by Carly Keene
I shove another dress aside. In the back—ah, here. Midnight blue, knee-length sheath dress with cap sleeves and deep v-neck, body-conscious without being slutty. This one had been my grandmother’s in the early 1960s, and it’s very Mad Men. I check it for stains, tears, flaws in the fabric: nothing. It’s pristine.
I try it on. It’s a shade tight in the bodice, but the v-neck just lets my boobage squoosh together, and I can still breathe just fine. I bend over, sit down, and walk, but not only does it look amazing, it’s relatively comfortable. Definitely sexy, but a restrained kind of sexy, the diametric opposite of the boho-chic hippie-sexy look I rocked in the Ren Faire dress.
I find the strappy silver heels I bought to go with the sequin tank and try them with the dress. I look in the mirror.
Yes.
I will be Ms. Successful Artist from here on out. I do not need a god of love and sex and power and prophecy; I am enough all on my own.
And then I look around this cluttered bedroom and see how much I have to pack up, all on my own, and I sigh all over again.
There’s a tap on the door. “Come in,” I call.
It’s my brother Noah. “Yowza,” he says, getting a glimpse of me in the Mad Men dress. “You will have guys drooling all over you in that. So what did you want to talk to me about?”
I’ve been dreading this conversation. But there’s nothing for it, I just have to dive in and say it. I meant to have a whole speech worked up, a way to let him down gently that I’m leaving, but I’ve been run off my feet with this gallery exhibit. I open my mouth, and then close it.
“Wow,” he says. “What are you so stressed about? Look, come sit down.” He pats the bed, and sits down in the chair beside it. “I know things are different around here these days. It’s a lot crazier, for one thing. And loud? Shit, I had no idea three little kids could make that much damn noise.”
He says these things, but he’s smiling.
“Yeah, they do make a lot of noise,” I say, and sit down. “But you love it.”
That’s all over his face. He grins. “Yeah. I love it. So, seriously, Rach, what’s up?”
“It’s—” and I get stuck again.
“You can stay as long as you want,” he says. “Kalinda wanted me to be sure to tell you that. This has been your home since you moved in, and it can stay your home forever. I owe you that much, for coming to yank me out of my depression and take care of my kid. And you’re my sister and I love you,” he finishes in a rush.
“What if I want to go?” I blurt. His face changes, but now that I’ve yanked the cork out, the words keep coming. “I’ve loved it here. But I feel like we’re in a totally new chapter now, maybe even a totally new book, and I want something different. I want to live my life for me.”
He catches his breath. “I never meant to sidetrack your life, I never wanted that.”
“I know. It’s okay, Noah. You’re my brother, and you have always had my back, except when you couldn’t. And I was really happy to come help you and James. He’s such a great kid. You both needed me, and I needed you too. But now . . . now I need something different, something entirely for me.”
“I hate to see you go,” Noah says.
“Let’s be honest here, you could use a little more space. Especially now that you hired that nanny lady—maybe she can start sleeping here when you and Kalinda both have to work.”
He nods. “I don’t know why I didn’t hire someone before.”
“Because I was family.” It makes perfect sense to me. “And now that time of me being right in the middle of your family is over, I think. I really love you guys, but I’m ready for that new chapter.” I lace my fingers together in my lap.
“You got a place lined up yet? I can help you look, if you want.”
“Not yet. I want to wait until after this gallery show to start seriously looking.”
“Okay.” He moves to hug me, and we do that for a long minute. “Love you, baby sis. Someday some guy is going to fall head over heels for you, and he’ll be great.”
“I don’t need a man,” I protest from inside his strong arms.
“No, but you deserve a great one.” He pats my back. “We’ll just have to hope that the guy who loves you is at least half as amazing as you are.”
Mabon, my heart says. I tell it to shut up. He was perfect, but that chapter is over too.
