“Turn around and close your eyes,” I said.
He obeyed without fussing. I stretched the candy cane–speckled necktie—who owned it or why was not something I wanted to contemplate—across his eyes and tied it tight.
“Evy?”
“Trust me.”
“You know I do.”
“Then hush.”
I led him into the kitchen, turned him around, and helped him sit on the dining chair I’d put near the sink. He tilted his head curiously when I tucked another towel around his neck and secured it with a chip clip.
“I’ll be right back,” I said, and then darted into the bathroom to collect the last two things necessary for this little experiment. I deliberately dragged my feet on the carpet as I returned. No sense in startling him. He was already tense, straight-backed, hands picking at the towel covering his lap. His head turned toward me with a question on his lips and in the slant of his eyebrows.
I placed one of the objects on the counter and shook the other a few times, then swirled an apple-sized amount onto my palm. The sudsy scent of shaving cream made his nostrils flare. I smoothed it across his cheeks and chin, over his upper lip, and as far down his throat as his prickly dark hair went, covering it all in a marshmallow of white.
“Tilt your head back.” I rinsed my hand in the sink and let the water run until it warmed, then held the razor under it.
“Do you know what you’re doing?”
I laughed. “Nope. Want me to stop?”
“No.” If his quiet tone didn’t convince me, the slight tenting of his towel did.
I pressed the razor to his throat, struck by the sheer power of it. Wyatt had nothing to fear, no reason to think I’d use this submissive position against him. I’d die for him, and in some ways, it’s what I was preparing to do. For him and Phin and Kismet and Tybalt, and for all the innocent people in my city that Thackery had threatened.
My hand started shaking. I pulled the razor away, held a deep breath, then exhaled.
“Evy?”
“I’m fine. Just relax.”
The gurgle of running water and scrape of the razor over skin was all I heard until the unmistakable raspy sound of his increased breathing overtook them. I ignored it, as well as the tenting towel and the growing ache in my abdomen, and continued the intimate act.
His upper lip was last, the cream falling away to reveal clean skin that would be shadowed again in a few hours. I rinsed the razor, patted it dry, and used the towel around his neck to wipe away any excess cream. A dollop tried to hide behind his left ear. Leaning close, back aching, I inhaled the clean scent. Exhaled. Wyatt made a soft noise in his throat, recognizing the nearness of me. I pressed my cheek to his—first one, then the other.
“Close enough?” he asked.
“Definitely.”
Strong arms circled my waist and pulled me onto his lap. Instead of removing the blindfold, he traced the shape of my face with featherlight touches, the pads of his fingertips blazing a hot path on my cool skin. Over my cheeks, across my chin, down the slope of my nose. The seam of my lips. I flicked out my tongue and tasted his finger—the barest hint of soap still lingered. He shuddered. His erection strained hot and hard, even beneath layers of terry and denim.
I remembered the first and only time we’d made love—literally a lifetime ago—but the memories were faint. Like watching an old movie slightly out of focus. It was all there—his gentle, questing hands and possessive kisses, the strong slide of him in and out of my body—distanced and unclear, marred by my new body’s lack of physical memory. Knowledge without experience.
I hated it and loved it, because I got to try something no one else could—two first times with the same man.
I pulled off his blindfold and let it flutter to the floor. He blinked hard, eyes readjusting to the harsh kitchen light, and settled his hands on my hips. My fingers grazed his chest, the pads of my thumbs brushing over his nipples. He made a sound deep in his throat—something caught between a growl and a groan.
His right hand tangled in my hair and drew me down, and finally we kissed. Our mouths moved, lips parting, and I drank in the taste of him. His tongue darted into my mouth, stroked across my teeth, until it was met by mine. A delicate dance began as flesh teased flesh. I dragged my fingers down his bare arms and earned a soft moan. His free hand drifted from my hip to my butt and squeezed, sending a shock of heat searing straight to my core.
Wyatt’s mouth left gentle, tasting kisses across my cheeks to my neck. I breathed him in, holding firmly to the knowledge that this was
The rough pads of his fingers tickled my bare skin, but he didn’t take the hint. I helped him out by yanking the shirt up and off, my hair tumbling back down around my shoulders in thick waves. Much like our positions a week ago on our apartment sofa, and I actually froze.
“What?” he asked, a tiny sparkle of panic in his expression.
“Just waiting for the Earth to move.”
He blinked, and I could see the retort forming in his mind. Then he smiled warmly. “For a second, I thought —”
“I was having a flashback?”
“Yeah.” He swirled his finger in my belly button. “Or you’d just remembered you forgot to lock the door.”
“You locked the door, dummy. Besides, even if it wasn’t, after the pointed look Kismet gave me in the car when she dropped us off, I think she’d recognize the necktie on the doorknob as the universal sign to keep out.”
Wyatt blanched. “You didn’t.”
“No, I didn’t, but I won’t let myself regret not being with you while I have the chance.”
Grief flickered across his face, there and gone so quickly I might not have noticed it if I weren’t staring right at him. I knew him, could practically hear his thoughts, begging me not to think of this as our last time together. To think of it as the first of many, and to continue believing we’d find another way.
His fingers skated across my ribs to my back, pausing where the bandages started. The itch-ache of healing was persistent and constant. The wounds would be gone soon. “They won’t bother me,” I said, answering his unasked question.
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Then don’t say no.”
“I’m not.” His voice was so quiet, almost a hoarse whisper. “This just feels like some cruel déjà vu, that’s all. Making love to you hours before you leave and don’t come back.”
A lump clogged my throat. I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and hugged him tight, even as he enveloped me in his. He wasn’t wrong, and that scared me. A month ago, still Original Recipe Evy, we’d been together in a cheap motel, and then I’d gone off to chase a lead, only to end up kidnapped, tortured, and eventually dead. Now we weren’t in a motel, and I wasn’t the woman I’d been, but his emotions hadn’t changed. He’d loved me then, and he loved me now.
I hated how heartlessly life seemed to be repeating itself.
“The future isn’t guaranteed, Wyatt, we both know that better than most. So let’s stop living in the past and dreaming of the future. Let’s just enjoy the now. Please?” My voice cracked on the final word.
He pushed against me, and I slid off his lap, sure I was in for either a fight or a rejection. I wasn’t prepared for him to stand and scoop me up. I wrapped my arms around his neck and snuggled against his shoulder, inhaling him as he walked us across the living room, toward the bedrooms, his answer given without words.
The first bedroom had a single twin-sized bed. Not completely ideal, but better than a sofa or the floor. Wyatt lowered me to my feet, and I didn’t have time to wonder whose room we were in before he seared me with a kiss. His tongue dove into my mouth, and I surged against him, his arousal pressing hot against my belly. When had he lost the towel?
