Bitter Sweet (40 page)

‘You think this isn’t serious?’ He held out one trembling hand. ‘Look at me shake.’ He gripped his thighs. ‘It took me damned near five weeks to come back here, and I didn’t know what I was coming to do. You should have seen me at home an hour ago, getting showered and shaved and picking out a shirt as if I were going courting, but I can’t do that, can I? And the other alternative makes me slightly less than honourable, so here I sit, talking about it - my God, look at me, Maggie, so I know what you’re thinking.’

She lifted a face that was brilliant scarlet and encountered his blue, blue eyes, as troubled as before. She said what she knew she must say. ‘I’m thinking that the proper thing for me to do right now would be to ask you to leave.’

‘If you’d ask me, I would. You know that, don’t you?’

She studied him for one pained moment, then whispered, ‘But I can’t, and you know that, too, don’t you?’

Their forearms rested on the table, fingertips inches apart. He dropped his eyes to her hand, then took it loosely in his own - her right hand, bearing a gold wedding band.

He ran his thumb over it and her knuckles, then raised his gaze again.

‘I want you to know this is not something I do all the time. That hug five weeks ago is the closest thing to unfaithful I’ve ever been to
Nancy
.’

Maggie was human; she’d wondered. And because she had, she dropped her eyes guiltily to their joined hands.

‘Let me say this once, then never again.’ He spoke solemnly. ‘I’m sorry, Maggie. For whatever pain this brings you, I’m sorry.’

He leaned forward and kissed her palm, a long, lingering kiss that kept him doubled over as if awaiting benediction.

She remembered him at seventeen, often expressing himself in dear, touching ways such as this, and she pitied the woman who knew him so little she’d somehow failed to tap this wealth of emotion. With her free hand she touched the back of his head, the hair that had darkened to a tarnished gold since the last time she had caressed it.

‘Eric,’ she said softly.

He lifted his head and their eyes met. ‘Come over here . . please,’ she whispered.

He left his chair and circled the end of the table, still holding her hand. She rose as he reached her, and looked up at his face, realizing he was right; they, d begun falling in love months ago.

She rested her hands on his chest and lifted her face as his descended, then his soft, open tips touched hers. Ah, that kiss, that long-awaited kiss, fragile as a new bloom, exquisite in its intentional reserve. They brought to it the charmed recollection of first times, of their timorous explorations of one another in years long past, and of a night in Easley’s orchard. They let the bloom open slowly, let the stirring build, and the breathlessness mount until their lips opened wider, their tongues joined.

In time he lifted his head and their eyes met; they read it in one another’s gazes - this is not going to be a simple affair;, hearts are involved here.

Their eyelids began closing before their mouths met a second time. In one motion he gathered her close and her arms circled his neck. The kiss became wide, lush, and flavoured with remembrance, a taking of one another on any terms. Their tongues met and welcomed a new fervour as they clung hard, his hands stroking her back, hers his shoulders. When at last they drew apart their breathing was laboured, their mouths wet.

‘Ah, Maggie, I’ve thought about this.

‘So have I.’

‘That night I brought Katy home... I wanted to kiss you then.’

‘I lay in bed that night and worried about you out in the storm.., riding away from me... and I was sorry I hadn’t kissed you. I thought, what if you died without knowing how I felt.”

He kissed her throat, her jaw. ‘Oh, Maggie, you didn’t have to worry.’

‘A woman worries when she feels this way.’

He kissed her mouth - warm, mobile mouth waiting eagerly for his return. The fervour built, took them on a swell of feelings that set their hands in motion and made them avid for more. They tasted and tested, their lips moist and supple and impatient. He bit her lower lip, licked it and spoke into her open mouth. ‘You taste exactly the way I remember.’

‘How do I taste?’ she murmured.

He drew back and smiled into her eyes. ‘Like Easley’s orchard when the apples bloom.’

She smiled, too. ‘You remembered.’

‘Of course I remembered.’

Struck suddenly by a slice of happiness, she fitted herself tightly against him, wherever and however she would fit - her face to his neck, her arms around his trunk, her breasts flattened, giving herself licence to love being body to body with him at last. ‘We were so young, Eric.’

‘And it hurt so much to leave you.’ His hands roamed down her spine and came up beneath her sweatshirt, scanning her warm back.

‘I thought we’d eventually get married.’

‘So did I.’

‘And when we didn’t, the years passed and I thought I’d forgotten all about you. Then I saw you again and it was like a kick in the gut. I just wasn’t prepared for it.’

‘Neither was I.”

She simply had to see his face. Had to. She pulled back, looking up, still flush against his hips. ‘It’s pretty stunning, isn’t it?’

‘Yeah... pretty stunning.’ It was then he touched her breasts, as their eyes communicated all they felt, as she leaned back at the waist and felt him hard against her.

Beneath the oversized sweatshirt he had unclasped her bra, ran his hands around her ribs and took her in hand. Both breasts at once.., warm and erect. Gently... lovingly . . stroking her.., all the while watching her face.

Her lips dropped open and her eyes closed.

It was spring again, and they were young and raring, and he had come to pick her up with apple blossoms bedecking his car, and the same wondrous urges they bad felt then, they felt now. She swayed pliantly as he stroked her, and smiled with her eyes still closed. From her throat came a sound of delight, neither word nor moan, a mingling of the two.

He dropped to one knee and she lifted her shirt, watching from above as his warm, wet mouth opened upon her, renewing memories. His head swayed, his tongue stroked, then his teeth closed lightly upon her. She gasped and her stomach muscles contracted.

‘Mmm... you taste good.’

‘Mmm... I feel good. It’s been so long and I’ve missed this.’

