"Come."
Just one word, drifting in the air like a lost feather looking for a place to rest. But just that one word held more significance to me than a million poems ever written, a thousand love songs ever sung.
Now that I let myself enjoy the moment, I found that it was easy. Too easy to lose myself in him, with him. "What do you want?"
"Nothing," he breathed and then stared at the zipper of my jacket. "This is metal? How does it work? Is it very difficult to undo?"
Another question: How could a man not know about something as mundane as a zipper?
A man would know…but someone not human wouldn't.
"Here. Try for yourself." I guided his fingers to the zipper tab and realized something odd. "You're shaking."
His brow furrowed in concentration as he drew the zipper down. He brushed the jacket off my shoulders, and his eyes widened.
"You're wearing something more!"
He sounded both astonished yet offended at the same time, and I didn't know if I should have laughed or pretended like I didn't hear him.
I tugged him down in front of the fireplace, wanting to see his body bathed in the warm yellow light of the fire. "Of course I'm wearing more. You can't expect me to walk around with just a jacket on in snowy weather, can you?"
"I wasn't wearing anything," he said, sounding proud of himself. Human or no, a man will be a man.
"Of course, you weren't."
It struck me as rather silly how only a few minutes ago I was doing up the buttons to the pajama top. And now, here I was, undoing them. I should have just done myself a favor and left them unbuttoned. Of course, then I had no idea things would come to this….
I was halfway done with undoing the buttons when he pulled away from me. "What are you doing?"
Sitting back on my heels, I quirked a brow at his sudden reticence. "What do you mean, what am I doing? I should say it's pretty evident, isn't it?"
He huffed, obviously perturbed about something.
"Arjun?"
"It has been so long. Perhaps too long since I've done this." Every syllable came out slow, thoughtful, as if he measured the efficiency of every one of them before putting them forth. "Before, I did not have to bumble my way into doing this. I knew how to please a woman. I knew how to make her cry out for me. But now…."
His words trailed into nothingness, and I was left with a man who stared at the palms of his hands, who couldn't believe what he was seeing, what he was doing.
"But now? Arjun, speak to me."
"And now, I don't know." He laughed quietly, like there was a joke only he knew. "I don't know. I don't know how to give a woman release. I don't remember how to please her. I've forgotten what it feels like to have her arch under me, over me. I've forgotten how a woman looks when she throws her head back and lets the pleasure eat away at her soul. I cannot remember a thing."
His hands grabbed mine and squeezed until I thought he was going to break the bones in my fingers. "I cannot remember a thing."
The despair in his eyes was all too plain to see, and my physical pain took a back seat to the hurt I saw in him.
"So?"
He looked at me, a question in those beautiful eyes. "What do you mean, so?"
I shrugged, trying to act as if I encountered lovers every night who didn't know how to make love. Meanwhile, the tantalizing peek of bronzed skin from the gaping pajama top distracted me so much I had to worry about looking at his face rather than his chest.
"So what? So what if you don't remember? So what if you don't know how to give me, um, release?"
"It means that I—"
But I cut him off. Time was ticking fast, and I wanted to touch him badly. But I couldn't do that until we'd straightened out a few things first. "What's wrong with learning? You know, you can relearn things you've forgotten. It's not like once you forget it's the end of that."
"Learning?" Wary hope crept into his voice. "Learning how to pleasure a woman again?"
I smiled. "It can be done."
On my hands and knees, I advanced the last six inches of distance between us and laid a hand on the bared skin that I wanted to kiss, that I wanted to taste.
"They say in order to be a master, one must learn first. And since you're merely a master who's lost his touch so to speak…." My mouth was only inches away, but I wasn't going to kiss him. He would have to do that himself. He would have to take the next step. "I'm sure you'll pick this up in no time."
His lips moved over mine. "You place such trust in me. If I should fail?"
"Try, try again?"
His lips curved into a broad grin. "I think I would like that very much."
Pushing off from the floor, Arjun closed that last inch between us, and his mouth covered mine. Hot, possessive, yet gentle and utterly sweet at the same time. Now that I was almost positive of what he was, I found myself falling in love with the crisp, pine taste of him that embodied everything winter had to offer.
