With his large hands spread under my bottom, he moved his pelvis.I felt him withdraw nearly completely, then slowly, tauntingly return.“You make me burn,” I managed to gasp against his neck.“Can’t you feel it?”
He didn’t answer at first, and when he did, his voice was deep and husky.“I feel it, babe.I feelit.”Holding our bodies locked tightly, he carefully lowered me to the bed.Still buried deeply inside me, he held himself up on his arms and looked down into my face.
He was beautiful.His eyes, his face, his body—he was a beautiful person.Tears came to my eyes at the thought of how lucky I was to have him.He made my heart swell to twice its normal size.
His lips touched mine with a gentleness that belied the throbbing I felt inside.“It does always come to this,” he said hoarsely, “because this is what I need.”He raised his head.His eyes met mine.“It’s only when we’re together like this that I know you love me.”
A knot swelled in my throat to rival the swelling of my heart, and I knew he was right.I hadn’t put the word to the emotion I felt, and I didn’t want to do it now, but there was no doubt it was real.Nothing else could explain the things he made me feel, even the sense of security I’d thought about moments before.I felt secure when we made love because during those times, Peter was unconditionally mine.I didn’t have to share him with anyone or anything.I could touch him and kiss him and hug him and love him.I liked it that way.
With a low moan, he squeezed his eyes shut.“What was that?What did you just do?”
I hadn’t realized I’d done anything until my muscles relaxed.“This?”I whispered.I clenched them again.
He made a rough sound, swallowed, nodded.His arms began to tremble.But his eyes, heavy-lidded moments before, grew suddenly large and intense.“I belong here, Jill.I belong inside you, not just when we’re making love, but during all the other times, too.You have my heart.You’ll always have it.I want yours.”
“You have it,” I whispered, framing his head with my hands.
“Now.But for always?It’s no good if it’s only when we’re in bed.”
I wasn’t ready to say the words.Nor could I lie and deny them.So I slipped my hands into his hair and brought his head down to my mouth.Silently I told him how I felt.
It wasn’t enough.
Peter lowered himself to his elbows.He held enough of his weight so that I wasn’t crushed, but our bodies touched at every possible point.Like the soft, swirling hair on his chest, his voice was a sensual abrader.“I’m insecure about some things, Jill, and you’re one.”His breath was warm above my face, his eyes hot.“I think about you all the time we’re apart, and it eats at me that you may not be thinking about me, too.I need to know you are.I need that commitment.I want you to take the sum of everything that’s you, turn it over and endorse it to me.For deposit only.No turning back.No withdrawals.Forever.”
I heard what he said, and part of me wanted just that.I didn’t feel threatened; it wasn’t aquestion of losing myself in Peter, as much as being all the richer for a merger with him.But I needed time.I had to come to terms with certain things, and I wasn’t about to do that now, not with the sight and scent and feel of him surrounding me.
“Show me what you want,” I whispered, and he did.He loved me with everything that was him, and then some, and it was the most glorious feeling in the world.At times he was gentle, at times fierce, making me feel alternatively like a precious jewel and an enchantress.I couldn’t say whether I preferred one feeling to another because they were both part of the whole, and the whole captured my mind to such an extent that analysis was impossible.
By the time we fell back to the sheets with our limbs entwined and our skin dewy, though, I knew that there’d never be another love for me like Peter.
We dozed off, awakening after an hour to make love again.After another nap, we awoke ravenous for food of the material kind, but the shower we took first led to a rebirth of passion.It was nearly midnight when Peter opened his front door to two large, loaded pizzas.
Nothing but crumbs remained—Peter ate his own pie, plus three slices of mine—when we took our large, loaded stomachs into the den, wrapped ourselves in each other and a large afghan that Peter had picked up in the course of his travels, and began to talk.
Peter must have known that I wasn’t ready to tackle the issue of love and commitment that night, because he bypassed it to talk about Cooper and Cyrill.“Tell me what you think.”
I snuggled deeper within the bands of his arms.“I think that Cooper fell hard.He was eighteen, Cyrill seventeen when she came to town.It sounds like she wasn’t the type to fall in love.She had plans.But she must have been taken with Cooper, enough to have an affair with him, and the affair went on long after she left Maine.”
“Cooper obviously knew when she became pregnant.”
“Or learned soon after.He was close enough when the baby was born to claim him and take him home.”
“I wonder what kind of deal he had to make.”
I tipped my head on his upper arm so that I could see his face.“What do you mean?”
“If Cyrill intended to make it big in New York, the last thing she needed was a baby.I wonder if he had to convince her to go ahead with the pregnancy.”
I sucked in a breath.“You think she might have wanted an abortion?”
“Maybe.She sure didn’t want the baby, if she allowed him to be taken from her and raised as someone else’s child.”
My heart ached for Benjie.“Poor kid.Imagine the rejection he’s probably felt over the years.”
“If he knows the truth.”
“I’m sure he does.It would explain the time Benjie told me in no uncertain words that Cooper would never marry me.”