He moved to her other breast, washed it as he had the first, then rubbed it with his hair. She cradled his head, drifting in sensation. In time he lifted his face and said in a gravelly voice, ‘Maggie, M’girl, I think we’re framed in your lace curtains, and they don’t hide much.’

Cupping his jaws she urged him to his feet. ‘Then come with me to the bed we bought together. I’ve wanted you in it since the night you set it up for me.’

His knees cracked as he rose and tucked her securely against his side. With their arms around each other they snapped off the kitchen light and climbed the stairs, their lazy steps giving lie to the anticipation coursing through them.

In the Belvedere Room she switched on a bedside lamp.

The shadow from is silk-fringed shade swayed against the wall as she turned and found him close behind her. He reached for her hips, set them lightly against his own and asked, ‘You nervous?’

‘Dying.’ The , too.’

With a smile he released her and began freeing the buttons of his pastel-blue shirt, tugging it tails out of his jeans.

When she reached for the hem of her sweatshirt he caught her hand.

‘Wait a minute.’ He grinned charmingly. ‘Could I do that? I don’t think I ever did it before, except in the dark, fumbling around.’

‘You did it on the Mary Deare the day after prom, and it wasn’t dark and you weren’t fumbling.’

‘Did I?’

‘Yes, and you were very good at it, actually.’

He smiled crookedly and reached out, murmuring, ‘Let me refresh my memory.”

He slid the baggy shirt over her head taking the bra with it, and flung them aside, looking down at her in the lamplight.

‘You’re beautiful, Maggie.’ He brushed his knuckles along the sides of her breasts and over their uptilted nipples.

‘No, I’m not.’

‘Yes you are. I thought so then, and I think so now.’

‘You haven’t changed, do you know that? You always had a way of saying and doing sweet, tender things, like downstairs when you kissed my hand, and now when you touched me as if...’

‘As if... ?’ His gossamer caresses sent goose bumps up the backs of her legs.

‘As ill were
Dresden
.’

‘
Dresden
is cold,’ he murmured, enfolding her breasts in his wide hands. ‘You’re warm. Take my shirt off, Maggie, please.’

What a heady pleasure it was, divesting him of the blue shirt, then the white one underneath, tugging it over his head, further dishevelling his hair. When he was naked to the waist, she held his clothes like a nest in her hands, lowered her face to them, breathing in his scent, calling back another memory.

He touched her head, stirred unbelievably by her simple gesture.

She lifted her face to him. ‘You smell the same. A person doesn’t forget smells.’

His belt came next. She had removed the belt of another man countless times during their years of marriage, but had forgotten the impact of doing so illicitly. Reaching for Eric’s waist, she felt heat pounding everywhere in her body.

She freed his buckle and the heavy metal snap at his waist, watching his eyes as she laid her hand flat upon him and caressed him for the first time through faded blue denim.

Soft old denim over hard, warm man. Her first stroke closed his eyes. Her second brought him leaning forward, hard against her, reaching behind her, running his palms down deep inside her red sweat pants.

‘You have a mole,’ he whispered, running one warm palm against her belly. ‘Right... here.’

She smiled. ‘How could you remember?’

‘I always wanted to kiss it but I was too chicken.’

She unzipped his jeans and murmured against his lips, ‘Kiss it now.’

They finished undressing each other in a rush. That first moment of nakedness might have been strained but he put self-consciousness to rout by catching her hands, spreading them wide and boldly assessing her length.

‘Wow,’ he praised softly, meeting her eyes, grinning appreciatively.

 
‘Yeah... wow,’ she returned, admiring him in kind.

He dropped their hands. His expression turned grave.

‘I’m not going to stretch the truth and say that I always loved you, but I did then, and I do now, and I think it’s important to say so before we do this.’

‘Oh, Eric...’ she replied wistfully. ‘I love you, too. I tried very hard not to, but I couldn’t help myself.’

He caught her beneath the knees and arms, and laid her across the bed, touched her in the places he’d touched years ago - breasts, hips and inside, where she was liquid and warm. She touched him, too, stroked and studied him in the amber lamplight and made him tremble and feel strong one minute and weak the next. He kissed her in all the places he’d been too shy to kiss in their younger days, along her ribs and her limbs, stained golden by the lamplight while she lay lissom beneath his touch.

She tasted him. in return, revelling in his textures and responses, each passing moment trying their patience.

When the limits of desire had been tested, he braced above her and asked, ‘Do we have to be careful not to get you pregnant?’

‘No.’

‘Are you sure, Maggie?’

‘I’m forty years old, and luckily for both of us, I’m beyond that particular worry.’

Their reunion was slow and supple, a mating of spirits as well as bodies. He took his time easing into her, all below billowing with feelings while the moment became prolonged pleasure. When they were wholly bound at last, they poised, motionless, making of the moment a prayer.

After so many years, lovers again.

How delicious their fit. How incredible their heat.

Momentarily he pressed back, found her eyes wide and gleaming. She girded his hips with her hands and set him in motion, silken and strong within her. He found her hands and clasped them against the bedding while she watched his face.

 
‘You’re smiling,’ he said huskily.

‘So are you.’

‘What are you thinking?’

‘That your shoulders are wider.’

‘So are your hips.’

‘I’ve had a baby.’

‘I wish it were mine.’

In time she drew his head down and their smiles faded, drawn away by the wondrous gravity of sensuality. They shared some lust and some fine driven moments before he wrapped her close and took her with him, rolling to their sides. Squeezing his eyes shut he held himself deep within her. ‘It’s so good,’ he said.

‘Because we were first for each other.’

‘It feels like coming full circle, like this is where I should have been all the time.’

‘Have you wondered what it would have been like if we’d got married the way we planned?’