ALoveSoDeep (7 page)

Caitlin’s lips curve on one side in an unexpected smile. “Well, that’s very…you. Old you. Before me.” She narrows her eyes. “I hope you were careful.”

“Wrapped up tighter than a Cuban cigar every time,” I say with a grin that fades quickly. “But none of them meant anything to me. Only one was even a friend, and it never got more serious than that. I called her this afternoon to tell her it was over.”

“So you’re fresh from a breakup,” she says, brows drifting higher on her forehead.

“It wasn’t like that. She was a place to hide, not a place to find the things I’ve been missing.”

Caitlin nods, the tenderness in her expression making it clear she understands. But then, she seems to understand me better than anyone, maybe even better than I understand myself.

“I was with someone, too,” she says. “Isaac and I were living together until a few days ago.”

The way she says the name makes it clear I should remember this person, but I don’t. “Isaac is…an old boyfriend? Before us?”

Caitlin blinks before she shakes her head. “Sorry, I forget. No, Isaac is an old friend from Giffney. You two met once. Big guy, very protective of me?” I shake my head, indicating the description still isn’t ringing a bell, and she continues with a shrug. “It doesn’t matter, but I think you liked him. Anyway…Isaac followed me to Maui a couple of months after the kids and I left. Eventually we became a couple, but I never loved him the way he deserved to be loved. I broke things off right before we flew back for the funeral. I couldn’t live that…half life anymore.”

I make a considering sound, fighting to keep the spark of jealousy in my chest from catching fire. “So you’re fresh from a breakup, too.”

“Not really. Isaac will make someone a great husband someday, but for me…” She lifts one bare shoulder. “It was like you said, he was a place to hide. And I was tired of hiding.”

A shadow flickers across her face and I suddenly know what she’s not telling me. It is an instinctive knowing, a limb tingling as it sinks beneath cool water, something I couldn’t ignore any more than I could ignore my own arm or leg.

“You don’t have to hide anymore.” I stare deep into her eyes, willing her to see that I’m ready for her, all of her. “Don’t hold back with me. I want you to be exactly who you are, and if I can’t handle it, then I’m the one who’s failed, not you.”

“That’s not true,” she says. “People change, I know that. It doesn’t mean anyone has failed.”

I shake my head. “It does for me. I realized something this afternoon, when I found that memo in my father’s office. Ever since the surgery, I’ve been afraid of myself. I thought I was afraid of my dark side, but I’m not. I’m afraid I won’t have the guts to become the person I need to be, the person I obviously was when I met you.”

“What do you mean?” she asks, brow furrowing again.

“My parents have played with our lives like our free will doesn’t matter. We’ve been pieces in their chess game,” I say, rage and betrayal rising inside me all over again, the way they did when I sat in front of my father’s computer this afternoon. “I come from people who prove there’s no point in playing by the rules. There will always be someone bigger and stronger, with more power, and no moral compass, who refuses to do the right thing. And those people make it ludicrous to think decent people can walk the straight and narrow and expect the world not to go to hell in a hand basket.”

I swallow. “Deep down, I knew that sometimes you have to play dirty to make sure the bad guys don’t win, but until today, I was ignoring the signs, wanting to stay out of the shadows. Wanting things to be…easy.”

“I don’t think life is ever easy,” Caitlin says, laying her hand on top of mine. “But love can be.”

I look at her beautiful face and my heart flips in my chest and I no longer feel like a person who’s gotten the short end of the stick. I feel like the luckiest bastard in the world, because she’s talking about me, and there is a place in her heart that is mine.

I lean in, pressing a grateful kiss to her lips before resting my forehead against hers. “Thank you.”

“You don’t have to thank me…but there is something I would like.”

“Anything,” I say, meaning it.

“Take me inside,” she whispers.

I reach for my door—not needing to be asked twice—but she stops me with a hand on my arm. “But not the couch,” she says. “I want a new memory, without any ghosts in it.”