FIVE: Never Seen Anything Like You
Maddox
So now it’s the day of the reception and I’m a little late, having had to work on updating some charts before getting a shower and dashing over to Art Factory. I’ve got my best suit on—navy, with gray shirt and silver tie. Polished shoes, fresh haircut and shave, the works. It should make me feel better about myself, but all it does is remind me of the girl I don’t have, who told me I was much better-looking out of my clothes. I sigh and pull open the door of the gallery.
The space inside is full of colleagues dressed up. There’s Finlay looking cranky in his suit, and Nicole from reception in plum lace, very yummy. There’s Deena McLean in blue with her EMT guy, who towers over everybody. Jack Mellon and his new squeeze (blonde, looks anorexic). Alison Sadler, our intern, is shimmering around the place in a green sequin thing that makes the most of her long legs.
I look around the room once again: no tall woman with glorious long dark hair. Nobody who’s raided Stevie Nicks’s closet. No goddesses.
I sigh, and go join the line at the buffet. It seems I’ve missed some of the speeches, which is okay; I hate speeches. There’s no assigned seating, so I find a chair at a table full of radiology techs and chat while I chew. The girls look good dressed up, but they just look like girls, nobody super special. I excuse myself to get another plate, this time concentrating on the gingered pork dumplings, and this time I sit with a table of nurses, both male and female. It is always advisable to make nice with the nurses. They save my ass six times a day, plus they are awesome people.
After my fourth plate of appetizers and my fourth table of colleague chat, I’m ready for wedding cake, but there’s no sign that anyone is ready to cut it yet. The sound system is still playing quiet pop music oldies in the background, stuff like the Temptations and Carole King.
So I get up and start perusing the art on the walls. Near the front of the room is a display of large white statue things, but they’re not statues of people. They’re very abstract, rounded but full of odd lines, and I find myself wanting to run my hands over each one of them. I’m fascinated. The labels underneath say the titles of the pieces (Abstract Form I, Sloped Figure IV, weird arty shit like that) and the artist, Rachel Bonner.
Huh. Noah’s sister, I presume. Interesting.
There’s a voice behind my shoulder, a woman. “What do you think?”
“I like them. Especially that one.” I point to one sculpture that makes me think of a breast.
“Yeah, the guys seem to like that one.” The woman behind me sounds amused.
I shrug. “I don’t know art. I just know what I like. I’d like to buy that one.”
“Looks like it’s sold,” the woman says. “See the pink sticker on the card?”
“Oh. Well, maybe that one instead.” I point to a different sculpture that looks like a flowing C, or a length of 3-D ribbon with its edges taut. “It looks like it’s moving even though it’s not.”
“I like that one myself.” She pauses. “The price is set at $600.”
“Hm. I could probably swing it. I do like it that much.” Then I realize. “Wait, how do you know? There’s no price listed. Did you ask?”
She gives the ghost of a laugh. “I’m the artist.”
I turn quickly, surprised. “You’re Rachel Bonner? You’re Noah’s sister?”
She nods, although she’s got her head turned away at an angle, looking at the piece on the far left. But when she turns back, the knowledge pops into my brain: I know her. I know her down to her beautiful bones.
I didn’t recognize her voice, but we sp
oke to each other for maybe fifteen minutes before we fell into each other like colliding planets. I can barely speak, but I say it anyway. “Rhiannon?”
All this time. Years working with her brother, and I never met her, never saw her picture. I would have recognized her, even as she is now in this elegant dress that restrains the flowing lines of her body, even with her mane of dark hair pinned up in a sleek knot on top of her head.
Now I’m hearing Stevie Nicks again, from her ‘80s pop years, “If Anyone Falls,” singing about twilight and dream time, and I can feel my mouth opening, my eyes opening wider, my heart busting wide open like she’s taken an ax to it.
Never seen anything . . . like you, Stevie sings, and I feel it.
She has turned back to me, her own eyes wide. Dark as midnight, and deep as the endless sky, with tiny points of light. Her lips part a tiny bit, she blinks—and she knows me too. “Mabon,” she whispers.
We haven’t looked away from each other. I am incapable of looking away. It is just the same as before, I’m caught in the net of her eyes.
