor in it.
He turned to me, his eyes twin dark wells in his face. “I could,” he said fiercely. He shifted his hips and pinned me beneathhim in one quick fluid movement that made me gasp. We’d made love less than an hour ago, but he was hard again. But he didn’t come inside me. He stretched both of my arms over my head and wrapped my hands around the bedpost.
“Hold on,” he whispered, kissing my hands. His breath was a silken sash that bound my wrists to the bedpost. He pressed his mouth to the inside of my wrist and ran his tongue down my arm.
“I could tie you to this bed and make love to you forever,” he whispered into my clavicle. He pressed a line of kisses down my chest that seemed to seal me to the bed. I felt myself sink deeper into the mattress and clutched the bedpost harder to keep from sinking. He tongued my naval and my back arched as if pulled by a thread connected to his mouth. He was spinning a web around me with his lips, each word and kiss binding me.
“I coulddevouryou,” he said, breathing into the cleft between my legs.
He really means it, I thought, arching my hips to meet his mouth. Hecoulddevour me. But as his tongue slipped inside me I understood that I didn’t care. He could tie me to this bed, lick me dry, and pound my bones into dust and I’d still cry out for more—as I was now, crying out in the empty house where the snow muffled the sounds and locked us in together, snowbound.
I woke the next morning with aching arms and that prickly sensation of having done something I should be embarrassed about but couldn’t remember—a feeling I recalled from drunken nights in college. Liam lay asleep beside me, his face angelic in sleep—an angel who’d told me last night that he wanted to tie me up and eat me.
It wasn’t really bondage, I thought, rubbing my wrists. And even if it had been—well, there wasn’t anything wrong withthat. Plenty of consenting adults engaged in far wilder games. But I never had, and something about the abandon I’d felt—the willingness to give myself over—made my stomach feel hollow now. I slipped out of bed quietly, so as not to wake Liam, and stole downstairs. I felt like I had to reconnect to the world somehow, so I opened my laptop and checked my email while I started the coffee machine.
I had 283 unread emails.
“Shit,” I swore, scrolling through my inbox. When was the last time I had gone this long without checking my email? How long had it been? What day was it anyway?
I looked at the date on the most recent email and was shocked to see that it was December 31.
Most of the messages were easily disposable but there was one from Paul. I poured my coffee before opening it.
Just wanted to make sure you’re okay, he’d written,and wish you a Happy New Year. <3 Paul.