For a man who claimed he couldn't remember how to satisfy a woman, he learned fast, and I moved away, breathing heavily, heart pounding like I'd just dashed a hundred miles.
"Wait, wait, that was, that was…." I couldn't find the right words to say. Every possible word just seemed so clichéd and fake. "That was…er…."
A wholly male smile wreathed his face, the kind of smirk a man shows when he is insanely pleased with or at something.
"I have pleased you?"
I felt as weak as a newborn, my laugh unsteady. "Arjun, I don't even think the word 'please' is enough to express what I'm feeling and thinking right now."
The warmth from the fire blazed across my bared torso as I pulled my turtleneck off, and he reached for a bra strap, wonder in his eyes.
"This is called a bra. It's a modern substitute for the outdated corset," I said, feeling a bit foolish, but enjoying the heated look on his features immensely.
His fingers trailed the raised bumps of my collarbone, and I shivered, feeling that touch as acutely as if he'd touched that area, not with a forefinger, but with his tongue.
"You're beautiful. Uncommonly so. Evelyn…even your name is beautiful," he said quietly, and I rolled my eyes mockingly at him.
"You're just saying that because I'm the first woman you've seen like this in…how long? A couple of years? More than that?"
"No." He shook his head. "I have seen many women, have been with many of them, and they aren't…they don't…." He stopped, apparently at a loss for words.
Which was completely fine by me. I didn't want to know about all the other women in his life. Talk about a mood-killer.
I tugged at the open neckline of the pajama top. The remaining small buttons popped free from their buttonholes, and one of them was ripped completely free, ricocheting off the fireplace mantle with a faint ping.
"Oh, Lord."
I knew he was beautiful. I'd seen him nude, standing there in the midst of the white, white snow, but that was then. Here, in the glowing light of the fire, tossing shadows back and forth on the concaves of his body, he was magnificent.
Divine.
I trailed my fingers down his chest, starting from the hollow of his neck to the waistband of the pants, right underneath his belly button. He shivered under my touch.
This wasn't enough.
Touching wasn't enough.
I wanted more of him. I wanted his hands on me, I wanted to feel him inside of me, and I wanted to give to him as much as he gave to me.
He was clumsy in tearing off the rest of my clothes, but that was all right. A hunger replaced the wide-eyed curiosity in him, and I responded to that hunger with a voracity of my own.
When I finally managed to tug off those ridiculously colored pajama pants of his, I was wet. Almost embarrassingly so, considering that he hadn't done much except for some touching and lots of excellent kissing. But I wasn't the only one. He was hard, thick, and ready to burst, and I was relieved to know
he wanted me just as badly.
Rigid under my hand, I squeezed him gently. He let out a slow breath, and I ran a hand through the silver-yellow hair that felt like cornsilk beneath my fingers. "I can't. I need to wait, but I…."
The rug was smooth underneath my back, velvet against my skin. "You want me. I want you. Why do you need to wait?"
I raised my arms out to him, and he laid his body on mine, his warm skin slick with the sweat of his ill-restrained desire. I wound my arms around his neck, wanting him closer than was humanly possible.
"Do it."
He thrust into me, and I cried out at the force of it. Vaguely, I heard him catch a breath, but by then, I was far gone. There was nothing but the constant push, pull of his strokes, in…out…and I ground against him, close, getting so close, and the only thing I heard was the pulse pounding in my head.
"Evelyn…," he murmured and braced himself up on his palms. "Too fast, too soon, not yet…."
He threw his head back, the muscles rigid in the strong column of his neck, hips quickening, and I was lost.
He brought me, screaming, and I fought to get closer, to get farther away, nails clawing at his back. Couldn't think, couldn't form a single coherent word; there was only this, only now, and when I pulsed around him, he thrust one more time, body straining, heaving, tensed.
I was re-learning how to breathe, and he lay upon my chest, almost as if dead. But I felt the slow, rhythmic pulsating of his heart against my skin, and I knew I had given him as much as he had given me. Aftershocks continued, coursed through my body, and I closed my eyes, wanting to stay in this position until the world collapsed around our ears.
Sleep came to me, and I let it wrap me in its silver cloak, resting assured in the knowledge that when I opened my eyes again, I would not be alone.
No.
I would not be alone.
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