Beautiful

by Christina Lauren

  “No,” he said carefully, “but I don’t bother dating someone more than once if I can’t imagine myself with them.”

  “Not even for a shag?”

  He smiled, kissing my nose. “Well, my friend Emily would be the exception, but as a general rule, I don’t sleep with women I’m not dating.”

  “Only ‘holiday girls’?”

  Jensen allowed a tiny smile at this. “Only holiday girls.”

  “It’s nice, though, innit?” I asked quietly.

  He kissed me, tongue sliding over mine, warm and slippery, making me ache from my chest and down, down between my legs. “It’s nice not having the pressure, knowing neither of us wants more.”

  “I think you enjoy this kind of sex,” I whispered. “I think you like being a little fast and dirty with someone.”

  “It’s true I usually wait until a few dates in before sleeping with someone. And I haven’t had a girlfriend, strictly speaking, in a while.”

  “Who was the last woman you were with? Emily?”

  He shook his head and chewed his lower lip, thinking, as his hand absently smoothed up and down my bare back. “Let’s see. Her name was Patricia—”

  “Patricia!” I cackled. “Did you play Naughty Banker with her?”

  He rolled to me, tickling my side. “How did you know? She actually is an executive at Citibank.”

  “A rollicking good time in bed, then?”

  Jensen pulled back a little, admonishing me with a look. “Relationships are about more than what happens in bed.”

  And when he said this, I could feel the ironic press of him against my stomach, and slid my hand down to wrap around him.

  “But what happens in bed is crucial for a relationship,” I reasoned. “At least to start.”

  He shifted forward and back in my grip. “True . . .”

  We shared a lingering moment of eye contact, his hips slowly shifting forward and back as he dragged his cock across my palm. I wanted to touch him everywhere, not only because I liked the lines and the tension of his body but also because I sensed that no one had ever made it their mission to learn each and every bit of him.

  “It’s too bad . . .” he began, and then let the rest remain unfinished as he started moving faster, breath catching.

  “It is,” I whispered.

  It’s too bad I’m too eccentric for you.

  It’s too bad you’re too busy for me.

  It’s too bad I’m only learning my heart and you have yours rolled in bubble wrap.

  His mouth came over mine then, lips warm and just a tiny bit wet, moving down my neck. He pulled at my breasts, sucking, teeth scraping down lower, over my navel until he was there, warm and breathy, tonguing at the aching space between my legs.

  “Harder,” I gasped when he licked me too carefully. “Don’t be gentle.”

  He did as I asked, sliding fingers into me while he sucked and licked and it was perfect and frantic and my body chased and chased the feeling until I knew what I wanted, and—

  “Up here—please.”

  In only seconds he was there, rolling on a condom, needing it, too, and I was consumed by the relief of him pushing into me: heavy, eager, his arms curling beneath my shoulders to anchor him there.

  I wanted to see it from above, needed to

  —in this oddly desperate way—

  because all of a sudden I was thinking of Mark, and his thrusting bum, and how it looked—even at the time, while my heart broke into pieces in my throat—like his movements over the nameless woman were so remote, so detached, like a pivoting machine.

  But here, it felt as though Jensen was trying to slide across every inch of me.

  His chest over mine, and his thighs to mine, and his cock inside me. He pushed so deep, arching into me as if trying to enter me completely.

  It was as if every bit of him needed contact. How could a man so restrained by his own rules not see how much passion he craved?

  I gripped his backside, pulling him still deeper, urging him with my voice and my movements from beneath, and we fit—it sounds insane, and I hated this idea, but we did; his body fit mine like we were some sort of carved, complementary pieces—and I could barely keep from biting his shoulder as it stabbed through the air above me.

  I was in that space where I didn’t want this to end, couldn’t imagine ever waking up without the feel of this and moving through the day without his skin to my skin and his mouth to my neck and his guttural sounds—so unrefined, nearly savage—hammering in my ear. It made me euphoric, seeing this side of him. It was like being let in to watch the unraveling of the prime minister, a tsar, a king.

