“And no big dog, either.”
She laughed. “I’d love a big dog, but he’d starve to death, since I’m gone half the time.”
“Want me to walk around, check things out?” he asked.
Yes!
She managed a casual shrug. “Sure. If you’d like.”
She walked him through, telling him the architectural history of the place as she did so.
“You’ve never been afraid out here, huh?” he asked.
“What? Are you trying to scare me?” she asked him.
At least he had the grace to look apologetic. “No, sorry. I’m not trying to scare you. I guess…” He paused, frowning.
“You guess…what?”
“Oddly enough, when I didn’t see you in the graveyard, I found that far more frightening than knowing you live out in the boondocks.”
“This is hardly the boondocks,” she protested. And it wasn’t. On a quiet night, she could probably scream loud enough for her neighbors to hear her. She was twenty minutes from the city. She wanted to live out in the country, but she didn’t want to be alone.
“Want some coffee or something before you drive back?” she asked, starting toward the kitchen, which had once been a large pantry, in the rear of the house. She assumed he would follow.
She hoped he would follow.
He did.
“Hmm, no milk for the coffee,” she said, rummaging in the refrigerator.
“I don’t want coffee,” he told her, then walked over to her, drawing her into his arms and looking down into her eyes. “Do you want me to stay?”
Her heart quickened. She wanted to say yes, and she didn’t want to say yes. She didn’t want him staying because she was afraid. She wanted him staying because he wanted to stay, and she wasn’t sure that he would believe her if she said so. But she had to ask.
“Do you want to stay?” she asked seriously.
There was a tenderness in his eyes that seemed to take away all the darkness of the night. Being held by him, feeling the warm, hard strength of his body and his arms around her, seemed so sweet and foreign that she felt a rush of dizziness.
“You know I do,” he said huskily.
“Then I definitely want you to stay,” she whispered in return.
The next hours passed in a glorious haze. In the morning, she would put the memories in order by where she found her clothing. Sweater in the kitchen, one shoe at the foot of the stairs, another halfway up. Shirt at the door to her bedroom, skirt halfway across the room.
Her underwear, at least, made it to the side of the bed.
It had been late. Time to slip naturally into bed, to enjoy the darkness, fumbling to touch one another in the shadows, even to laugh a bit at the urgency that brought them together. In his arms, she didn’t mind the darkness.
She didn’t even think of shadows.
There was just him, his body long and smoothly muscled, vibrant and hot against her own. There was touching him and marveling again at the feel of his skin beneath her palms, knowing that first night they had shared was not a fleeting moment to be cherished forever, relived in memory but never to be repeated. She loved the way he stroked her face, as if learning the structure of it, and she loved the way his lips felt on her skin, as if he were branding her with kisses of fire and ice. She loved the pressure of his body against hers, the intimacy, the electricity. The hunger and the longing, and the sense of climbing, escalating, being so desperate for something and yet savoring every tiny, anguished step to reach that goal. Then there was the exultation of climax, like a scorching blaze that lit up the sky within her own mind again, and then again….
The simple beauty of being held, the slick warmth of passion and even the chill of aftermath, the slowing beat of pulse and heart, and still being together.
Maybe, for a while, she could live the dream. He would leave eventually, of course, and then all the wonder would indeed be confined to memory.
But it was foolish to envision the future. It would come soon enough. Somehow, she had to teach herself to be glad for the moment. Guard her heart, but live fully in the moment.
Easy enough to say, but almost impossibly hard to do. She was so tired, though, so on that note, she slept.
She heard the cawing of a crow.
It was coming from the darkness, except that the darkness was easing. Morning was coming. An overcast, cold morning, a forerunner of the winter that would so quickly follow the fall. But she was home, standing on the balcony just outside her bedroom window, and she was watching as the light of day struggled to pierce the mist and the night. She could hear the crow screeching again and again.
From her vantage point, she could see the cornfields.
And she could watch the crows.
They were circling over the cornfield.