“Well, now I know where you get it from,” I remarked, smiling as I looked over my shoulder at him. “And your eyes, too.”
Theo smiled. “And who do you get your eyes from?”
“My dad,” I said. “Mom likes to tell the story of when they first met. It was a camping trip, they were both in their late twenties, and her group of friends couldn’t figure out how to set up their tents. My dad offered his help, and Mom says when he finished putting the tent up, he grinned at her from where he was hammering a stake into the ground, and the Colorado sky reflected in his eyes.” I shook my head. “I swear. She talks about rolling clouds of white and green leaves and all this romantic flowery stuff and Dad just blushes and shakes his head.” I shrugged. “It is one of my favorite stories, though.”
Theo smiled, following me along the edge of the bookcase as I picked up the next two photographs — one of him and his Envizion partner in their Harvard days, and one of him skydiving in New Zealand. He made a comment about how one day, he’d have my first TIME Magazine-featured photograph framed there, too, and I just laughed him off the same way I had the first day we met.
I let my fingers wander the records next, leaning into every word as Theo told me about his favorite jazz musicians. Finally, I picked up a very worn copy of The Waste Land by T.S. Elliot, a first edition that looked so mangled I was certain he wouldn’t have purchased it that way.
“I think these things are supposed to be kept in a glass case with protective film,” I remarked, carefully paging through the book.
“Not in my eyes. What are books for, if not to be read?” He paused, watching me as I flipped through before he said softly. “The awful daring of a moment’s surrender which an age of prudence can never retract. By this, and only this, we have existed.”
My stomach fluttered with the wings of a million butterflies, and I smiled, closing the book again before running my palm over the worn dust jacket. I gently placed the book back on the shelf, and then followed the edge of the room over to the vast windows.
It was curious, the way I could see so clearly through them. I saw every sparkling light on the shore, and every white cap of the waves that gently rolled by, and every detail of the yacht’s bow that spread out below. And yet, the windows were dark, and I knew from experience that if someone were to look up from the deck under us, they’d see only a silhouette.
“Quite a breathtaking view,” I said.
“Yes,” Theo agreed, and I shuddered when I felt his hot breath on my neck with the words. His hands found my waist, and I sucked in a breath at the contact I’d been so desperate for all week long. “It really is.”
My next breath shook through my parted lips, and I let my eyes flutter closed, leaning back into Theo’s chest. I reveled in the warmth of him connecting with the warmth of me, at the way his arms so easily wrapped around me from behind, holding me tight to him, completely encompassed.
“You said the first time you saw me, you thought I looked like a king,” he mused, nuzzling my neck with the tip of his nose. I felt every word vibrating under my ear. “Do you want to know what I thought the first time I saw you?”
His hands fisted in my dress at my hips, hiking the fabric just an inch higher, but I felt the cool air of the room sweep in like a whispered warning.
“Mine.”
I sucked in a breath at the word, and then Theo’s lips brushed my neck, his hands fisting again and again as he reeled the fabric of my dress up higher and higher. My legs shook so violently from the touch that I had to lean all my weight into him, and he held me steady, pressing a soft kiss under my ear that made me whimper with need.
“I heard you in your room that night we went to the Grotto,” he whispered as he pulled my dress all the way up to my hips. The lower half of me was bare but for the simple cotton thong I wore beneath it — one I’d felt silly putting on under such a beautiful dress. “You were begging for someone to kiss you.”
Theo held my dress up with one hand while the fingertips of his other slipped under the band of my thong at my hip.
“Who did you want to kiss you, Aspen?” he whispered, sliding his fingertips over my hot skin.
I tried to answer — truly, I did. But my words were lodged in my throat, and every breath strangled to make its way in or out around the response I couldn’t set free.
Theo dragged the tip of his nose up my neck, sucking my ear lobe between his teeth as a full body tremor rocked me from head to toe. “Tell me,” he commanded.
“You,” I said in a rush of breath. “I wanted you.”
“And do you still?”
I spun in his arms, yanking my dress from his grip in the process. The skirt plummeted down over my legs in a curtain of silky fabric, covering me once again, but Theo held firm to my waist. I pressed up onto my toes, locking my eyes on his before I answered.
But not with words.
Confidence and desire took me under their spell, and I pressed my lips to his, taking what I’d wanted for longer than I’d ever admit.
Theo groaned at the contact, wrapping me in his arms tighter and pulling me so fiercely
