Finding Eden (26 page)

I went upstairs and changed into my swimsuit. When I walked out the side door onto the patio, Calder was out of the pool and sitting on one of the deck chairs next to the stone bar. Water was cascading down his bare, smooth, muscled chest in little rivulets and his hair was pushed back away from his face in wet spikes. God he was ridiculously gorgeous. And there was something especially beautiful about him when he was wet. I'd thought it before and I thought it now—it was as if water was his own personal element and he wore it better than anyone else on the face of the earth. "Hey, handsome. I thought you were getting in the shower."

His eyes swept up and down my bikini-clad body and I blushed despite myself. This man had seen me as naked as the day I was born a hundred times over, and from every angle imaginable, and yet I still felt that same modesty I'd been taught to feel when I was showing an "indecent" amount of skin.

"I changed my mind."

I sat down on his lap and ran my thumbs over his chiseled cheekbones and down his strong, masculine jaw, rough with a day's worth of dark stubble. I leaned forward and kissed his lips. He tasted sweet. "Hmm, what have you been drinking?"

"Just Coke," he said, looking embarrassed as if that was some sort of crime. I smiled at him.

"What'd the detective want?" he asked, his jaw tensing.

I studied him. I ran one fingertip over his dark eyebrows, one by one. "Just more questions about Clive's role in the council—what I experienced of him in the main lodge," I said in answer to his question. "You don't have to dislike Detective Lowe. He's actually very nice."

Calder's jaw ticked once, but he didn't deny disliking the detective. He took a deep breath and studied my face. I met his eyes. "I just worry," he started. "Sometimes I think maybe you wonder . . . or maybe you
will
wonder—"

"Then ask me," I said softly. "All you ever have to do is ask me."

Vulnerability skated over his expression. "Do you ever wonder what it'd be like to be with another man? A man you could start fresh with? A man who could give you more than me? A man who's
better
than me?"

"No. No man can give me more than you. No man is better than you," I said without hesitation.

He smiled a baffled, crooked smile full of hope and my heart lurched in my chest. A flash of him as a little boy looking up at me after I'd put a butterscotch candy in his hand raced through my mind, and all the love and tenderness I felt for him filled my chest so full I ached with it.

His face went serious. "I don't even have a name, Eden. No one's even come forward to claim me. No one ever even reported me missing."

"Oh, Calder," I said. "Is that why?" He'd seemed so quiet lately, lost in his own head, and he'd leave the room each time the police came by, and now I knew why. The news they were bringing was never about him. "There must be an explanation," I said.

He shrugged.

"The police said they'd help you and Xander get the necessary paperwork to get IDs."

"Yeah, but it won't really be me. It will be who Hector made me. If I'm Calder Raynes, I'll always be a slave, a
water bearer
." He said the last two words with disgust lacing his voice.

I wasn't sure what to think about that. I had loved him then, and I loved him now. His name—any title someone else gave him—would never, ever change that. It didn't alter who he was under his skin. And we didn't even know for sure that he had been abducted anyway. "Calder," I started hesitantly, "is it possible that Hector was just talking jibberish? At the end you have to admit, he was crazy," I finished quietly.

He shook his head. "Mother Willa—"

"We can't put a whole lot of stock in what she said, either."

Calder pulled that full bottom lip between his teeth and sucked on it for a minute. "Maybe. But my family, Eden, you have to admit, I didn't look anything like any of them, not in coloring, not in features."

I looked behind him, trying to picture his mom and dad. I couldn't create a clear picture of their faces in my mind. But I remembered making note of the fact that he didn't look like his family many times in Temple as I watched him interacting with them. "That's not definitive proof of anything either though," I finally said.

He let out a frustrated breath and it was then I realized he didn't want to believe they were his real parents. He didn't want to believe his own mom and dad could have ever done what they did to him at the end. He was looking for hope. He was picturing someone else out there who loved him and would fight to the death for him. I smoothed my thumbs over his cheekbones again, looking in his hurt-filled eyes. "I love you, Butterscotch," I said, feeling the emotion of the statement well up in my throat.

His eyes met mine and filled with warmth. "I love you, too."

He looked away. "This whole situation, it's making me someone I don't like. I feel like we're trapped, caged again for the second time in our lives." Frustration washed over his expression. "I can't work, I can't take care of you. I haven't painted. I can't even wake up in the same bed as you. And now I don't even have a home to bring you back to once all this clears."

"We'll find a new home together."

His eyes warmed. "I know." He sighed. "I just feel . . . stripped bare, I guess," he said, smiling a smile lacking humor and raising his eyebrows. 

I studied him for another minute, my eyes drinking in the striking male beauty of his face, the depth of emotion and sensitivity behind his eyes. I'd never get tired of looking at him. Loving him would never cease being my greatest pleasure in life. "I've always liked you stripped bare," I said, smiling a cheeky smile at him and trying to get him to smile back. It worked. I went serious. "You've always been most beautiful when you're stripped bare," I said, meaning that in every single way. "You,
just you
, with nothing else, no job, no house, no money, nothing. Stripped bare.
You
will always be enough for me. You will always be my dream come true, my destiny."

Calder let out a loud exhale, relief filling his expression. He leaned forward and kissed my lips. "I
will
give you more though."

"I know," I whispered. I tilted my head. "Want to get in the water with me?"

He gazed at me a minute and then nodded. "Yeah, okay."

"No one's here. We could be naughty and strip even more bare." I nodded my head toward all the trees blocking the pool from anyone's sight. "No one can see us."

Calder chuckled, and immediately began removing his swim trunks.

