“I want all the tomorrows you can give me.”
“Yes,” Holly murmured. “They’re yours.”
Reyna kissed the corner of her mouth and Holly forgot where she was until a loudly cleared throat brought her back to the time and place.
Nancy, looking both curious and congratulatory, was leaning on Holly’s boxes. “Don’t mind me.”
Holly disentangled herself from Reyna. It was no easy thing to do when her body didn’t want to listen. “Nancy, this is Reyna. I didn’t know she was meeting me.” She could hardly explain that she and Reyna hadn’t communicated at all for the last four months and in less than a minute had picked up exactly where they had left off.
Nancy shook Reyna’s hand. Nancy had heard about Reyna on their first drive to the airport, four months ago. “Why don’t I take charge of your stuff and you two have a, um, reunion.”
“I can’t do that to you,” Holly protested. It would be rude. “You’re not my personal stevedore.”
“So you’ll owe me,” Nancy said. “Besides, you haven’t seen the piece I decided to paint on your bedroom wall, and I want you in a good mood when you do. I had all this leftover blue and red and came up with the most bitchin’ purple but we’ll talk about that later. Really, I don’t mind, especially if you put the time to good use.” Her eyes were twinkling.
They all helped get the heavy cart out through the crowds and into the short-term lot. Once the boxes and suitcases were loaded Holly waved good-bye to Nancy, and turned beet red when Nancy whispered that she wanted all the details later.
She looked at Reyna after Nancy had backed out, and all the desire was there. But there was more. There was time for details. Time for honesty. “I’m here for four months,” she said. “Then I go back for six months or so. Then I’m back here again for a while. It’ll be that way for the next two or three years. I might… I might have good reasons to settle there.”
“I understand,” Reyna said. She was still on the other side of the parking space and it was entirely too far away for Holly’s liking.
Holly crossed the distance that separated them and smoothed Reyna’s cheek. Her thumb caressed Reyna’s lips and was quickly kissed. “I wish Australia was closer.”
Reyna moaned as Holly’s hand slid down her neck to her chest, to her stomach. “You have a life to get on with, I understand. I won’t stand in your way when you have to go, wherever it may be, with whomever you choose.”
Holly’s hand stilled. Hadn’t Reyna understood what Holly meant by all her tomorrows? “What are you asking for? What are you giving me? I can’t be confused about it. I need to know.”
“All you want of me, of this,” Reyna answered. She kissed Holly with a bruising hunger and Holly felt her body ignite. Reyna pushed her against a hard concrete column and her mouth was demanding, then tender. She broke away with a low moan. “I’m sorry. I want you so much.”
“No,” Holly said. All the blood in her head had drained to places south. She felt faint and yet she could still think. “No,” she repeated.
“Did I hurt you? What”
“It’s not good enough.” Holly tried to steady her voice. Her heart and mind were in total agreement about the future.
Reyna looked wounded to her core, and turned so pale that Holly was afraid she would faint. “I misunderstood, then.”
“Look at me.” Holly captured Reyna’s face in her hands. “I’m going with you tonight, wherever you want to go. I know that before you’re done with me I’ll be screaming and dying, and begging, and I’ll do all I can to make you feel the same way, and there will be nothing you ask of me I won’t try, and I’ll learn every inch of you again, and it will be magnificent.”
Reyna was moving against her as she spoke and Holly could hardly see for the pulsing between her legs.
“But it won’t be good enough. Because as bad as I want it, I’m not going with you if you didn’t mean you wanted all my tomorrows, even when I’m away. Because that’s what I want. No matter how long we have to be apart, I can bear it if I know that I have your future. I give you mine, right now. It’s the only thing of value we can give each other.”
Reyna’s eyes shimmered. “I didn’t dare hope. I can’t imagine what you thought of me, the way I lied, the hypocrisy of it all.”
“We’re agreed on tomorrow, right. All the tomorrows?”
Reyna nodded and swooped in for another hard kiss.
“Then we’ll talk about that tomorrow. Tomorrow I’ll prove to you that I’m not just about sex. Tomorrow. Because tonight sex is all I can think about, you and sex and you ”
Reyna’s mouth was on her, traveling from forehead to chin, to her throat. “We have to get going or we’ll get arrested.”
Holly murmured her agreement, but it was several minutes before they parted, clothing askew.
Reyna pulled her quickly toward the elevator to the next level of the garage, then toward the section where motorcycles were parked. The Virago was at the end.
“You really weren’t planning on suitcases, were you?”
Reyna looked chagrined. “I didn’t think for a minute that you would want me. I just had to see you. I wasn’t even going to speak to you, but then you saw me.” She laughed shakily. “But I had hopes of seeing you soon.” She unlocked new compartments on each side of the bike and withdrew two helmets and two leather jackets.
Holly blinked away tears. “You sure know how to romance a girl.” She shrugged into one of the jackets and then slid across the bike seat.
Reyna bent over her to secure the helmet, then kissed her again. “Would you mind going to the same place as before? I want to finally have a tonight become a tomorrow there. I think I’ll believe it then, that the past has actually led to this future. With you.”
Holly wrapped her arms tightly around Reyna’s waist and let the wind blow away the past. She felt fused to Reyna again, one body, one heart, one skin between them. Tomorrow was subject to random chaos her intellect told her it was unquantifiable. But she had the constant she needed to solve the equation, at least for herself. The constant was their future. It was the only solution that mattered.
Substitute for Love Page 27
