Chapter 11
Inevitable. Unstoppable. Certain. It was no longer a matter of if, but when.
As two giants of a storm, they stood face-to-face in the electric hush that inhabited the seconds between lightning and thunder, Kate the former and so sudden, so blinding in her strike that Rick could barely find the words to speak, let alone unleash the roar inside him that it prompted.
Whatever it was that'd effected the shift and emboldened Kate to come to him had altered every molecule in the room. It wasn't only the newness of the way she looked at him, or the timbre of her voice, or the words she used. It was everything. Suddenly, everything in the world felt different.
"Are you okay?" She waved a hand in front of his face, but he only stared back at her, like a statue, like he was frozen in time. "Rick?"
A rumble escaped the back of his throat, and with it he finally blinked his eyes for the first time.
"Hmm?"
"Did you hear me? I asked if you're okay because you're not moving and you're not saying anything."
"What do you mean?" he responded after a long moment, appearing genuinely puzzled by the observation.
"Maybe you should go sit down." Rick shook his head at the suggestion, nothing more. "Okay, then maybe I should go sit down."
When Kate turned, he reached for her arm. "Don't. Don't go anywhere." He erased the step she put between them. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to space out on you. You just threw me for a minute, in a good way. In the best way."
In a move slow and deliberate, Rick braced her against the edge of the counter, his heart pounding in his chest, his hand anchored to her hip, and along a path they'd traveled in his mind a hundred times before he traced the line of her jaw with the backs of his fingers.
"Why?" he asked and caught her off guard, just as she had him.
The truth was she had no answer to give, no why of it to spell out. His was the very question she'd been asking herself since the moment he'd barged into her life, and even standing there with him now having declared herself open to his advance, the reasons still eluded her. But more powerful than the bewilderment was the desire, and she had no willpower left in her arsenal to sustain that fight.
She dropped her chin, and her hair wet and wild came untucked from behind her ear, partially obscuring her face, but it wasn't loose long before Rick found it a home again.
"Kate."
"I don't know why," she said when his body met hers, and it was as much an admission as it was an appeal for illumination, for some clue to the mystery she hadn't been able to unriddle. "Can that be okay? Right now, can I just…please?"
That was when the sky finally cracked wide open.
The wave of hair he'd so sweetly curled back into place was freed once more, his fingers its liberator as they drove through and pushed it aside, exposing the skin of her neck where his mouth began its journey northward.
Unhurriedly he climbed a meandering path, tasting hints of the rainstorm on his lips, on his tongue, and savoring every inch, drawing out his arrival at the summit not in retaliation for the hours and days of torturous wait but as a gift for them both, because it was in those extra seconds of worship where whispers grew into screams, embers into fire, want into need.
Rick lifted her body onto the counter, and she slid open her legs and pulled him in between, her thighs bared as the robe spilled over their curves and invited his touch.
Their mouths at first impatient settled into a harmonious rhythm, painstakingly thorough in a shared exploration that at once rewarded with the exhilaration of a new realm's discovery and the relief of being home. But a greed of such measure as was born out of their union couldn't be satisfied by discipline or restraint, and as the minutes ticked by, that fact became ever clearer.
"Wait, wait, Kate." He took in a gulp of air, rested his forehead against hers, even as she tried feverishly to rid him of his shirt. "Wait. Is this really what you want, because I swear no one on this earth has ever wanted anyone as much as I want you, and I don't think I'll be able to-"
"Take me somewhere." She could almost feel the victorious tap-dancing feet of the devil on her shoulder, her voice as honest as it'd ever been. "I'll show you," she vowed and then kissed him as she never had any man before him, with the whole of her, as though she knew, unconsciously or otherwise, that there was nothing to be saved, because there would never be another after him.
Rick spun around on his heels and threw his arms out open. "Climb on. One of the best things about this house is that with all the rooms you never have to go very far to find a bed."
Kate wrapped her arms around his shoulders and her legs his waist and off they went down the hallway. Pushing open one of the doors, he carried her inside and dropped her onto the mattress. She bounced and giggled over of it, but when he turned to her and pulled off his shirt, silence enveloped the room.
