by Sam Cheever
Together, our bodies found the perfect pitch and danced the ideal rhythm. His hips gently rolled, sliding the hard length of him across the core of my pleasure over and over and over again in a determined but tender assault.
I felt my pleasure building along with his. The tears had long since stopped as my body warmed and melted into his, my heart finding the rhythm he gave it and happily joining with his to beat out the moments of pure joy our bodies were making together.
I gasped every time his cock surged into me and nearly cried out in despair each time he slid away. My body clenched around him, pulling him with me and beginning the long, lovely climb to the top of my climax.
My skin tingled and my body heated with sensations I’d never dreamed I’d feel.
His skin against mine was a drug. His body claimed mine as if it had always been his. And as I fell over that precipice into a tender but earth-shattering climax, I realized it was true.
I had always been his.
I just didn’t know if I ever would be again.
Chapter Four
Time Stops
I watched Bion from the bed, unwilling to get up and face real life again. He smiled down at me as he buttoned the two buttons I’d left on his shirt when I’d ripped it off.
I realized with a start that our time was probably all but over together. Our excuse for being together buried under the incredible events of the last few hours.
I felt tears threatening again and it made me mad.
Flinging aside the covers, I climbed out of my bed and went to my closet for a robe. I shoved aside the warm, frumpy fleece robe that covered me from neck to toes for the less warm but eminently sexier silk one that barely reached my knees.
Pulling it on, I busied myself tying the sash and fought the despair that was trying to batter down my defenses and overwhelm me.
I felt Bion’s warm presence well before his arms slid around me from behind. He kissed the back of my neck and I shivered, dropping my head to give him easy access. He sighed and tucked his head into my shoulder. “I don’t want to leave.”
I squeezed my eyes shut and felt myself smile. “I don’t want you to leave.”
We stood that way for a few moments, just enjoying the feel of each other’s bodies and the residual passion that coated us like an expensive lotion. But finally he sighed again and pulled away, giving me one last, exquisitely tender kiss on the back of my neck.
I shivered at the loss of his warmth. Forcing a smile onto my face, I turned around. His face was dark with worry. He touched his forehead to mine. “Are you sure you’re okay? You seem…I don’t know…melancholy is the word that leaps to mind.”
I shook my head. “I’m fine. Really. My emotions are just roiled up.” I smiled at him, putting all of my feelings into my eyes so he could see them. “It’s a good thing.”
He didn’t look as if he believed me but he put an arm around my shoulders and pulled me close. “Walk me to the door?”
I nodded and slid an arm around his waist.
At the door he leaned down to kiss me and I wrapped myself around him, determined to pull every ounce of sensation out of the kiss I could. I knew it could very well be the last kiss we shared.
Bion responded in kind and for a moment, I wasn’t sure he would actually make it out the door. But he finally pulled away and touched me on the tip of my nose with a finger, grinning. “You’re trying to keep me here.”
I grinned back. “Is it working?”
He laughed. “No. But only because I have a very important meeting that I can’t miss.” He leaned to give me a small kiss that felt like a promise. “But I’ll see you tomorrow night?”
Joy surged through me but I quickly squelched it. We’d see if he still wanted to be with me then. I knew it was just as likely he’d have moved on. I nodded and then realization hit me like a blow. “Wait…we can’t see each other tomorrow. We have no time left.”
He grinned. It was a mischievous grin that somehow lifted my spirits. “We have plenty of time, Daphne.” He left, promising to call me later in the day.
I closed the door behind him and leaned against it. With Bion gone despair washed over me again. I was sure Bion believed that I could just let the Pence match go away now that he and I had shared a few incredible hours together but he didn’t know what I knew. That our relationship, as amazing as it was, could only be a blip in his life and was destined to die out very quickly for him.
As far as he knew we had unlimited time.
But I knew differently. We had just used up the last of my excuse for spending time with him. Unbidden, my gaze slid to the small clock on the buffet table beside the door.
My eyes widened. My heart sped up. I gave a little cry and grabbed the clock. It was impossible. My eyes must be blurry from sexual overload. I squeezed them tightly shut and opened them again. I pulled the clock up to my ear thinking it had stopped. The familiar tick tock of its inner workings met my incredulous ear.
I dropped the clock back onto the table and ran to the kitchen. The clock there mirrored the one in the foyer. I ran to my bedroom and checked that clock. It said what the other clocks said.
I ran back to the foyer and stared at the door. I was flummoxed. Totally at a loss. According to all of my clocks Bion had just arrived.
No time had passed.
We still had three hours of precious time left in his pre-screening.
I shrieked with joy. The Fates had given me a gift.
Twirling in the foyer, I hugged myself and laughed.
I still had three glorious hours before I plunged…once again…into loveless mediocrity.
I had three more hours to live.
*
I bounced into the office, throwing cheerful greetings at everyone I passed and determinedly ignoring the looks I got in return.
