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“I’m scared, Alejandro,” I finally admitted after our kiss broke apart, pressing my forehead to his. “I’ve never done this before.”
“Done what?”
“Fallen for anyone.”
He brushed the pad of his thumb against my cheek. “Then hold my hand, Cariño, and we can fall together.”
He captured my sigh with his kiss, sweeping me up in his arms and carrying me the last steps to his cabin. That night, under the Caribbean sky, I did something else I’d never done before.
I made love.
***
My eyes flitted open, and it only took a few seconds to remember where I was. The weight of Alejandro’s body cocooned around mine caused me to sigh as flashes of our night flickered across my mind like a vivid slideshow.
The kissing. The passion. The love-making. The romance.
Oh, the romance.
I never knew romance like this was possible. But I supposed falling in love amplified the joy of sex. At least it had for me. Until last night, I’d never felt anything as incredible as standing in the spotlight and feeling its heat envelope me ... the feeling of knowing I was the star. But last night with Alejandro had shined a light so bright on me that I knew it would never dim. There would be no curtains closing on my feelings for him, leaving me standing alone in the dark. No. This spotlight we’d turned on last night would burn forever.
Last night we’d talked about our life together. Alejandro worked three months on and three months off. We would spend his three months off together in Las Vegas, where I could do my show, and for his three months on, I could cruise the world with him and spend my nights in his arms under the open ocean sky. It all seemed too good to be true, but my heart knew the feelings we had for each other were real. They may have come on quickly, but they were as deep and true as if we’d known each other forever.
As I lay there in his arms, basking in the glow of our night, all the emotions churning inside warmed me to my core. I was in bed lying in the arms of my one true love ... a man I didn’t ever think could exist. But as I processed that truth, I also processed something else ... I was lying in bed with my one true love in the morning ... with my hair undone, my makeup likely a mess, and God knows I must have horrific morning breath.
I covered my mouth, carefully peeking over my shoulder to see my lion sleeping peacefully behind me. He was so beautiful even in sleep, and I envied that he didn’t have hours of prep work to find his beauty like I needed. He didn’t need injections and waxing of straggling chin hairs. He didn’t need breast lifts and chin tightening and eye lifts. He didn’t need an hour of makeup and an hour of hair just to head out for the day. No. He was perfect in all his natural glory.
Suddenly, terror started to wind its way into the nooks and crannies inside me. What if he woke up and saw me like this and the spell was broken? Would he still love me if he knew I didn’t wake up looking like the woman he’d taken to bed? Or that I had chin hairs that needed tweezing or sagging skin that needed lifting? Would the magic fade away?
Panic tightened inside of me, and a feeling I wasn’t familiar with joined it. Rejection. As I lay there in his perfect muscular arms, I worried that he would reject me. The real me. The me I’d never let anyone see before, but that me was impossible to hide from someone I was in a relationship with.
It was easy to kick men out of my bed at night so they’d never see me without the smoke and mirrors that made me look twenty years younger. Made me look the age when I hadn’t had to worry about such things like I wouldn’t be attractive enough to a man. Back then, I was beautiful no matter the time of day. But with age came the hardships of fighting against the clock, and the battle grew more difficult each year. I’d even been able to hide it from my husband for most of our lives, and he’d passed before the reality of my age had really caught up with me.
But now I lay beside Alejandro trying to process how this would work. Separate bedrooms for the rest of our lives? But the thought of not waking in his arms pained me so greatly that it nearly split my heart in two. Sneaking out of bed every morning before he woke so I could put on some makeup and fix my hair to something not resembling the rats nest our love-making created? No. That wasn’t sustainable, either. I had only one choice if I was going to really do this thing with Alejandro.
I had to show him the me without the makeup and clothes. The me who had to soak her aching feet every night or she couldn’t walk the next morning—the imperfect me.
The real me.
The me who became increasingly real every day as age picked away at my natural beauty. Its fragility had become more obvious to me in the past year since moving to Vegas with the constant supply of young, beautiful women flocking to the city every day. On Wilder Lane, I’d been the most beautiful woman around, but now, even though I could run circles around women my age, I couldn’t hold a candle to the firm-skinned, shiny-eyed beauties surrounding me. Whenever I encountered one, envy worked like a siphon to my unwavering confidence until the tank was all but dried up. For the first time in my life, even with all the extra makeup, creams, injections, and work, I didn’t feel like the most beautiful woman when I stepped into a room, and it felt like I was losing my oldest friend.
My beauty.
My identity.
It had been a part of me always, and I didn’t know who I would be without it or if Alejandro would run for his life when he opened his eyes and saw the stunning woman he’d taken to bed replaced by the old lady in his arms.
Taking a stilling breath, I had to decide between laying there in his arms like I wanted, knowing he would wake up soon and see the real me, or slipping out of bed to rush back to my room and fix my hair and makeup enough to be presentable. Perhaps buy myself some time before I let Alejandro see behind the curtain. I glanced back at my handsome lion and decided I wasn’t quite ready to let him see me without all the magic. Maybe I would show him a little at a time and hope it wouldn’t send him running the other way after realizing I wasn’t some young, beautiful woman like the ones closer to his age. Or younger.
Jessica Rabbit’s face flashed through my eyes.
Nope. Not ready. I was going to have to drag this part out.
Very carefully, I slipped the covers back. Gently, I wiggled my naked body to get out from under his arm so I could make my getaway and get back into bed before he woke. But as I shifted my hips, I felt a small wet spot on the bed.
My heart plummeted to the ground.
Another curse of my losing battle against aging. My overactive bladder sometimes caused me slight urinary incontinence at night. It hadn’t mattered how many Kegels I’d done after giving birth to Celeste, some things never quite snapped back to normal. As I got older, the occasional leak became more frequent. And now I had leaked in bed beside the beautiful younger man who had no idea what he was getting himself into falling for a woman my age.