  My orgasm really was like a revelation: it was a spiral twisting through me, beginning at the center and climbing down and up at the same time, so that I arched and bent beneath him, begging him to not stop, never stop, please, Jensen, don’t ever stop.

  But he had to, because his body did the same above me: growing still in the tension, arms gripping me, face pressed to my neck in a posture of relief that felt like giving up and letting go all at once.

  They sound the same, but they aren’t. I felt it.

  The air around us was warm, and still, and slowly—but not slowly enough—it mixed with the conditioned air beyond, and everything seemed to cool. Jensen pulled from me in a move that made us both groan quietly, and he kneeled between my legs, looking down as he removed the condom and then sat there, chin to chest, breathing heavily.

  I’d had flings before. I’d had casual nights with men. Sweet men, distracted men, hungry men; forgettable in many ways.

  This—tonight—wasn’t like that.

  I knew I would remember Jensen when I was old and thinking back on things. I would remember the lover I had on my Boston holiday. I would remember this tender moment, just here, when he was overwhelmed by the love we’d just had. It may have been a spark, a match struck to pavement and extinguished, but it was there.

  I stared at him as he reached across the bed to throw the condom in the bin near the bedside table. He came back over me, warm, tired, and wanting the languishing sort of kisses that are the sweetest prelude to sleep.

  It didn’t scare me, but it didn’t quite thrill me, either.

  Because Jensen was right: this was all very unexpected.

  Twelve

  Pippa

  Our final drive was far north, to the cabin in Waitsfield, Vermont—just southeast of Burlington. We were all groggy, having stayed up far too late in our respective hotel rooms the night before, and maybe more than anything had run out of the low-hanging conversational fruit.

  Jensen and I were no longer playing pretend, but something else had settled into place—permission to kiss and to touch, and not for the benefit of someone else or as any sort of game, but because we wanted to.

  I dozed on his shoulder in the far backseat, vaguely aware of our position—his right arm around me; his left hand on my thigh, just beneath the hem of my skirt; his body arranged toward mine, curving to make himself a more comfortable pillow. I was aware that he spoke in hushed tones whenever Hanna asked something from the front seat. I was aware of the weight of his kiss when he would occasionally brush his lips across my hair.

  But only when he gently elbowed me awake was I aware of the truly magical thing happening: cityscapes had given way to lush wilderness. In their final throes of life before winter, maples lined the two-lane roads densely. Oranges and yellows lingered on the ground, kicked up by the wind as we passed. Faint green could still be found here and there, but otherwise the land was an array of earth tones and dwindling fire with a backdrop of bright blue sky.

  “Good God,” I whispered.

  I felt Jensen’s attention on the side of my face, but I could barely tear my eyes away.

  “Who—who—?” I began, unable to imagine who could live here and ever leave.

  “I’ve never seen you speechless,” he said, amazed.

  “You’ve known me seven days,” I reminded him wi
th a laugh, finally able to turn and look at him.

  So close. His eyes were the brightest things in the car, focused as they were on me entirely.

  “You look quite pensive,” I whispered.

  “You’re beautiful,” he said just as quietly, making his words simple with a small shrug.

  Don’t fall, Pippa.

  “We’re ten minutes out,” Will called from the driver’s seat, and I felt the energy rebound in the car as Ruby lifted herself from her nap on Niall’s lap and he stretched his long arms across the bench seat in front of us.

  A tiny town passed, and houses seemed to become spaced farther and farther apart. I thought of London, of the way it felt we were all living one on top of another, and tried to imagine a life out here.

  The simplicities of getting only what you need, of having things be well and truly quiet, of being able to see each and every star.

  And the difficulties, too, of not being able to walk to the market, not being able to trip home with a bag of takeaway or hop on the Tube, not being able to get away from the same small-town friends without a long drive.

  But you would have this at your front door every minute, and it would be ever evolving, from winter to spring, summer, and autumn. No more English gray that loomed far more frequently than the sun.

