Playing for Love at Deep Haven (15 page)

“Morning Has
Broken.”

Of course.

She slid to the
floor of the bathroom, holding her knees to her chest, her ear pressed lightly
against the crack between the closed door and the wall, and listened to him
play. It was the least she could do, since he’d finally listened to her.

***

When the
bathroom door finally opened, Zach’s fingers paused. She stood motionless in a
white towel, her hair wet and wavy, bathed in the soft light of the nightstand
lamp. Though she was only a few feet away, it was too far away from him. He
ached for her.

“Don’t stop,”
she whispered, leaning her head against the bathroom doorway. “Please play it
again.”

“Violet,” he
started, wanting to tell her what an ass he’d been and beg her to let him be
with her tonight—hold her, talk to her, lie on the floor while she slept on the
bed—anything but face exile from her, from the feeling of wholeness that he
hadn’t felt in too many years.

“Please, Zach.
Please play it again. For me.”

He did. Because
he would do anything for her.

Her sad, tired
eyes held his as his fingers picked up the light, plaintive melody again.

“The music was
wrong,” he said softly, staring at her.

She smiled.

“But I think
something like this would be . . . right.”

“It’s folk,” she
said, her eyes filling.

“I can live with
that.” He looked down at his fingers for a moment before catching her eyes
again. He was still worried that he’d be forced to spend a moment away from
her. “Can
you
?”

“Yes,” she murmured
as he finished the final phrase, his fingers stilling.

She approached
him, and he held his breath, his chest expanding with her nearness, wanting her
more than he’d ever wanted anyone, as though she belonged to him. She gently took
the guitar off his lap and leaned it against the chair across from the bed.

He watched her,
wondering if she’d let him stay or send him on his way.

She turned back
to him and stood between his legs, reaching around his head to take his hair
out of its ponytail and then running her fingers through the thick, shoulder-length
brown strands. She didn’t belong to him. She wasn’t a part of him. He didn’t
have a right to her. And yet she touched him like maybe she could love him
again, and he cursed his hopeful heart for not holding back something,
anything. Didn’t it know better than to hope for love after all of these years
without it?

But this was
Violet. Violet. And so he was rushing headlong into it with every possibility
of losing her again. Whether she realized it or not, he was filleted wide open
to her, his beating heart offered in sacrifice, in penance, in trade for
anything she was willing to give. And it had been such a long time coming,
there was nothing,
nothing
, he could
do about it.

Reaching through
the seam of her towel, he rested his hands on her naked hips and pulled her to
him until his cheek rested on the towel, over her breasts.

“That’s my
favorite song,” she murmured as her fingers threaded through his hair gently.

He leaned back
to look at her, reveling in her nearness, her touch, the smell of her freshly
washed body, scented with lilac and lemon. “I remember.”

She stared at
his face with a wide, worried gaze as his hands skimmed up from her hips to her
waist, massaging her soft, damp skin with his strong, calloused fingertips.

“Can I trust
you?” she asked quietly, as though deep in thought, more to herself than to
him.

“I won’t hurt
you,” he promised, his fingers inching up her body until his hands cupped her
naked breasts, his thumbs brushing the nipples into tight points as she swayed
closer to him. She loosened the towel until it fell from her body, pooling on
the floor at her feet.

Zach sucked in
his breath, looking away from her face to his hands, which covered her breasts.
He leaned forward and took one pink bud into his mouth, sucking on it gently as
her head tilted back, her fingernails grazing his skull. He kissed a small
trail to her other breast, licking a circle around the nipple.

Her hands
reached down to find the edge of his T-shirt and pushed it up his chest, the
heels of her hands running slowly over his skin until Zach reached behind his
neck and pulled the shirt off. Her fingers wasted no time unbuckling his belt,
and he stood up from the bed so she could unzip his pants.

“I want you as
naked as me. I . . . I need you, Zach.”

His body reacted
to her words, tightening everywhere in anticipation and time stopped, screeching
to a halt around him. His thoughts about the song and her feelings and his
feelings for her, his worries and her mistrust and everything—all of it—disappeared.
Because all that mattered was that Violet needed him.

He pushed his
jeans to the floor, and she wound her arms around his neck as she crushed her
body against his, her smooth, pale skin pressed against his tan, tattooed
muscles. But before his body took over completely, his mind asserted itself one
final time. He dipped his head to kiss her, but paused against her lips,
panting.

“I mean it,
Violet. I won’t hurt you. I won’t fucking hurt you. Never again.”

Then he dropped
his head, smashing his open mouth against hers. She moaned low in the back of
her throat, and he pushed her down onto the bed, carefully covering her naked, willing
body with his.

***

“What’s this
one?” she asked, propped on her elbow beside Zach, as she took a guided tour of
his body in the moonlight. “A lighthouse?”

He lay on his
back, smiling at her, and glanced over at the sleeve of tattoos that covered
his right bicep. He flexed it lightly.

Show-off,
she thought, remembering how he’d held
his incredibly toned body over hers as he made love to her, teasing, until she
cried out to him to “cut the shit,” and he’d beamed as he slid with unerring
precision into her hot, wet body. His smile had faded quickly, though, as he
clenched his jaw in determination, holding himself still and full within her.
She’d gasped her approval, then grasped his ass and pushed him forward to the
hilt as she
arched
up to meet him. His eyes shuddered
closed then, and he lost whatever battle he was waging with self-control. He
drove his body into hers over and over with increasing speed and thrust until
she exploded beneath him, and he bellowed her name, convulsing inside her.

