Time After Time (36 page)

If so, it added another,
intriguing dimension to their homemade therapy session.

I love the way he touches
me,
she thought.
As if my cheeks were made of butterflies' wings.
She found herself sliding under his spell: more
relaxed, and at the same time, more expectant. Impulsively she
lifted her own hands to his face, skimming his high cheekbones, his
wiry eyebrows, the first stubble of a beard.

It will scratch,
she thought.
But not so
much.
The thought made her cheeks warm
with anticipation. She took a deep breath and was filled with the
indefinable scent that made him Jack Eastman and no one else. No
cologne, no hair treatment: just salt and sea air, a rugged
all-male, all-Jack smell.

She felt him take her
wrist and gently kiss the open palm of her hand, a gesture as
courtly as it was romantic. No one had ever kissed the palm of her
hand before.

For someone who's not a
virgin,
she thought, amazed,
I sure have lots of virgin territory.

He laid his hands on her
hips, then eased the knit fabric of her top upward, his hands
echoing the line of her torso. She felt curves she never knew she
had, simply through his touch. Automatically her arms went up as he
peeled away the top; she heard it land on the floor in a hush.
After that, she folded her hands in her lap and waited for the next
step in his gentle, tantalizing disrobing of her.

She heard the snap of
plastic as her bra fell away in the front, and she felt cool air
wash over her unbound breasts.

"You are beautiful," he
murmured, breaking the silence at last.

She sucked in her breath
as she felt his fingers lightly circle the tip of her breast, and
then, irrepressibly, she said, "How can you tell? Your eyes are
closed, remember?"

"Ah ... right," he said.
"I forgot." She sensed his head lowering. "And anyway," he
murmured, the words muffled in a wet stroking caress of her nipple,
"You're not supposed to talk."

"Ah-h-h ... right," she
said, putting one arm on the white quilt to brace herself. "I
forgot." The touch of his tongue was absolutely electric: her
breath began coming in small, tight gasps, and her head began to
droop, bringing the scent of him closer. She threaded the fingers
of her free hand lightly through his hair, encouraging him as he
moved from one breast to the other, wondering how it was she
could've gone so long without this, without
him.

He paused — she made a
low, whimpering protest — and eased her back down on the coverlet.
The bed was still made from two nights ago; she hadn't pulled the
covers back on the previous night, the night she'd wrapped herself
in the paisley shawl, the night of the apparition.

Lying full length, one
knee up, she permitted herself to open her eyes for a
peek.

"Wow," she said softly.
"That was nice."

He was sliding one hand
idly up and down the curve of her torso and was studying her
intently, as if he'd just seen her across a crowded room and was
trying to place her face.

"Shhh," he told her with a
small, crooked smile. "Do you want to break the spell?"

She shook her head slowly,
then closed her eyes again, trying to control a kind of giddy fear
that it might not go on. What if this, too, were all a
dream?

The next barricade to fall
was her skirt, a cotton drift of summer pastels that she'd sewn
herself. It had hooks and eyes at the waist instead of a button;
the buttonhole attachment on her machine had been broken at the
time she'd made the outfit. She began to warn him, but he knew all
about hooks and eyes.

He knows too much,
she thought, suddenly dismayed.
He 's undressed too many women.

But then he slid the
skirt, and her panties, off in one fluid motion, leaving her skin
rippling with goosebumps, and she found that the other women —
however many there were — were as irrelevant as her ex-husband.
What did it matter, really, how much experience he had or how
little she had? He was a man; she was a woman. It didn't get much
simpler than that.

Still, she felt obliged to
state the obvious. She opened her eyes and gave him a steady
look.

"Before you, there was
only Keith," she confessed as he was about to kiss her. It was so
embarrassing: only one man in thirty-six years. In her mind, it
explained everything.

The look on Jack's face
was heartachingly tender. "In that case, I feel sorry for every
other male on earth right now."

She fingered the top
button of his shirt and indulged in a tiny naked shrug. "I just
wanted you to know."

"And now I do," he said,
kissing her on her brow. "And I don't care." His mouth came to rest
on hers — more to shut her up, she thought, than anything else —
and his tongue sought hers in a taunting kiss that soon turned into
a deeper, hungrier probe than anything before it. She hadn't been
kissed like that since — well, she'd never been kissed like
that.

He left her moaning,
sighing, arching her hips skyward as he trailed a hot blaze of
kisses up and down her body, coming back to her breasts again and
again, each time ratcheting up the heat; each time, leaving her
more fever-struck.

Secret places she never
knew she had — inside her elbow, and halfway between her belly
button and the downy clump of hair below it — these places were
thoroughly mapped out and explored. She had never in her life been
the focus of such relentless, attentive, concentrated
stimulation.

She was on
fire.

And she wanted Jack to
catch up. When she said that to him, he laughed out loud in a kind
of groaning whoop of sheer male enthusiasm. "I'm ready!" he said.
"Willing!
Bursting,
my love!"

Whether he was bursting or
not, Liz loved the "my love" part. Between them they had already
fumbled through the buttons of his shirt and peeled it away. Now
she shrugged off his T-shirt, and he yanked off his trousers and
then his shorts and tossed them on the floor.

She watched him undress
with furtive curiosity. He was solid and fit, but hardly the
washboard-of-muscles type: his strength had a more natural look
than that. She couldn't imagine him displaying himself in a
volleyball game at Easton's Beach, any more than she could picture
herself Rollerblading down Thames Street in short shorts and a tube
top.