It was the week before Valentine’s Day. The Cupid universe became fraught with stress and worry during these last days. The stress of trying to make those final matches before the fateful day had been enough to completely unhinge better Cupids than I.
But I wasn’t going to let that stop me from enjoying the short time I had left with Bion. Before entering my office I remembered a message I needed to pass on to one of my colleagues. I decided to stick my head in her door before going to my office.
Backtracking a few steps, I opened her door and stuck my head through the crack.
Athena Gooligos’ dark head flew up in surprise and something very small and very sharp whizzed past my head and embedded itself into the door by my nose.
I looked from the tiny arrow in the door to Athena and gave her a shrug and a sheepish grin. She glared at me from behind her large desk. Across from her were two clients I knew she’d been working hard to match for the past month. The clients were speaking softly together, their heads dipped toward each other in happy oblivion. I knew they were under a distraction spell so Athena could perform the arrow ceremony.
The arrow ceremony, though unrecognized as such by the clients, was the last leg of the matchmaking journey. It was the most important part and took some skill and planning on the Cupid’s part. Athena had a full schedule that day and wouldn’t thank me for putting a kink in it. But she quickly altered her expression as her clients turned toward her, their distraction spell broken by my appearance.
She smiled at me. “Hello, Daphne. What can I do for you?”
As I opened my mouth to speak, the clients turned to me. I watched the man jump and rub his thigh as Athena took the opportunity to blast him with an arrow.
I grinned at Athena and she shrugged. One type of distraction is as good as another and since the man was still holding the woman’s hand the arrow would do its work just fine. Otherwise, the fact that he’d been looking at me would have been a problem.
“I needed to talk to you about Thursday night.”
The female client quickly lost interest in me and took the opportunity provided to check out her match’s fine buttocks as he turned
in the chair to see what I was doing. She jumped too and rubbed an arm.
Athena, seeing the end of another happy match, stood up and smiled at the happy couple. “I think we’re done here.”
The couple stood, suddenly unable to look at anyone but each other. The initial effects of the arrow ceremony are a singular obsession with your match. This lasts for several hours and has been known to kick off a few families. It definitely has engaged some truly hot lovemaking episodes. The effects died down after that to become an ingrained but not at all monotonous warmth that was usually enough to keep the matched set enamored of each other for years.
Some people, like Dema Pence, seemed to throw off the ceremony’s effects very quickly and, like a druggie searching for the next fix, come back to us for more. Fortunately for us those folks are relatively rare.
I moved into the room and stood to the side of the door.
Athena ushered her clients out of her office and closed the door behind them, leaning against it wearily. “I’ll be glad when this week is over.” Her beautiful brown eyes were shadowed with fatigue and her usual stately beauty was just the tiniest bit disheveled.
I nodded only because she expected me to. Despite a huge backlog of work awaiting me, I was personally looking forward to the coming week. Or at least three hours of it.
Feeling just a tiny bit guilty for my happiness, however fleeting, I went to the coffee pot Athena kept brewing at all times and poured her a cup, handing it to her.
She gave me a tired smile. “Thanks, Daphne.” She sipped the hot coffee gratefully and headed for her desk, her long, competent strides eating up the space from the door to her large, cluttered desk quickly. She settled herself behind the desk and grabbed two files, which, I assumed, belonged to the two people who had just left. “Do you want to meet at O’Daniels on Thursday like we did last year?”
Over the years, Athena and I had made it a practice to meet before the big Valentine’s dance and share dinner and a few bolstering beverages before heading out to work on the most important matchmaking night of the year. During this cherished outing, we talked about the matches we needed to get accomplished that night and gave voice to the feelings of loneliness and despair we weren’t able to share with other Cupids, the gods or the Fates. The annual Valentine’s Day Ball always brought those feelings to the surface for us. It was good to be able to talk about them with someone and it had become a treasured event for me, as I suspected it was for Athena.
Which was why I really hated to tell her that I couldn’t do it this year.
I sat down across from her in one of the recently vacated client chairs. I watched her drink her coffee for a moment and try to organize the mess of files in front of her and then gave a nearly silent sigh.
She noticed the sigh.
Looking up, her face crumpled. “What? Don’t tell me you can’t make it Thursday.”
I made a face. “Sorry. I have to meet with a client for dinner.”
She frowned. “A client? For dinner?”
I nodded, feeling like I was perched on a bridge made of eggshells that spanned a killing precipice. Sharks circled the water below.
“He’s threatened to call in his lawyer if I don’t finish the pre-screening and he wants Thursday night to finish it.”
Athena’s gorgeous face darkened in anger. “What a jerk.”
I just shrugged, biting back a sudden need to defend Bion.
“Why is he insisting on the hours?” The anger faded quickly as realization replaced it. Athena had been on the receiving end of a few human male obsessions. She’d barely survived one of them. “Oh my gods, Daphne, he thinks he’s in love with you, doesn’t he?”
I hesitated, if I told her she was right it would cheapen what Bion and I had shared. And even though I knew how this was gonna all play out, I wanted to ignore that for as long as possible and pretend, at least to myself, that I could be happy and in love.