I nod, already knowing exactly where I’ll take her. To a place where I can watch the setting sun turn her tawny skin gold as I kiss every inch of her body, until she’s begging me to do more than kiss, and I sink inside her, and finally find out if real life can compare to all the dreams I’ve had of her.

Dreams of being shattered and made whole, dreams of finding everything I’ve ever wanted in one beautiful girl’s arms.

CHAPTER SEVEN
Caitlin
“I love you not only for what
you are, but for what I am
when I am with you.”
-Elizabeth Barrett Browning

We go in through the red door and head up the long staircase hand in hand. It’s lighter than it was the last time Gabe and I crept into his father’s office on a Sunday. The sunset light filters in through the window at the top of the stairs, turning the air a rosy gold that makes even a law office seem like the perfect setting for a romantic reunion.

I see the leather couch in the corner has been replaced by a larger couch with carved arms made of blond wood covered in striped canvas, and think maybe it would have been okay to make a memory there, after all, but Gabe doesn’t pause on his way through the room. He leads me through the office into the small bathroom, where he opens a crystalized window to reveal a metal fire escape.

“The roof okay?” He glances back at me, heat and caution mixing on his handsome face, making it clear I’m not the only one who’s feeling as anxious as I am eager.

Will making love with him feel the way it used to? Or will it be like being with someone new? I have no idea, and I’m not sure it matters, as long as it is wild and raw and sweet.

“The roof is perfect.” I follow him out onto the fire escape, and up the metal rungs leading to the top of the four-story building. It’s the tallest building on the block, so no curious neighbors will be spying on us, and I can’t remember the last time I saw a helicopter fly over Giffney. I feel certain we’ll have privacy if not comfort, but then we step over the concrete ledge at the top of the fire escape, and my worries about hot tar beneath my back vanish in a rush of delight.

“It’s beautiful,” I breathe, drifting across the roof to the garden on the other side. Raised beds full of white daisies and violet verbena stand at right angles, surrounding a set of table and chairs, and two loungers with thick red cushions. Strings of bare bulbs crisscross overhead, and a stereo and grill stand in the shelter of a wooden cabana that hints at the gatherings that must have been held here.

“Charlene did all of this,” Gabe says, coming to stand next to me as I lean down to smell the verbena. “She and her husband come up here every Friday night. They’ve been married for twenty years, but still can’t get enough of each other.”

The mention of Charlene’s name is like someone flipped a dimmer, muting the golden evening. I stand, the lemon scent of the verbena leaving an astringent taste in my mouth. “I remember meeting her when I came to pick you up after work. She seemed so nice…” I shake my head, hating that the dark things have followed us up here, to this refuge from the world. “Why would she help your parents fake your funeral? Did she have any idea why they were doing what they did?”

“I don’t know,” Gabe says. “We’ll search her desk before we go, but right now I have more important things to do.”

He wraps his arms around my waist, pulling my back to his front, sending awareness coursing through me as our bodies slide into place, fitting together as perfectly as we always have. He presses a kiss to my neck, my jaw, the hollow beneath my ear, before he captures my earlobe between his teeth and bites down hard enough to make me suck in a breath through my teeth.

“Still like biting?” he asks, fingers digging into my hips.

“Still like biting.” My pulse speeds and my nipples pull tight, celebrating the feel of his teeth raking across my skin.

He fists his hand in the hair at the base of my neck, forcing my head back as his lips return to my throat. “How about this?”

“Yes,” I moan, eyes sliding closed as my muscles go limp and my knees start to feel decidedly weak. I arch back against Gabe, until his erection pushes against the small of my back, making me shiver. He feels so perfect, the size and shape of him as familiar as my own face in the mirror, even after all this time apart.

“And what about getting fucked like I mean it?” he asks, the hitch in his voice making the course words sweeter than any of the endearments Isaac whispered into my ear.

