“Kevin,” she whispered breathlessly. “I don’t think I can stand anymore.”
“Then sit on me.”
She eased herself down onto him, and as soon as he slid into her wet heat, he knew he wasn’t going to last long. Draping her legs over his, she leaned her back against his chest and rocked against him. Slow at first. So torturously slow. She reached back, wrapping her arm around his neck, and brought his mouth down to her collarbone. His hands were everywhere, one palming her breast, the other between her legs, his finger stroking from the place where they joined up to her swollen clit. She began to rock faster, so his hands moved faster and the moment he was trying to delay came all too quickly.
“Fuck, Jazz…I’m gonna come.”
Even when he bit into her shoulder, she didn’t stop. Even when his body shuddered, she didn’t stop. Even when she’d drained every last drop from his body, she didn’t stop. She rocked against him and he felt her clench around him. His finger worked harder against her throbbing clit until she burst. She arched her back, whispering his name as she climaxed. She was trembling when she finally came down from her high and he wrapped both his arms around her to keep her steady.
“God…I didn’t know numbers turned you on so much,” he teased, placing butterfly kisses along her neck.
She giggled and dropped her head against his shoulder. “You should see me when I get started on trigonometry.”
*****
“I’m sure I look exactly like her,” Jasmin said as she walked out of the bathroom naked, her long hair draped untidily over her breasts.
It was strange how just a few weeks ago she was insecure about showing her arms and now she was comfortable enough to prance around naked. Her growing confidence was as appealing as everything else about her. On a scale of one to ten of awesomeness, Jasmin was definitely an eleven.
“I don’t look anything like my dad,” she continued. “Like, not even one feature, so all her genes must have been passed on to me.” She pulled on his discarded T-shirt and climbed into bed beside him.
“Then you better keep her away from me. I might just prefer the cougar version of you.”
She giggled and hit his arm before pulling it over her chest. “I wonder what it’s going to be like. She’s probably going to be so surprised to see me.”
She was nervous and excited. Her eyes glistened with hope and there was so much longing in her voice as she spoke. Kevin wanted to caution her to not expect too much, but he didn’t have the heart to bring her down from her high.
“Just leave it in the hands of destiny,” he said. “Things will turn out the way they’re meant to be.”
Annoyance flashed on her face. “Did you just throw destiny at me, Kevin? You know I think that’s all a bunch of hogwash. You’re such a disappointment. Next thing you know you’ll be telling me you believe in soulmates andthe one.”
She said it with so much repugnance he was almost afraid to admit the truth. “My parents are still happily married and madly in love after thirty-two years. Of course I believe in it.”
She shook her head, looking at him condescendingly. “I’m gonna lay this out for you, Son. I just hope your petty little mind hasn’t been too warped by society’s misconceptions for you to accept the knowledge I’m about to impart.”
“Oh, a cynic and a bitch.” He chuckled and lifted up onto one elbow to give her his full attention. “All right. Lay it on me.”
“There’s no such thing asThe One. It’s all mathematical, statistical. Now I have a theory, but obviously I haven’t met enough people to prove it yet. I’m gonna throw numbers at you, but they’re random. It’s just a theory until I can prove it, okay?”
He nodded. “Okay.”
“So let’s just say that you meet a hundred people in your lifetime. Out of those hundred people, you might like forty of them. I’m talking about people you can hold a conversation with, people who are fun to be around. Out of those forty people, you might become friends—and before you get upset, I use the term loosely—you might become friends with, let’s say, twenty of them. These are people who you party with, hang out with a lot. You really enjoy their company. Out of those twenty people, there may be only five that you have arealconnection with, kindred spirits…whatever. And out of those five, there will be that one person that you fall head over heels in love with. People deem this person as The One when actually he or she is just the one in one hundred. If you had to meet another hundred people, statistically, the pattern will repeat itself and you’d find anotherone. There are billions of people on this planet. Anyone’s personality is bound to be compatible, to the level of love, with a few people, not just one.”
“I disagree,” he said, lightly running his fingertips up and down her thigh. “Some couples stay together until they die. They do that because they found the one and only person they could love like that.”
“Okay. Then answer me this. There are some couples who are madly in love and each of them believe that they found their soulmate, but then a few years later, they get divorced and one or both of them find love again. It’s the same with finding love after the death of a spouse. Many people believe that maybe the second person istrulythe one when in actual fact, they both werethe one…the one in the statistical pool of one hundred. Said person just encountered enough people to meet both of them. The people who stay together until they die are so in love that they close themselves off to the possibility of meeting someone else, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. There are multiple soulmates for everyone.”
“That makes sense,” he said, though he still saw holes in her theory. “But how would you end up meeting these people in the first place? It’s destiny.” It was weird how he always sound like the sentimental one.
She rolled her eyes, completely exasperated, and he had to hold back a smile. “Really, Kevin? I give you my theory, which is not proven, but still very sound and you throwdestinyback at me. I am still unconvinced that such a thing exists. Why don’t you take some time and think about something solid and scientific, back it up with plausible fact instead of trying to feed me airy-fairy hogwash and then maybe—just maybe—you might make a believer out of me.”
This was a lot of nerdy conversations for one day and he wondered if other couples talked like this. After that crazy thought, he had to remind himself that they weren’t a couple. He interlinked his fingers with hers and brought her hand to his lips as he thought about it.
“Got it,” he said after a few minutes. “Okay. So energy cannot be created or destroyed, thus I assume a soul is energy. Once it enters a body, it has a mass and if it has a mass, I’m thinking…Newton’s Law of Gravity. That’s how soulmates meet.”
“The force between two objects is equal to the product of their masses, divided by the square of the distance between them…Hmmm?” She recited it slowly, letting it sink in as she spoke. “That’s the smartest thing you’ve said all night. Yes, Newton’s Law of Gravity is the perfect explanation. It also explains how we met. I couldn’t understand it at first. Why was I at that exact place at the exact time you were there and then we were both going in the same direction. It was so coincidental, but now it makes sense. When I was in South Africa, the distance was too big, so the force was small, but when I moved closer, it became stronger. And once I got to Montana, our souls just pulled us towards each other and it was a force that both of us didn’t understand.”
She was right. From the very beginning, he’d felt an unexplained pull towards her, one so strong it made it impossible for him to leave her every time he’d tried.