“Why are you here?” She’s still whispering, and now so am I.
“I’m Maddox Gray. I work with Noah.” I swallow. “If I’d ever asked to see a picture . . .”
“Yes. Or if I’d ever brought him lunch at the hospital . . .”
“You left.” Although I’m trying to be discreet, I can’t hide the pain in my voice. “You left me.”
One crystal tear falls down her cheek. “It was perfect. You were perfect.”
“We could have had so much more,” I tell her. I’m not sure whether to be sad, or angry.
She looks down, wiping the tear. Then she looks back up, with that direct midnight gaze of hers. “Is it too late, do you think?”
SIX: If Anyone Falls in Love
Rachel
It’s only when he calls me Rhiannon that I recognize him.
I should have seen it before, in the lines of his body. The shape of his hand, the way he shoves it back through that fair hair. I can only blame my distraction on the fact that he was looking at my art, and I want so badly for people to like it. I want them to see it and like it and buy it, or commission more. I’ve been so excited by people seeing my art—seeing me.
And then I see that he is Mabon, and I forget about my art entirely, because he is seeing me.
His face is soft and stunned, bright blue eyes softened by a sheen of tears. He is still every bit as beautiful as I’d remembered, and I still want to rip every shred of his clothing off him and ride him to glory. My abdomen is suffused by heat, and my panties go instantly damp as my nipples harden in this ladylike dress.
I want him, I want him desperately. He’s not Mabon, his name is Maddox, and my body wants to leap right out of this dress into his arms.
“You left,” he whispers, and I see how it hurt him.
How did I not think of that before? I only thought of myself and my stupid pursuit of perfection, stupid because people are never perfect. I’m not. He’s not. No one is. I try explaining anyway. The ache in my throat rises to sting at the back of my eyes.
We can never be perfect.
But maybe we can try.
“Is it too late, do you think?” I ask him, seeing the pain in his face matching my own, and our matching desire for each other despite the pain.
He swallows hard. “No,” he says in a voice thick with arousal. “We make our own opportunities. Come with me—Rhiannon.”
I hesitate, knowing I should tell my brother. But then Noah gets up and picks up the microphone to welcome everyone, and if I wait to talk to him this chance may slip away. I couldn’t bear it if that happened. I pull my phone from my wristlet purse and send him a text that I’m leaving and that I’m okay. Then I shut off the phone and look back up at Maddox.
He offers me his arm, and we leave the gallery. It’s only a short walk to his apartment building, the one I remember but could never have found on my own. He fumbles for his keys to open the door, and holds it open for me.
“Don’t leave,” he pleads. “Not this time.”
“This time you know how to find me.” Laughter bursts out of me, and then, immediately after that, tears. I’m finding out so many important things tonight. “I didn’t know I wanted so badly to be found,” I tell him.
And then he takes me in his arms, and we are made perfect.
His eyes glow blue at me, and his mouth is hot and sweet on mine, our tongues dancing a tango while I kick off my shoes and unbutton his dress shirt. He shrugs off the suit jacket, helps me take off his shirt, and his strong chest is warm and bare. He breaks our kiss to complain, “How the hell does this dress come off?” I have to show him the 60’s style zipper down the side, and we laugh, and then the dress is on the floor. His hands are in my hair, taking my bobby pins out and shaking out my long waves over my shoulder. I take off my bra. He slides my panties off my hips, and his fingers quest impatiently between my thighs to find my soaked folds.
I moan, tipping my head back as his lips fasten around first one hard nipple and then the other, sucking gently at them while he rubs my aching clit. His touch is just as magic as it was four years ago, and I come hard, crying out his real name.
“Rhiannon,” he whispers to me, and then picks me up to take me to his bed. He lays me down and spreads my hair out across the pillow, and then strips his lower clothing off, to join me as naked as I am. He turns the lamp on by the bed, and I can see all of him.