  Jensen’s fingers slid up my neck and into the hair at the nape, massaging gently as if it were something he did every day.

  Was it that I couldn’t imagine leaving this state, or just that I didn’t entirely want this trip to end?

  “I wonder if this is how my mobile phone feels when the battery dies and I leave it alone for a few hours,” I mumbled.

  Beside me, Jensen laughed. “Your random metaphors are beginning to make sense to me.”

  “I’m slowly blackening your intellect.”

  “Is that what you’re doing when you’re fucking me senseless?”

  He’d thought he said this quietly enough, but out of the corner of my eye I saw Ruby sit up straighter, pretending not to listen as she leaned toward the window. I put my finger over Jensen’s lips, shaking my head as I bit down a laugh.

  His eyes went wide in understanding, but instead of turning awkward and pulling out his phone for immediate emotional disengagement, he leaned forward, pressing his mouth to mine, trapping my fingers in between. This permission to touch when we wanted, where we wanted, was going to do me in.

  Don’t fall, Pippa.

  Don’t fall.

  “Holy shit, guys,” Will called from the front, and we all bent to peer out our respective windows.

  A private drive peeled off from the main road, and we turned down it, the van’s wheels crunching quietly over gravel and bark. The air felt cooler here, damp under the shade, the sun blotted out by the thick branches of trees overhead. It smelled of mulch and pine and the bite of decaying earth underfoot. A curved driveway spread out ahead of us, and Will slowed the van to a stop, turning off the engine.

  I nearly didn’t want to disturb the quiet that followed, didn’t want to rustle any leaves or chase off any of the birds by opening a car door. The house before us looked like something out of a movie from my childhood: a massive A-frame log cabin built of stripped maples and stained a warm, syrupy brown, with spindly saplings that dotted the perimeter and bled into the deeper shade of the forest behind it.

  “It looks even more amazing than the photos!” Ruby sang, nose pressed to the glass so she could see the whole of it, towering above where we’d parked.

  “It does!” Hanna squeaked.

  Eventually we tumbled out of the van, stretching our limbs and staring ahead of us in wonder.

  “Hanna,” Will said quietly. “Plum, you’ve outdone yourself with this.”

  She bounced on her feet proudly, staring up at him. “Yeah?”

  He smiled, and I looked away to give them privacy as something unspoken passed between them.

  Ruby took Niall’s hand and they made their way down the path to the house. We all followed, staring up at the trees, the skies, the web of hiking paths sprouting away from where we stood and into the woods.

  The closest path—the one from the parkway to the cabin—approached from the side, but the majestic front entrance dwarfed even Niall. The house was two stories, with balconies on either end. A pair of rocking chairs flanked the front porch, and a small rack of chopped firewood stood neatly stacked nearby. Anticipating our approach, the caretaker had set a warm fire in the fireplace, and through the window I spotted a bottle of red wine—open and breathing—on the table just inside the entry.

  Wherever there wasn’t wood, there was glass: windows upon windows lined the side of the house, casting the area outside the cabin in the same warm light that infused the indoors.

  Hanna pulled a key from an envelope in her vacation folder and opened the door.

  “This is fucking absurd,” I heard myself say.

  Jensen laughed beside me, and Will turned, nodding as he smiled. “Oh, completely.”

  “I mean, how the fuck am I supposed to go back to real life after this?” I asked. “I live in a shack.”

  Hanna giggled delightedly.

  “I thought we were friends, Hanna,” Ruby added, laughing. “But forever after this, the rest of my life will look bleak—and that’s on you now.”

  Hanna threw her arms around Ruby and smiled at me over her shoulder.

  “We are friends,” she said, and her smile grew when Will came up behind her, sandwiching her in. “We are best friends, and this is the best vacation of my life.”

  Nine more days, I thought, looking over at Jensen as he and Niall laughed over the absurdity of our fortune. Just over one more week with them.