"I didn't bring you here for this, either. I want you to know that. Saying goodbye to you is becoming one of the hardest things I have to do, and I just couldn't do it today." He cocked his head after a couple of beats. "I think I might actually like you in that thing more than in the jeans. Consider it yours when you come back."
"When I come back? Pretty presumptuous." Propped up on her elbows, she tugged at the loop of the robe's knot and unfastened it. "I guess you'd better make sure you bring your A game then."
"Please," he snickered, and then jumped onto the bed like a kid cannonballing into a pool.
xxxx
With the bowl balanced on his chest, Rick spooned up the last bite of macaroni and fed it to Kate, her naked and warm body snugged against his in the bed.
It was a handful of hours later, the intoxication of the music they'd created together still wreaking its delicious havoc, and though neither knew for certain what the morning would bring, by some unspoken accord the weight of tomorrow didn't reside with them in that new place. Each breath was its own. There and then was all there was.
"I know eggs and pasta aren't the most impressive, but I will actually cook a proper meal for you at some point." He set the empty dish aside, gave the tip of her nose and her lips a peck. "I promise I'm more than just a pretty face."
Kate continued to swirl lazy fingers across his skin, soothing herself as much as she was him. "I know you are." She paused in thought, considered holding her secret close, but the way he looked at her with such sweet eyes of surprise, she couldn't help but come out with it. "I've been reading your books."
"You have? Really?"
"A few, yeah."
"That's…unexpected."
"If I call this a first date, will you tell me why you stopped writing them?"
She could feel his muscles twitch with excitement.
"I'm agreeing to this bribe only because what you're doing with your hand is turning my brain to mush and warping my reason."
She didn't stop doing it. He didn't want her to.
"Okay." He pressed his lips to her forehead. "Remember how you told me that after you lost your mom you couldn't find your way back to the way things were before, that something inside you shifted?" On her tiny hum of acknowledgement, he went on. "One morning, as I always did, I got up, I showered, I poured coffee, and I sat down at my laptop, but unlike every other morning, I couldn't write a single word. For hours, all I did was stare at the screen. A few days later, I scrapped the three chapters I already had finished, and then spent the next month and a half writing the end of Derrick Storm."
Kate lifted her head, equally curious and confused. "But why?"
"Because I realized that I'd become so robotic in what I was doing that I'd forgotten why I was doing it. I'd basically become a machine, banging out books and cashing big checks, and that was all fun and great for a long time. That was enough until it wasn't. Why it happened that morning I still don't know, but that was it. That was my shift."
"I'm sorry," she said and stroked his cheek. "I can hear that it upsets you."
Rick took her hand in his and kissed her palm. "The last thing I am here with you is upset, and you know," he continued as she smiled at him with affection, "since you confessed to something, I suppose my coming clean about something is only fair." Kate's brow dipped, understandably concerned by the lead-up. "Yeah, so the thing is I cheated, that first night when I guessed you were a matchmaker. I kinda sorta maybe asked the bartender to spy on you, pretty much."
"You're an ass, you know that?" She playfully flicked his ribs.
"That may be true, but you did end up naked in my bed because of it. No need to thank me. You've already done that, multiple times."
Kate nuzzled into his neck when he tucked her in closer, her fingers resuming their tranquilizing trail out across his chest and back again.
"I don't want to find you someone else," her heart whispered to him, breaking the momentary quiet. "I never did."
He imagined the ecstasy of the previous hours was the height of it but realized then how foolish he was. There was no joy like that moment's joy.
Shifting position, Rick hugged an arm around her waist and settled her body beneath his.
"I'm glad you told me that. It saves me from having to fire you which is always awkward," he added jokingly before drifting his mouth over her breast, feathering kisses down the line of her torso until he rooted between her legs. "Can I tell you something?"
"Yeah," Kate struggled to reply as he brushed his lips along the inside of her thigh, thoroughly testing her self-command.
"You're the only thing that's ever made me feel the way writing made me feel." He heard only the hitch in her breath when he passed over her center to lavish equal attention on her opposite thigh. "Now that I know what you don't want, can we go back to you telling me what it is you do want because I liked that part very much."
Even with her effort to mask it, he recognized it as it washed over her face and took hold. Moving back up her body, her knees closed gently around his hips and cradled him against her, her eyes giving away what her silence couldn't keep hidden.