When we were both naked and submersed in the heated water of the large pool, I wrapped my arms around his neck and we bobbed like that for a little while, me sighing out at the delicious feel of the water lapping around my shoulders and Calder's hard, wet, bare body right up against mine.

"Right now, I can imagine we're in the water at our spring," he said, smiling. "I can imagine it's just us and the stars." The look on his face was peaceful, serene.

I nuzzled into his neck, kissing him softly there. I felt him stir against my belly and as if my body was answering, I felt an immediate tingling between my thighs. "This is better," I whispered. "We're free. It's definitely not how we would have wanted it to go, but we're here, we're together."

Calder turned us around in the water and I laughed, leaning my head back. The sky was cloudy and overcast above us.

"Sometimes I miss it," he said. "Is that insane?"

I lifted my head and looked in his eyes, moving a piece of dark hair off his forehead. I shook my head slowly. "No. We both knew ourselves there. Even if we didn't like it, we knew who we were. We knew what we wanted. Out here," I brought one hand from around his neck and waved it to the side of us, "it's not always clear. It's confusing and scary sometimes."

He nodded his head, his expression unreadable to me as he looked in my eyes. "You always get it," he said. "It's a fucking relief." He closed his eyes briefly and I laughed softly.

Calder's use of a swear word sent a jolt of surprise through me that ended between my legs. "The big society is rubbing off on you. Now you're using dirty words?" I raised one eyebrow, teasing him.

He grinned wickedly and spun us around again. "Only with you. I only get dirty with you." He leaned in and ran his tongue up my neck and I moaned. "Let's get dirty." He grinned against my skin.

A thrill shot through my body and a pulsing throb started between my legs. It was somewhat shameful how little Calder needed to do before I was practically panting for him. But, hadn't it always been the case? I figured it always would be.

Calder gazed at me, his eyes moving over my face. "You're painfully beautiful," he whispered.

I breathed out a small laugh. "It's not supposed to be painful."

"It is." He pushed my bangs to the side. "Yours is the type of beauty that makes a man want to fight wars and pillage villages full of other men who might dare to look at you."

I laughed softly, my heart skipping a beat. "No pillaging necessary. I'm yours. I've been yours since the beginning of time."

Calder's eyes flared and I leaned forward and kissed his lips gently. He walked us over to the wall of the shallow end of the pool and sat me on the edge. He leaned into me and took my mouth, at the perfect height so that our faces met as he rested his hands on the cement next to my hips. He moved in between my thighs and I wrapped my legs around his hips.

He broke from our kiss and gazed at me with heated eyes. The throb between my legs intensified and my breaths grew quicker. Calder's eyes moved down to my pebbled nipples and his eyes darkened with lust.
That look
. . .
Oh God, that look.
"Please," I murmured, bringing my hands up to his head and pulling him forward. I needed his mouth on my breasts right that second. He obliged and when his warm, wet mouth closed over one nipple, I moaned loudly. It felt so good. I always felt like I was at risk of climaxing just from what Calder did with his mouth on my nipples. It was bliss. With one hand braced on the cement behind me, I used my other hand to hold the breast Calder was licking and sucking and watched him as he pleasured me that way. The sight of him along with the delicious feel of his mouth was almost my undoing. "Calder, I need you inside of me. Now," I groaned out. He smiled against my skin and then glanced up at me with heated eyes before he moved to my other nipple. I panted out in time with his tongue flicks, pressing into his erection that was right at my core.

"I'll never stop wanting you," I said, my voice barely a whisper. Calder's mouth paused for just a brief second, but then his tongue lashed out again, harder this time. I gasped out, my body pressing into his more forcefully.

He reached down and took his erection in his hand. I watched him stroke himself a couple times, my breath catching in my own throat.

"Scoot forward a little," he said, sounding strained, that beautiful smoky voice even more gravelly.

I swallowed and did as he asked, moving from side to side until I was at the very edge of the pool. I brought one fingertip to a vein that started at his abdomen and ran downward, imagining the blood pulsing to his shaft below. Something about that had lust shooting through my veins. 

Calder let out a strained groan and lined the tip of his erection up with my entrance. I groaned out, too, half in frustration, half in relief. His eyes met mine and they were dark and unfocused.

He pushed into me inch by slow inch, looking into my eyes the whole time. I wanted to close my eyes and relish the sensation of his body filling mine, but I couldn't look away. There was something dark and deep and powerful in the way he was watching me.

He pushed in until our bodies connected and I gasped and he moaned, his eyes falling shut and his lips parting. I wrapped my legs around his hips as he began to move slowly, so excruciatingly slowly. He wrapped his arms around me and brought his mouth to my ear, tickling it with his breath and causing my body to unconsciously buck into him. The sensations he was causing were almost too much. I didn't know whether I was going to have an orgasm or self-combust. Possibly both.

"The things you do to me, Eden," he whispered, his voice low and raspy.
The things I do to him?

I just moaned, raking my fingernails over his back as he started another slow slide out.

"I love you so much it makes my guts ache." He slid in slowly, pressing firmly against the part of me that felt swollen and achy with need. Sparks of pleasure burst through my body and my legs tightened around his hips. "I want to fuck you and worship you." He slid out and I made a gurgled sound of loss in my throat, excitement shooting through my body at his dirty talk. He pushed in again more quickly, brushing his thumbs over my nipples and causing more sparkles of pleasure to dance around the perimeter of my foggy vision. "I want to worship you while I fuck you. I want to fuck you until you feel how much I worship you." He slid out and then pushed in in several quick thrusts, bumping his pelvis against my body in a delicious tease that was too much and not enough at all. "I hate it and I love it because I know it will never change. It's been this way from the moment I laid eyes on you and it'll be this way until the day I die."