swollen red from all that endless kissing. 'I have a lot to face. A lot I have to figure out. But the way you love. Will…at least the way you love me…makes me feel whole. In every way.'
Well, hell. Dinner would have to wait.
He was already hard. From the sound of her voice, from the lazy winsomeness in her eyes, from her fingertips curled around his neck. Her body was already warm, for him. with him. from him.
He told himself it was so good because he knew her body now. Knew that a certain stroke ignited her sensual core. Knew that the undersides of her breasts were exquisitely tender. Knew that she liked to ride as much as she loved to be ridden. Knew that she was wary of being hurt, because she had this way of tensing right before he entered her, as if any lover or lovers she'd had in the past hadn't taken care to insure she was ready.
Knew that sometimes she liked speed and a fast pump.
That sometimes she liked slow and long and whispered words.
He knew so much about her now. But he had a bad feeling, after they finally crashed from the last rocketing orgasm, that none of those factors explained why it was so impossibly good between them.
It was starlight.
And spring moonbeams.
And Paris.
He closed his eyes, thinking he was so wiped he was going to sleep forever. Yet he didn't sleep for ages, just held her, inhaled her, long after she'd zonked out completely.
It was the magic of
He knew it. And so did his heart.
KELLY WOKE UP to the sound of a ringing phone. Eyes still closed, she patted the bed next to her, thinking she'd better make sure Will knew he had a call. But the smooth sheet was already cool, and when she opened one sleepy eye, she found boundless bright daylight. Below, the lusty roar of traffic was near deafening, even if she hadn't realized it a second before. The day had galloped into full gear while they were still snoozing.
At least while
She pushed away the covers, aware that every private part of her body was tender. Embarrassingly so. So embarrassing that she seemed to have a smile on her mouth that wouldn't quit. Even before coffee.
'Will?' she called, and then chuckled when she saw him standing in the doorway.
Her hero, her lover, her darling, was holding a fresh mug of coffee. He was also wearing only jeans, and the bare feet and bare chest aroused fresh desire in her when. Lord knows, she should be satiated times ten.
'Hey, y…' A teasing greeting was on the tip of her lips, but it died. And so did her smile.
He was just standing there, but something in his expression alerted her to a problem.
'What's wrong?' she asked immediately.
'Nothing. Nothing at all.' He brought the mug over, handed it to her and said in a hearty voice. 'The call was from the consulate. Your passport's ready. I gave them heaps of praise. They did everything but stand on their heads to get the paperwork moving this fast. They even booked you a first-class ticket home, for the same price as the flight you had to cancel. Tomorrow morning, at the crack of dawn. As close to your original departure date as they could get.'
'Oh.' Her cheerful smile suddenly felt as frozen as his. 'That's wonderful.' She felt as if her chest had caved in from the blow of a five-ton lead ball. Or a heart attack. Or maybe it was just that her heart suddenly felt broken. 'I thought everybody complained about the bureaucracy in France. And here they came through like troupers. Arranging the ticket home was unbelievably nice.'
'I think they felt bad about the mugging. And they didn't want an American going home, whining about the French.'
'I wouldn't have done that.'
'I know, but they didn't. Anyway, it's really great,' he said.
'Really great,' she echoed, and then couldn't seem to speak at all.
She didn't have any more vacation time. Piles of new crises were up in the air-like the knowledge that she had a father and brothers. She also had a life impatiently waiting for her back home. A job, the need to make money. Her mom.
And oh. yeah. Jason. Her fiance.
She
It didn't matter how she felt about Will. All she'd shared with him. all she felt for him.
Didn't matter how deeply and insanely and crazily she'd fallen in love with him.
She had to fix her real life. Her American life.
'Well,' she said, and then couldn't seem to remember how to breathe.
'Quit looking like that.' Will said suddenly, swiftly. 'We've got one more day. And there are some places you have to see, things you have to do.'
'What?'
'You'll see,' he said.
She'd barely showered and dressed before he hustled her out the door. He bought beignets from a vendor for breakfast, then took her down to an old part of Paris. The sign over the door read Chemist, but she discovered it was really a
'This is going to be too expensive.' She didn't actually know the cost, because no one had mentioned anything specific. But she'd seen two clients amble in, one wearing an Hermes scarf and the other a Chanel bag. which was clear enough proof the scents weren't cheap.
But nothing could talk Will out of this. Heaven knows, he looked like an antsy tiger in the cage, but he kept talking to the chemist, a wizened little man with a beak nose. Apparently the process began with the chemist asking questions about the woman's natural likes and dislikes.
'I can understand him well enough to answer those questions,' Kelly said.
'No. You don't know about you. Not like I know about you,' Will said, and turned back to his conversation. The chemist did some patches on her skin, testing for pH, but the questions were all about her. What scents were more natural to her-flowers, musk; did she tend to be sexy, sweet, exotic. Oriental, what was her nature?
Will told the chemist that she was elegant. Fresh. No musk, maybe something with flowers, but not heavy flowers-in-your-face. Sexy, but not the kind of scent someone would pick up unless close to her. More a scent just for a lover. Not gaudy, not look-at-me. But something in the scent needed to have a hint of a surprise, something you'd never expect.
'That's how you see me?' Kelly asked.
By then Will had rejected the first scent, insisted the chemist try harder. And then they had it. The exquisite little vial was sapphire-blue, her favorite color, and when the chemist put a drop of the scent on her wrist, she looked up in both surprise and delight. She loved perfumes, but she'd never smelled anything like this.
An hour later. Will teased her, 'People are going to think you're weird if you keep smelling your wrist.'
'It's just so wonderful!'
'That's the thing. It's your scent alone. That's the whole point…' He'd managed to put together a mini picnic with bread, cheese, wine, a blanket. There were so many fantastic gardens in Paris, but Will had claimed this was a favorite of his-a spot he'd discovered the first month he moved here. It was a place in the lee of some giant old trees, where yellow and blue flowers peeked through the soft grasses, catching the warm sun beams.
They lay head to head, after eating. 'Just a twenty-minute nap, no longer,' he warned her. 'We still have miles to go today.'
Midafternoon. they caught a mime show in a park. Then Will insisted they needed to take one last run through Notre Dame, and since she knew how allergic Will was to churches, she was touched he was willing to do that for her. After that came a winding walk on the rue Monge, with all its Latin Quarter flavor.
From the old Halles market, he bought her a scarf-blue and white, silky and long-and then a silly, touristy Eiffel Tower key ring, and then, it was on to dinner. The restaurant had neither a sign nor a name. The place was perched high, where the windows overlooked the night lights of Paris. Inside was candlelight, a rich merlot and the chef who informed them what they were going to eat-and that they were going to love it beyond anything they'd ever tasted before.
Dinner was delicacy after delicacy. Then they drove back to Will's place and walked around. He got suckered