"Why are you scared?"
Fighting down the lump in her throat and the impulse to counter his perceptiveness with her usual stoicism, Kate answered without pretense. "That's why. Because you know I am," she explained, "and I still don't understand how." When she looked away, Rick brought her back to him. "I don't understand how it happened this way. How do I trust it? This isn't me."
He caressed the skin between her breasts, over her heart.
"A friend of mine shared a story recently that I've thought a lot about since. It was about how someone she loved very much believed that certain people are meant to cross our path, that they come into our life for a reason."
He left a kiss where his hand had been, and she calmed beneath him.
"Maybe you were meant to cross my path to show me that I could feel this way again, and maybe I was meant to cross yours to show you that this can be you, Kate, that it doesn't all have to fit inside the lines to be right. Look, I wasn't expecting you, either, but nothing has ever felt more real to me, and I would never want you to be afraid of anything, but if you are, I want it to be with me not of me. Whatever this is between us-and I think it could be something really special-let's figure it out together."
"Pretty face," she spoke softly. "Pretty words."
She gave him her hand. Then she gave him the rest of her. Again.
"Time for ice cream," Rick announced once the two came up for air, throwing his legs over the side of the bed. "We deserve it for our impressively acrobatic performance…s. Just wait until we get upstairs to the king-size. I'm going to need to stretch." Naked he pranced off to the kitchen.
With the opportunity, Kate went across the hallway to the bathroom and shut the door behind her, woke her phone she'd left there on the counter, and dialed Lanie. For a few fleeting seconds she entertained a video call, imagining with amusement the look of disbelief she knew would soon occupy her best friend's face, but the mirror's reminder that she too had nothing on quickly ruled that out.
"Hey," she said casually when Lanie answered, the echo of Rick's cheery whistle off in the distance kicking off a flutter. "What're you doing?"
"Lying in bed, reading an article in Cosmo about all the positions to maximize my sexual pleasure that I'm not currently engaging in." A blush warmed Kate's cheeks wondering how many she might be able to check off the list before the night was over. "But, if your girl here has anything to say about it, this dry spell is about to come to a screeching halt."
"What do you mean?"
"You remember that hot and spicy detective I told you about, the one I met at that scene a couple weeks ago? Well, he called, and, honey, I damn sure answered, and he and I are going out for a drink this week. A drink and then some. A whole lot of some."
It was almost too perfect, the timing of it, and amid the lingering buzz of her own feast, Kate couldn't help but find the poetry.
"What're you doing? It's late, especially for you. I called you before to see if you wanted to grab some dinner, but you didn't pick up."
"I just saw your message, sorry. I'm actually in the Hamptons…at Rick's place."
"Excuse me, where now? Rick, as in the man you set up with your hot friend but who you really want for yourself. Is that the Rick we're talking about? You're at his place in the Hamptons, like, right now? Okay, clearly I have missed a chapter in this book because-"
"Lanie," Kate cut in, "I get the confusion, but stop talking so I can say what I called to say and then hang up."
"Kinda rude, but I guess go ahead," Lanie sassed.
Kate looked up at her reflection. Her hair was a jumble of waves, her skin pinkened, her lips thirsty, and the mess staring back at her brought greater happiness than she'd felt in so long.
"Bathroom. Naked. Smiling," she said, and a gleeful shriek came booming through the phone.
XXX
"Don't allow your mind to tell your heart what to do. The mind gives up easily." Paulo Coelho
For something a bit different, I thought I'd share a playlist I created and leaned on to help keep this house of cards of mine standing as I moved along. Some songs offered inspiration by way of their lyrics, some by their energy, and others I consider to be among the sexiest ever written.
"Feelin' Love" – Paula Cole
"Unfinished Sympathy" – Massive Attack
"Blue" – LaTour
"Falling For You" – Jem
"Black Grease" – The Black Angels
"Love Comes Quickly" – Pet Shop Boys
"Skin" – Madonna
"We Belong" – RAC (feat. Katie Herzig)
"Show Me" - Seal
"Honey Honey" – Feist
"Fallen" – Lauren Wood
"Hairy Trees" – Goldfrapp
"The Air That I Breathe" – The Hollies