  That night, as the sun set outside the broad kitchen window, we sat around the breakfast bar, drinking wine while Will cooked for us. Unbeknownst to even Hanna, he’d had groceries delivered, already having planned the meals for the week.

  While we poured wine and laughed listening to Niall read aloud the entire string of Bennett’s texts from the past week from Will’s phone, Jensen stood off to the side of the room, listening without really joining.

  “ ‘I can’t decide whether I should keep her pregnant for the next ten years solid,’ ” Niall read, “ ‘or quietly go get a vasectomy and pray that I get my wife back.’ ” He scrolled down a bit, murmuring, “That was from two days ago. This one, from last night: ‘Chloe made a pie.’ And Max replied, ‘And not to throw at you?’ ”

  Will laughed, tossing a handful of garlic into a pan of hot oil. “I told them we won’t be on cell service all week, so if they need anything, they’ll have to call the landline.”

  I wondered if Hanna’s eyes flickered to Jensen the same way mine did, watching him pull his phone from his pocket and gaze down at the screen.

  I didn’t have to ask to know what he saw there: Nothing. No bars, no 4G, no LTE, no service. Having checked the guest log after we brought our things in—I was more curious about where previous visitors had come from than about where to find the remote controls and firewood—I did happen to read that there was no Wi-Fi, either.

  At least with the winery tours, we were fairly constantly on the move, and the drama of Becky, and of the holiday girl beside him, seemed to keep Jensen from worrying too much about work. But now, I knew nine days stretched out ahead of him, blank but for whatever he chose to fill them with. I watched him react to the isolation of the cabin and the days of leisure he would be forced to endure here: his face grew tight, he slipped his phone back into his pocket, and he turned to stare out the window.

  And then he turned back, meeting my gaze as though he felt me studying him. I’m sure I looked rather intense and bullish: my jaw set, my eyes focused on him and clearly communicating what I was thinking—Put down the bloody phone, Jens, and enjoy yourself. So I smiled, winking as I lifted my glass meaningfully to my lips and took a long swallow.

  The tension in his shoulders seemed to slowly dissolve—through effort o
r some subconscious trigger being pulled, it didn’t matter to me—and he made his way across the room to stand behind me.

  “No work, you,” I said, tilting my head to grin up at him. “Sorry to be the one to tell you, there’s no lawyering allowed in here. Such a shame.”

  He shook his head with a small, tense laugh, bending to plant a kiss atop my head. But he didn’t immediately retreat, so I took advantage, leaning back against the solid, reassuring weight of him, biting back a wider smile as his arms went around me.

  The Becky excuse was hundreds of miles away, and still no one reacted like this hug was anything odd at all.

  Our first morning, after sleeping in till an unholy hour, was full of buttermilk hotcakes sloppy with preserves. Afterward we went berry picking and swimming in the wide creek, then lazed by the fire in the cabin, reading whatever fabulously terrible mysteries we could find on the shelves of the house.

  And the days blurred together a bit just like this: hikes through the woods, midday naps, and endless hours spent laughing in the kitchen together, drinking wine while Will cooked.

  The only thing missing, I felt, was some gratuitous wood chopping.

  Around day three, I knew it couldn’t go unmentioned. I suspected that, when we looked back on it all, this could be my true legacy to the trip.

  “The fire looks a bit dim,” I called out to the men, who were playing poker in the dining room.

  Ruby looked up from her book and then glanced meaningfully back and forth between where I sat, curled in a ball in the giant leather chair by the fire, and the heavy stack of wood piled in front of the fireplace.

  “Well, there’s plenty of wood,” she said, confused.

  “Ruby Stella,” I said, sotto voce. “I’m not saying you should shut your trap, but I’m not not saying it, either.”

  She clapped a hand over her mouth just as Will jogged into the room, worried. He pulled up short at the sight of the fire—positively blazing in the hearth—and the giant pile of wood next to it—not at all insufficient.

  “Sure, I can put some more wood on.” He said it without any pointed lazy ass inflection.