Studying the
dips and curves in his arm muscles made her pelvic muscles flex and release in
a flutter of activity, like aftershocks. Oh God, she wanted him again. (And
again and again and again.)

“That’s for where
I grew up,” he said, his eyes heavy and sated and amused. Damn him, but he read
her like a book. He kissed her lightly. “Not yet, Vile.”

He looked so
pleased with himself.
Yes, Zach, you’re
totally irresistible
, she thought, rolling internal eyes
.

“In landlocked Upstate
New York?” she asked, trying to sound crisp and disinterested in his insanely
cut body as she poked the lighthouse again.

He took her
finger from his arm and bit it lightly, making a tremor shoot from her
fingertip to her belly, increasing her frustration.

“Yes, wiseass. In
Cape Vincent, which is on the Saint Lawrence River, directly across from Canada.
Not landlocked. And at the farthest tip of town, there’s a lighthouse out on
Tibbetts
Point. Cora and I used to ride our bikes there
when we were kids. One of my few good memories of growing up there.”

What had
happened, she wondered, that had formed him into the bitter, introverted boy he
was when she met him at Yale? He rarely talked about his parents, except for a
few times when he was drunk, and never in a very positive way. They’d driven
him to success. Perhaps too hard.

“Tell me about
it, Zach. About home.”

His eyes
hardened. She had definitely hit a nerve.

“Fuck home. It’s
just a lighthouse. I never said home. It wasn’t a home.” She winced as he spat
out the words, but he reached out and put a gentle hand on the swell of her
hip. “Sorry, Vile. Sorry. It’s not you.”

“I know. It’s
okay,” she said. “You never talked about it very much.”

“Wasn’t much
good to say.” He avoided her eyes, his fingers moving of their own volition.

“We don’t have
to talk about it right now,” she said softly, reaching out to cup his cheek. At
some point she hoped he would talk to her, help her understand who he was and
what he had suffered. But she also knew enough about Zach to know that he had
trouble with intense emotions, and she’d rather wait for him to tell her than
force the issue.

He turned his
lips into her hand, muttering, “Thank God.”

“So a lighthouse
for Cora?” she said in a light voice, touching his cheek tenderly.

 
“This one’s for Cora,” he said, placing her
hand near his heart.

“Roman numeral
two?”

“Gemini.”

They were
talking about his sister,
his sister
,
for heaven’s sake, and all she wanted was for him to flip her over and fill her
again. When had she become so insatiable?

“Ah. The twins.”

He leaned up on
his elbow, mirroring her, and reached out his hand to lightly caress her breast.
“
One
set of twins.”

Her body flooded
with warmth. He pulled his hand away, which made her scowl. He was teasing her,
and she wasn’t in the mood to be teased. She was in the mood to—

“You’re twisted,
Zach. We’re talking about your sister, and you’re grabbing my chest.”

“I don’t care if
we’re talking about my
mother
, Vile.
I’m still
gonna
want to grab your tits.”

She was so
surprised by his words that she laughed as he reached for her, pulling her up
against him.

“You’re so
beautiful, you can’t be real,” he sighed, dropping his lips to the soft skin of
her neck. They lay side by side and she leaned into him, tilting her head back
to give him better access, and then . . . then she felt it, as she lay in
Zach’s arms with his lips pressed to her skin and his rigid flesh pressed
against her: happiness. Tentative but real. For the first time in too long to
remember, she felt happiness, and it almost made her want to cry with relief.

She made a sound
in her throat that was a cross between a moan and a laugh and a sob, and he
leaned back, stroking her hair out of her face. He slipped a condom on deftly
and rolled her onto her back, moving his hips into position over her.

“What?” he asked.

“I’m happy.
That’s all.”

“That’s all,” he
panted, testing her, teasing her, touching the tip of his hardness to her slick,
ready entrance.

“You too.” She
didn’t ask; she stated it, like an unquestionable truth, running her hands down
his back, waves of hot and cold covering her skin as she poised herself for his
welcome invasion, every cell pining for him.

The muscles of
his back rippled and flexed as he eased into her with a low gasp. “Me too.”

***

He looked at the
clock—six thirty—then turned back to Violet’s sleeping face. The sun was just
starting to peek through the edges of the shades, casting her pale skin in a
half-light.

I can hear the soft breathing
 
Of the girl that I love,
 
As she lies here beside me
 
Asleep with the night.

F-Dm-Bb-Am.
Simon and Garfunkel’s words circled in his head, and his fingers twitched,
playing the chords softly on the sheets between them. F-Gm-C. A folk song. She
must be deep in his head if his default morning music was folk. Who was he
kidding? She’d always been in there deep. His lips turned up at the thought,
thinking maybe folk music wasn’t so bad, after all. He sighed, drinking her in.

Her hair tumbled
around her head in chestnut waves, unruly and wild. She looked like the Violet
he used to know, and he reached out gingerly, fingering one thick curl, then
pulling away before he woke her. Dropping his glance to her lips, he memorized
them, the slight puffiness of them that was his doing, the way the bottom lip pouted
a little, begging him to grab it between his teeth and bite gently before
sucking, before nipping and kissing.

He groaned and
rolled onto his back. Her eyes had been tired and overwhelmed last night as she
stood against the doorway while he played “Morning Has Broken.” She needed
sleep, and he needed a distraction or he’d be waking her up for a little more
of what they’d enjoyed until dawn.

His stomach
growled, and he mentally reviewed the paltry contents of the kitchen. Half a
can of Pringles, some Oreos, a box of
Cheez
-Its, half
a bag of
Cheez
Doodles, and three cans of Diet Coke.
Not much of a breakfast.