She kisses Oliver like she has wanted to kiss him a thousand times—a kiss forged from every agonizing moment she has wanted him but couldn’t have him. An ache blooms inside her. “Yes.”
Oliver kisses her, hard, and she gasps. She presses into him, needs to feel his body against hers.
They make it to the bedroom. She fumbles with the buttons on his shirt, peels the wet fabric from his skin. He steps behind her, and she leans into the warmth of him. He places a soft kiss behind her ear, trailsanother dozen down her neck, each one featherlight. Her pulse races. “What are you thinking?” she murmurs.
He slips the strap of her sundress off her shoulder. Kisses there, too. “I think I’m glad you don’t wear a corset anymore.”
She laughs. “So am I.”
He tugs at her zipper, and it releases, slowly opening as his hand moves down her back. Her dress slides over her hips and pools at her feet. She shivers in her slip—no, she is trembling now. She turns to him, and her lips are on his again. She can’t get close enough, can’t get enough of his touch, his taste, of him. His fingers brush the edge of her slip, caressing the line where bare skin meets lace. Past it. Just.
Slowly, his touch drifts up her thigh. Higher.
“You are such a tease,” she breathes against his mouth.
“We have time,” he whispers in her ear.
She’s not sure who pulls who into the bed.
Time doesn’t so much stop as cease to exist entirely. There is only her. Only him. His breath warm against her neck. His touch, electric on her skin. His mouth on her. She moves against him, moves with him, until they are nothing but a tangle of limbs and longing, aching for release, until Beatrix is sure she has never wanted anything so desperately in her entire life.
Until everything else ceases to exist, too.
The storm passes quickly, like summer storms do, the wild evening giving way to a clear, calm night.
Their last night in Paris.
Beatrix gazes out at the city lights twinkling below her, all the way to the horizon. She sips her champagne. Tiny bubbles pop sharply against her tongue as the first notes of “The Theme fromA Summer Place” carry onto the balcony, tinny flutes and violin drifting to her ears from the radio inside. Oliver turns up the volume and joins her at the rail.
He offers Beatrix his hand. “Would the lady care to dance?”
She puts her champagne on the table next to Oliver’s half-empty glass and places her hand in his. He draws her close and places his other hand on that familiar spot on her back.
“Still not a lady,” she says.
“Just a thief.” He kisses her gently.
She leans her head on his shoulder as they sway together to the music.
Beatrix doesn’t know how long she’ll live, can’t fathom an eternity, even now. But she knows she will remember this day, this night, with this view and this man dancing with her on this balcony, forever. However long that is.
Tears prick at her eyes. A melancholy wave crashes over her, as if her heart knows she was not meant to have this much happiness. Because she can’t will the sun to never rise again, can’t live inside this moment forever.
Because one day, Oliver will leave her, and he won’t come back.
A tear spills down her cheek, then another, and she can’t stop them from falling. Oliver wraps his arms around her. He doesn’t say a word, just holds her close.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers. She was trying to savor thehereandnow. But old habits die hard, and hers are very, very old. She wipes her tears away. “I’m ruining it, aren’t I?”
Oliver kisses her on the forehead. “Never.”
July 21, 1960London, England
Beatrix unlocks the door to her apartment and pushes it open. She lingers in the hushed quiet of the hallway with Oliver, not ready to be home, for their trip to be over, for him to leave her.
“When will I see you again?” She forces a lightness into her voice she doesn’t feel. The last three days have been a dream, one she doesn’t want to wake from.
Oliver sets her yellow suitcase inside her door and pulls his journal from his jacket. He flips past a marked page. “I’ll be in America in 1969. Do you want to meet me there?”