But her piercing brown gaze was relentless and finally I nodded.
Athena let her breath explode as she sat back hard in her black leather chair. “I’m sorry, honey. I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy.”
I felt tears flooding toward my eyes. Not because of my predicament with Bion but because of Athena’s assumption that it would all come to no good. I shrugged and let the tears flow. I couldn’t stop them anyway.
So much for my good mood.
I swiped at the tears and stood, sniffling daintily. “Anyway, I can’t dissuade him from the evening so I’ll be going to the dance with him.”
Athena’s eyes widened, “You’re going to the dance?”
I nodded, smiling stupidly through the tears. “Technically I’ll be working and Bion’s insisting…”
“Bion?”
Oops.
She cocked her dark head at me, her beautiful eyes filling with pity. I wanted to slap her for that pity. “Daphne, please tell me you aren’t falling for this guy.”
I turned toward the door, suddenly frantic to escape. “Don’t be silly, Athena, I’m not that stupid.”
I almost made it to the door. “Daphne?”
I stopped, hand on knob, reluctant to turn back around. “Yes?”
“You know how these things turn out, right?”
I didn’t trust my voice. I nodded and left.
*
I had three sets of matches on my schedule for the morning. My thoughts roiled as I performed the arrow ceremonies. In fact, I was so distracted by the time I reached my last ceremony that I missed my male match’s thigh with my little arrow and hit him right in the crotch. He squeaked and leapt from his chair holding his groin.
His eyes never left the woman in the other chair, his gaze scouring over her like he would eat her right there on the spot.
Interesting. Apparently if you hit them in the manly protuberance the reaction is even stronger.
Good to know.
Bad for any future, difficult clients of the male persuasion.
Fortunately I got the arrow into the female match right away and the male’s socially unacceptable crotch grabbing activity was excused away in a haze of love and arrow-induced lust.
She just thought he was hungry for her love.
The newly matched pair left quickly, practically devouring each other on the way out. I hoped I hadn’t damaged anything he might need in the next few hours.
Figuring I’d done enough damage there for the moment, I grabbed up two files that required my presence at a client site and headed out.
I climbed into my car, a dark blue Solstice GXP, and headed toward the client’s place of work, a construction site for a new high-rise building downtown.
Sometimes it’s all but impossible to get both matches into a room at the same time for the final arrow ceremony. We don’t like to do it but occasionally we are forced, due to a high volume of matches or a shortage of time, to perform the ceremony on the matches separately. This can be a tricky process and requires some creativity on the Cupid’s part.
This match was a particularly difficult one. He owned a very highly regarded construction company and took an active role in every aspect of his business. He worked all hours and when he wasn’t working he was constantly on his cell phone giving instructions and putting out fires.
She owned the largest and most prestigious preschool in the city. Maybe even the country. Her clients included the children of rock stars and politicians. Like her match, she was also a workaholic, catering to her high-powered clients’ eclectic time schedules and sometimes only returning home in the wee hours of the morning to grab a few hours of sleep and “her” time.
The two of them had been unable to keep relationships in the past because of their need to put their jobs first above everything else. They had both wanted someone who would be there for those brief respites in their work lives and not want more.
They were a perfect match for each other.
However, they did present a challenge for me.
I stopped
the Solstice a couple of blocks away from the construction site and climbed out, locking it with my electronic key as I walked away. I was pretty sure it wouldn’t get hit by a flying brick or anything that far away. I clutched a file under one arm and swung my purse up over the other shoulder.
As I walked I inhaled the smell of freshly cut lumber warming in the sun. I’d always liked that smell. It went well with the smell of hardworking male.
The building that was under construction rose high above my head and was still growing. Its skeletal form buzzed with activity. It looked like at least a hundred men skittered across its bony face, pounding, sawing, welding or just observing.
They all wore hard hats. Almost all of them wore jeans and short-sleeved t-shirts. Only one of them wore a suit—minus the jacket—and a tie.
Always the tie.
Chet Adkins ran a tight ship and he’d been known to fire workers on the spot for doing something he didn’t like on one of his projects. But he expected as much from himself. And he was admired by his men for that.
Right at that moment it looked like old Chet was about twenty floors up, walking along a naked metal beam in his dress shoes and suit, looking like he’d just hopped out of Gentlemen’s Quarterly magazine. Except for the hard hat of course.
I sighed and touched the muscular biceps of a nearby worker. “Excuse me. I need to speak to Mr. Adkins.”
The man’s sun-drenched face split in a grin. His hazel eyes slid upward, crinkling expansively at the corners from sun and what appeared to be a healthy sense of humor. “I hope you can climb.” He shook his head at my stupidity and turned away.
Okay, that just pissed me off. I grabbed the hard hat off his head before he could get away and dropped it onto my head, turning toward the building.
I could damn well climb. Damn him.
“Hey!” the jokester behind me objected.
