mastery or skill. It was enough for him just to love her, and everything he felt for her, give to her with his body, his eyes, his mouth, his hands.
And maybe also because, though it was his first time with her, the excitement and awe of that were tempered with sadness, and his joy with the aching awareness that it must also be the last time. He wanted to cherish and savor the moments he had with her now…as if he could somehow make them last forever.
She reached with her hands to lift the edge of his shirt, nudging it upward as her hands slid inside and rose along his ribs, fingertips finding deeper muscle where torso flared into back. He stopped kissing her in order to oblige her by pulling the shirt the rest of the way off, and when he would have resumed that breathless activity, she held him away with a hand, fingers spread wide across the middle of his chest while she drank in the perfection of his body with her eyes. It seemed perfection to her, the symmetry of his collarbones, the sweet way muscle clung to bone, the arrangement of hair in the center of his chest and around his nipples. Except for his arms and throat, his skin was fair, undamaged by sun, and blushed here and there with fever spots. Fascinated by them, she lowered her head and kissed each one, and felt his gasp, the thumping of his heartbeat against her lips. She felt his hands come to touch the sides of her head, lightly, as if he were bestowing a blessing, and he held his breath and shivered. She felt something inside herself rock with a strange quaking, somewhere between laughter and sobs.
Gently, so gently, he eased her down. Her eyes closed; rapture danced behind her eyelids when she felt his mouth, warm where she was cool, his hair a tickly coldness on her own fevered places. They undressed each other; what did it matter how, or in what order? She felt weightless, effervescent, her body no more hers to govern than if she’d been a kite riding on a storm wind. She had no purpose, no identity, no yesterday or tomorrow; her world was only in this moment; she existed only where he touched her.
But there was no part of her he did not touch! His touch was everywhere, first his hands-long, sensitive fingers guiding, stroking, boldly opening, preparing. Then his mouth-enticing, teasing, intoxicating, enthralling. His touch was stunning in its sensuality, rousing in her responses she’d never known herself to be capable of. Once reserved, now she was earthy and abandoned. She had no inhibitions, no shyness. She found herself opening to him without reserve, moving with and for him, and every part of her body his to touch, to kiss, to explore.
And there was such reverence in his touch, an almost worshipful awe. Everywhere he touched her body, touched her soul, her heart, her spirit, too, and when at last he sank himself into her body, she felt profound relief and over-whelming joy, as if until that moment she had never been whole.
She opened her eyes, and it was like seeing the sun for the very first time. His eyes gazed down at her, glowing with a rapturous light that warmed and softened his gaunt and craggy features, and it seemed to her the most beautiful face she had ever seen. She smiled, but didn’t speak; she was too full of feeling for words.
He smiled, too, and for a long time they simply looked at each other, eyes filling with tears that were only emotions neither dared voice. Then Eric slowly lowered his mouth to hers; their fingers laced together as if from long and tender habit. Their bodies rocked slowly together as one body, without urgency or strain, and Devon felt herself softening, swelling, opening…like a bud ripening into a flower. The sensation was so exquisite, so beautiful, she smiled inside his smile, and tears squeezed beneath her eyelids. Her completion came, not like an explosion but like a blossoming, the unfolding of layers of petals, layer upon layer, growing and growing, until she clung to Eric, whimpering in fear and panic, sure her body couldn’t contain so much sensation.
Afterward she wept, and he held her so tightly she could feel his own rapidly beating heart, and murmured broken assurances into her hair. But she couldn’t tell him why she was crying. Couldn’t tell him she was sure such exquisite joy and beauty were not humanly possible, and therefore could not have been real, that it must have been a dream. That she wept because she knew with utter certainty she would never know such happiness again.
She awoke in his arms. He felt her lashes tickle his cheek before she stirred, and slyly said, “Good morning.” And laughed at her dismayed gasp, her sudden stiffening. “I’m teasing,” he whispered against her temple, “though it is morning-and Merry Christmas, by the way. You’ve only been asleep a few minutes. It’s still a long time until daylight.”