He went back, suddenly, to
retrieve his pants: bending over to pick them up, he slipped his
wallet out from a back pocket. With a sheepish look he opened the
wallet and said, "My emergency stash — something tells me you don't
have a drawer full of these."

Protection! She'd
forgotten all about it! Somehow the knowledge that she couldn't get
pregnant, not to mention the fact that she'd been out of
circulation for the past hundred years ... she hadn't seen a condom
this close up since her senior year in high school. The packet
looked almost quaint.

She sat up. "Wait," she
said, after he tore off the top of the foil. She bit her lower lip.
"Are you planning to stay the night?" she ventured to
ask.

"If you let me," he said.
He gave her a quizzical look.

"And you only have one of
these?"

"This is it," he said,
more tentative than ever.

"Then I suggest," she said
with a demure half-smile, "that we get a little
creative."

He quirked one eyebrow
upward. "What, pray, did you have in mind?"

Without a word, she took
the half-opened foil from him and tossed it on the bedside stand.
"Hmm. Well, it's been a while," she said with a considering frown.
"But it seems to me that if I do ... this," she said, trailing her
fingers lightly across his very male, very responsive member, "yes
... that's what I recall used to happen. And then, if I do ...
this," she murmured, stroking him more boldly now, "—yep. I guess
men are all the same."

He was standing next to
her, hands on his hips, completely at ease in his nakedness — but
maybe not so at ease as when he first undressed. "Witch," he said
in a sexy, shaky voice. "If you think I'm going to stand idly by —
you're absolutely right."

She increased the pace,
surprised at the ease with which she'd taken control from him,
thrilled to be giving him pleasure. His breathing came more deeply
now; she looked up and saw his face, tense with concentration, and
thought,
How can I make him stay? I
don't
want him ever to leave.

Suddenly he took her by
the wrist and shook his head. "No ... dammit, no," he said
hoarsely. "I want us together. We'll worry about later,
later."

He sat on the side of the
bed, took up the packet, and sheathed himself. She opened her arms
to him, and he came on top of her, supporting his weight above her
on his forearms.

"My eyes are open, as you
can tell," he said softly, his voice slurred with desire, "and I
was right the first time: you're very beautiful,
Elizabeth."

"Shhh," she said, because
it was impossible for her to believe he could find her
beautiful.

She slid her arms around
him. She realized in a profound way that he was broader, heavier,
an altogether different person from the one she'd been with for a
decade. He smelled different, he kissed different, he sighed
different.
I have a new man in my
life,
she thought, dizzy with wonder as
she parted herself to him.
It truly is
like being a virgin. Only better.

He was gentle and slow
coming into her. She'd been so long without someone; and yet in one
slow wave of entry, it seemed as if she'd never been without at
all.
Full circle,
she thought.
I have come full
circle.

They lay motionless for a
long, long moment, savoring the heat, unwilling, after all this,
for it to end. He threaded both of his hands through her hair,
burying his face in it, taking deep, hungry breaths of her. "I'm
crazy about you, Elizabeth. You know that," he said in an aching
voice.

The words seemed to echo
like a drumbeat through the chambers of her heart. "And I ... am
crazy, too," she murmured in response. What she wanted to say
was:
I love you with all my heart, and I
would do anything to spend the rest of my days on earth with you. I
would do anything to be your wife.

But she knew, after Keith,
that talk like that scared men, and so she simply repeated, in her
own soft echo of despair, "Crazy ... crazy ... crazy," as he pulled
slowly back, and then began an easy, rhythmic ripple through her.
She lifted herself to meet the rhythm, moved by him, moving him,
she hardly knew which. It was all so right, so new, so
old.

It seemed to her that they
began to be surrounded by a kind of ringing lightness: and then, in
the final, frenetic thrusts, the lightness around them entered into
her soul, filling her, driving out despair, flooding her with a
crazy hope that Jack wanted a wife, and not merely someone to bear
his heirs.
Crazy ...
crazy ...
crazy.

She heard Jack groan and
felt his climax, and then she felt herself shudder in an
overwhelming release. Marveling, she thought:
Both of us, at the same time. It never happens at the same
time.

Jack sank onto her breast;
she held him close, cherishing him, and sighed heavily, feeling his
weight rise and fall with the act. And then, in a slowly
dissipating haze of passion, she opened her eyes and saw:
Christopher Eastman.

He was standing in front
of the shuttered window, an artist's palette in one hand, a
paintbrush in the other. An easel — an easel, for pity's sake! —
was now standing alongside the wicker chair in front of the window.
Perched on the easel was a large canvas, apparently a work in
progress.

The apparition was wearing
his paint-dabbed smock; his face had the same fierce frown of
concentration that she'd seen in her vision the night before. He
seemed more substantial than ever.

Liz absorbed it all in
half a second and caught her breath in a sharp gasp of
panic.

"What?" Jack said quickly.
"Am I hurting you? Pinching somewhere?" He began to lift himself
off her.

"No!" she cried. "Don't
move." She yanked him back down over her and held him fast. Ghost
or no ghost, she was naked and not taking any chances.

Jack nuzzled her neck and
said, "Hey, love — these things aren't reusable, you
know."

"Don't be silly," she
said, distracted. "My husband could be back in business in two
minutes when he wanted to."

"Not
that
thing," Jack said with a
chuckle. "The condom. Unless.. . do you want me to run out to the
drugstore—?"

"No! Stay right over
me!"

"That's an odd way to put
it, but—"

"Oh, God — I must be going
crazy. I
have
gone crazy."