My ribs contract and my heart lurches and I suddenly feel like I’m going to start crying the way I did when I saw Gabe’s face this morning, because he
remembers
. He remembers that last night, when there was nothing but him and me, and all the horrible, wonderful longing for more time, more love, more everything we were to each other. He may not remember every moment we shared, but he remembers that heartbreaking, soul-healing night, and right now that is enough.

“You always fuck me like you mean it.” I turn in his arms, twining my arms around his neck, echoing his response when I’d begged him to take me harder, to fuck me like it was the last, best thing either of us would ever do.

“Don’t be gentle,” I say, standing on tiptoe, kissing him with the words. “I don’t want gentle tonight.”

He curses beneath his breath, letting me know I drive him as crazy as he drives me. “I don’t think I could hold back right now. Even if I tried.”

“Don’t try,” I whisper, a startled sound escaping my throat as he swings me into his arms, sweeping me off my feet so swiftly my head is still spinning when he lies me down on the lounge chair and covers my body with his own.

Our lips meet in a bruising kiss that is a frenzied tangle of lips, teeth, and tongues, not even close to the languid kisses we usually start with. But Gabe’s right—tonight, a slow burn would be impossible. Right now, we are a spark and kindling catching fire, igniting with enough heat to burn down the entire building.

His hands work their magic and suddenly my skirt and tank top are gone, without me remembering shifting to help him make them disappear. And then he’s pulling away from me to rip his shirt over his head, revealing chiseled muscles sharper and more defined than the toned chest I remember.

“Become a meathead while I’ve been gone?” I ask, hands shaking as I trail my fingers down his rounded pecs, to the taut ridges of his abdomen.

He was lovely before, but now he is…perfection, so gorgeous it seems a shame sculpting the male figure went out of vogue with the ancient Greeks. Someone should sculpt this man, immortalize every inch of his beauty in marble for women to drool over for generations to come.

“You know I enjoy torturing myself,” he says, a pained expression flickering across his face as I hook my fingers over the waistband of his shorts.

“No torture tonight, only good things.” I dip my hand lower, raking my fingernails over the bulge straining his fly, drawing another curse from his lips.

He captures my wrists in his hands, drawing my arms up over my head before pinning them to the lounge chair’s cushions. “Not yet. If I take any more clothes off, I’ll be inside you in thirty seconds.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.” I wrap my legs around his waist, flexing my muscles until I’ve pinned his hips to mine. His cock presses against me through his shorts and my thin bikini bottom, making my entire body tighten with desire.

“I’m not the only one who’s changed.” He runs his hands from my knees to my thighs before giving them a squeeze. “Run any marathons lately?”

“I don’t do organized athletic activity. I run at night, by myself.” I punctuate the words with circles of my hips, grinding against him through our clothes. “I run so I’ll be fast enough to get away from the bad guys.”

“You are so fucking sexy,” Gabe says, breath shuddering out against my lips as his palms slide higher, until his fingers nearly encircle my waist.

He dips his head with a growl, finding the end of the bikini strap tied around my neck with his teeth and loosening the bow with a jerk of his head. My top springs free, baring my breasts, and a moment later Gabe is pulling my nipple into his mouth. Immediately, I forget that I was going to tell him that he is sexier, and that I’m never going to get enough of his body.

I forget everything but the amazing way he makes me feel.

CHAPTER EIGHT
Caitlin

Waves of bliss course from my breast to every electrified inch of my skin until I’m moaning and squirming beneath him. I thread my fingers through his hair and try to tug his mouth away from my chest, but he only intensifies his efforts, licking and sucking and biting until my breasts ache and the flesh between my legs is swollen and slick. I feel bruised with wanting him, and I only crave more. More of his kiss, his touch, more of the way he makes me feel like my skin is too small and my soul too big for this fragile human body.

“Please.” My fingers claw into his thick biceps, so much denser than they used to be. “I don’t want to wait. I need you. Now.”