“I still should go.” Her voice was husky, her breath warm and humid against his shoulder.
“Not yet.” His heart lurched in denial of the inevitable, and he tightened his arms around her and cuddled her closer. At what point-was it after the second, or the third time they’d made love?-had they actually made it into his bed? Now, inside the tumble of blankets, they lay twined together like puppies.
“What if we fall asleep? What would your parents think?”
He laughed again, with less humor this time. “Are you kidding? I think my mother planned this from the beginning.”
She didn’t reply, and the silence lengthened while they listened to their pulses ticking against each other, growing louder and louder, like unsynchronized clocks. At last she said very softly, “Eric…are you regretting this?”
His arms tightened reflexively around her. He uttered a garbled, “No-” then cleared his throat and repeated it. “No-of course not. What made you think that?”
“You’re so quiet. I thought…”
He paused, feeling the ache come back into his heart, the sadness coming home to roost like the wintering sparrows in his mother’s barn. “I guess I was just listening,” he said.
“Listening to what?”
“The clock striking midnight.”
“What clock? I don’t hear-oh. Cinderella, right?” He felt her body relax with an exhalation, as if she were relieved to discover she knew the right answer to a question on a quiz. “You mean-”
“Back to the real world…”
She stirred restlessly, opening up space between them. The blankets seemed too warm, now-suffocating. “Eric…” Her voice was so small he had to hold his breath to hear her. “I can’t do what you want me to. I’m sorry.” It broke, and she shored it up with a breath. “I can’t remember what didn’t happen.”
“It’s all right,” he said, and discovered that it was true. He felt calm and quiet inside, now. His mind was clear, his course set, all decisions made. He had no more battles to fight.
“It didn’t happen. What Susan told you-I don’t know why she told you that, but it isn’t true. It just isn’t. I’d remember something like that.”
He murmured reassurances to her, his hand moving on her back in long, gentle strokes, as if he were comforting someone waking from a bad dream. She lifted her head and looked at him; her eyes were jewel-like in the dim light, and luminous with hope. “She’ll be all right, Eric. I want you to know that. My mom and dad will be good parents to her. She’ll have a good home. You’ll be able to visit her-your mom and dad, too, if they want to. We can work it out…”
“I know,” he said gently, soothing her. “It’s all right…it’s going to be all right.”
“Merry Christmas…Merry Christmas!”
The greetings flew back and forth across the yard like snowballs mixed with laughter, accompanied by cold- flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes and hugs, and dogs hovering, circling, darting everywhere with wiggles and excited yips.
Devon had watched it all from the kitchen window- Mike and Lucy hurrying down the steps and across the yard as a maroon SUV pulled to a stop beneath the leafless oaks, car doors opening, three people getting out-a tall, very attractive man with dark hair, graying at the temples, and two women, both also tall, both also very attractive. One, older but still slender and youthful, had long silver-blond hair worn in a ponytail, pulled straight back from a classic oval face and caught at the back of her neck with a red velvet bow that matched her red holiday sweater and red and green plaid skirt.
The other-and Devon caught her breath, because this could only be Eric’s cousin, Caitlyn-defied such easy description. Even dressed in the nondescript casual, even scruffy way popular with Generation X-ers, with pale chin-length hair in spiky disarray, she was still breathtakingly beautiful. And there was something unconventional about that beauty-an ethereal, almost magical quality impossible to define. Her silvery eyes and full mouth seemed too large for her heartshaped face and delicate chin, and yet her smile was simply incandescent. Though thin to the point of appearing frail, she moved with such grace that her feet seemed barely to touch the ground, and when Eric swept her up in a hug and swung her around, Devon whimsically thought of gossamer wings shimmering, iridescent in the weak winter sun.
She felt a stab in the vicinity of her heart and pressed her hand against her chest, though she knew the pain
