“But not about you.” His voice lowered, and he closed the small distance between them. “Not ten years ago, not now.”
He swept his arms around her and caught her with a kiss that rocked her back on her feet. She nearly fell onto the unmade sofa bed. His mouth and hands were suddenly all over her, hungrily devouring any self-restraint she might have had. She exulted in the feel of him, turned her body loose, boldly slipping a hand down his chest, past the waistband of his pants, testing his arousal, teasing him with delicate flicks of her fingertips. Playing with fire.
She wriggled out of her robe. It dropped to the floor. Her nipples were outlined against the translucent fabric of her nightgown. He gave a soft moan, opened his mouth to hers, already lifting her nightgown up to her hips, cupping her bottom with his palms.
And he stopped. It was her turn to moan. “Jeremiah…”
He eased her down onto the bed, and she fell back against the cool mattress, her nightgown up around her hips. Slowly, languorously, proving he could make this last as long as he wanted, he slid his fingers between her legs, found where she was wet and hot, and did a little delicate flicking of his own. Even when her breath was coming in gasps and she was grabbing at his back, he didn’t pull back. Instead, he followed with his tongue.
He pushed her nightgown up with one hand while the other kneaded the warm, firm flesh of her bottom, while his mouth continued to plunder. She made short work of getting her nightgown off, tossing it aside.
She heard him unzip his pants. “Yes, now, now.”
In one swift movement, he was free, driving into her, lifting her hips up on him, her legs squeezing him as she responded wildly, everything fast now, furious, total delirium setting in.
Hours later, or seconds, she was clinging to him, limp, spent, aware of a cool breeze floating through the windows and her mind drifting.
A decade ago, they’d made love like that. No wonder she hadn’t forgotten.
“You’re cold,” he said, his voice ragged.
“That’s because you still have your shirt on and I don’t have anything on.”
He smiled. “I noticed.”
“So,” she said, still breathless, yet every muscle loose, warm, “do I fetch the sheets or do you think maybe we can dare sleep together? I mean, at twenty I could do this ten times in a night. But now…” She grinned at him, running one finger along his jaw. “I don’t know, once or twice more might not kill me.”
He popped up off the sofa bed, laughing. “Innocent flute player, my ass. You were a wanton woman ten years ago, and you’re one now. I’m going to take a shower and rebandage my poor cut thumb. Then, darlin’,” he said with a wink, “we’ll see who’s not twenty anymore.”
The night brought out the smell and the sounds of the south Florida coast, and as Jeremiah sat on Mollie’s deck, he breathed them all in. They were a part of his soul, he thought, the way they never could be of hers. He had his feet up on the rail, his mind focused, not wandering as he sipped a martini. He’d been surprised to find the makings in Mollie’s cupboard. Probably her godfather’s doing.
They’d made love again, slowly, tenderly, in her sprawling bed, and he’d had the feeling she was absorbing every nuance in case it would be another ten years before they had another chance.
Maybe it would be.
The breeze shifted, carrying a touch of the Everglades to the posh streets of Palm Beach. Jeremiah had another sip of his martini, and he had to accept there was no way he could pretend he was out on the dock at his father’s outpost, looking at the stars.
He was in freaking Palm Beach, as Helen Samuel would say.
Mollie had fashioned a nice life for herself here. He had wandered around her office and sensed that her relationship with her clients, while professional, had a personal quality that was uniquely hers. She would dive in headfirst and risk really understanding them as human beings, not simply chess pieces, means to an end. She wasn’t just an opportunist after money and success. There was a stark integrity to her that required courage, confidence, commitment.
He squeezed his eyes shut, and he could see his mother puttering around the yard while his father was out on the lake. He could feel the comfort of knowing they would be together forever, his mother and father. Even as a boy, he’d known that what Reuben and Jenny Tabak had was special and unusual.
When she was dying, she’d told her husband and son, “We need to learn to go on without each other, you without me, me without you.”
His father’s grief was quiet and complete. Yet, eventually, Jeremiah had come to see that Reuben Tabak had learned to go on without the love of his life. He was content, he said. He felt he was lucky to have had that kind of relationship at all. He had no regrets, no bitterness.