His cock is hard and thick as I remembered it. I reach to touch it, to feel the hardness of it under the silky skin, to rub my thumb across the wetness at the tip. “I want you,” I tell him. “I want you so much.”
“Not yet.” He spreads my thighs with his hands, then lifts me like a chalice to his mouth. I cry out again as his tongue licks little flames all across my pussy, the exquisite pressure building with each stroke of his tongue, each movement of his fingers across my sensitive terrain.
“Please,” I beg. “I want you inside me, please, Mabon, my god, Maddox, please!”
He raises his head to look at me, and he sees me naked and writhing on his bed, enslaved to the pleasure he’s giving me. He lowers me down and straddles my hips, giving his beautiful long penis a firm stroke. “Ready?”
I’ve been waiting so long. I reach for him, and together we rub his cock through my creamy wetness before I slip its tender tip inside my pussy. “Now,” I beg, and he delivers me from that wait, finally, plunging his hardness into my welcoming cunt. The feel of him is so right that tears come to my eyes again. I wrap my arms around his neck, and my legs around his back, as he sets a rhythm that sets me on fire. I’m on the edge, my hips rising to meet his over and over, our bodies finding the groove, and then a bolt of lightning pleasure shoots through me and I lose control.
He bites the side of my neck, hard enough that I come again almost immediately, and then he’s there too, groaning as he climaxes inside me.
When we can both breathe again, he shifts to the side, kissing my breasts. “Don’t leave.”
“Chain me to the bed and I can’t leave,” I tease.
His eyebrows go up and he starts to smile. “It’s a thought.”
“Oooh,” I say, and shiver involuntarily. I’ve never been into kinky stuff for its own sake, but this is my sex god and whatever he does turns me right the fuck on. “I’d be totally at your mercy. Oh, fuck, that would be so good.” My pussy was already wet with my arousal and his hot juice, but I get wet all over again, my nipples tiny peaks.
“Shit, look at you.” He leans over to lick my nipples, and I moan. “I’ve probably got some rope or some old shirts we can rip up and tie you to the bed.”
“I’m definitely sticking around for that.”
SEVEN: Somewhere in the Twilight Dream Time
Maddox
So here I am with my goddess in my bed.
Well, on my bed. We never even turned down the covers the first time, it was so rushed. But now I want her in my bed. I
want her to stay this time, and while we’re bantering about tying her to the bed, it turns her on again, which turns me on again, and she promises not to leave.
Not that she could while I’m lying on top of her, sucking her nipples into little tight buds. I’m hard as a teenager again for her, my poor dick just as desperate to be inside those warm pink folds as it was half an hour ago.
This is my goddess, my Rhiannon. Things are just as lusty between us as they were that one night so long ago, and I want to make this night last.
I can smell us in the air. On the bedcovers. My hot seed, her pussy juices. Her perfume—lilies and amber. Our sweat.
The pillows go flying, and she laughs. “In the bed,” I tell her. “Now. Or I really will tie you to it.”
We kick the covers down, and she stretches her arms suggestively against the headboard. “Rope?” she asks hopefully, and my cock jumps.
I don’t actually have rope. Damn. But hell, I’ll sacrifice a few old ties if I have to. I jump up and go to the closet. Here’s one I had in high school, for fuck’s sake, and another one that the dry-cleaner’s couldn’t get a stain out of.
“Neckties,” she says, when I come back. She doesn’t quite laugh this time.
“You want handcuffs, you’re gonna have to buy them yourself. This’s all I got.”
“You beast,” she says, and licks her lips. Fucking hell, it’s sexy. “Better get to tying me up, then.”
I want her mouth on me. I tie one wrist to the bed frame, and then the other, making sure there’s plenty of give. “What’s your safeword?”
“I don’t have one.”
I look down into her face. “That is hella sexy. Why is that sexy?”
She shrugs, as best she can with her wrists restrained. “I’ve never needed one before. Never done this. What’s yours?”
“I’ve never needed one either,” I admit. “I’ve been pretty vanilla. This is probably as much kink as I can handle.”
