by Kim Baldwin
“No arguments. Get your butt out here.”
“As your resident medical professional, I concur with Dita,” Karla said. “Go home, and go to bed. That’s an order.”
“What’s up with you both?” Pasha asked. “Are you high or something? I said I’m fine.”
“Dang but you’re stubborn.” Dita frowned. “Do I have to threaten to fire you?”
Megan started giggling, and both Dita and Karla immediately glared at her.
“What in the hell’s going on?” Pasha demanded.
“Should we tell her?” Karla asked.
“She’d kill us,” Dita said.
“She’ll kill us worse if she has to wait much longer.” Megan giggled again.
Finally, she got a clue. “Emery’s here?” Her voice emerged as an excited squeak, and they all roared with laughter.
Pasha flew out the door and ran home, taking the steps to her apartment two at a time. She tried the door—unlocked. Dita had an extra key. With the power so strong, Emery had to be inside.
She took a few deep breaths to calm her raging heart and turned the knob. The living room blazed with candlelight, and soft music emanated from her speakers. Sara Bareilles, the same album she’d been listening to, and singing along with, the first time she met Emery face-to-face a lifetime ago.
“Are you going to come in, or just stand there all night?”
Pasha turned in the direction of Emery’s voice as she stepped forward and closed the door.
Emery stood in the doorway of her bedroom, watching her with a bemused expression. Her aura shone gold.
“You lied to me,” Pasha said with no trace of rebuke.
“I wanted to surprise you, though I figured you’d know when I got in. Kind of hard to hide from your power.” As Emery slowly closed the distance between them, the bemused look in her eyes became molten heat. “I’ve missed you like crazy.”
Pasha flew into her arms, triggering a full-body shock of voltage that made them jump, then laugh as they hugged each other tight. And then they kissed, deep and passionate kisses conveying the depth of their desire. When they broke apart to breathe, she had to lean on Emery for support.
“Seems like I’ve wanted you forever. I haven’t been able to think of anything else,” Emery said. “Those days in the hospital just crawled.”
“I’ve been running nonstop, but I thought about you just as much.”
“By the way, I told Dita everything you did for us, and she happily obliged me with a small favor,” Emery said. “You have the day off tomorrow to stay in bed with me.”
“Mmm. I like the sound of that.” Pasha drew back from their embrace to look up at her. “Are you well enough?”
“Clean bill of health. The doctors were amazed, actually, at how quickly I’ve healed. They just kept me as a precaution.” Emery kissed her again. “Nothing’s stopping us now, Pasha. We have all the time in the world.”
As Emery put her arm around Pasha and led her into the bedroom, Pasha felt a pang of bittersweet longing. They didn’t have all the time in the world. Emery was still only a temporary fixture in her life and would move on. If not next week or next month, certainly too soon.
She wouldn’t, however, let that realization mar the happiness of this moment.
Emery had placed candles around the bedroom as well and set a bottle of wine in an ice bucket on her dresser beside two goblets. Though Pasha had made the bed before she’d left, Emery had folded back the sheets invitingly.
“Nervous?” she asked as she took Pasha into her arms beside the bed.
“Excited, not nervous. Well, maybe a little. You?”
“I’m nervous about my scars. There’s a lot you haven’t seen.”
“Emery, Emery, Emery.” She made the kind of tsk-tsk sound a parent makes with a naughty child. “I thought we’d talked about that.” Very slowly, she reached beneath Emery’s turtleneck, caressing her abdomen and sides as she pulled the garment up and over her head. Then she gently kissed the scar at Emery’s throat. “These are part of who you are. You don’t have anything to be nervous about.”
She ran her fingers lightly over the thin pale lines that marred the smooth skin of her abdomen as she openly admired Emery’s breasts, framed by a lace-edged, crème, satin bra barely covering her nipples. “God, you’re beautiful.” Her fingers found a slight roughness, and when she glanced down, she marveled at how well the puncture wound had healed—now just a faint red mark about the size of a dime.
“You have any idea what you’re doing to me?” Emery asked, her voice husky with desire.
“I have an idea of what I’d like to do to you, but it involves far less clothes for both of us.” Pasha started to unbuckle Emery’s belt, but Emery stopped her.
“Me first.”
Pasha acceded with a smile. As Emery removed her boots, socks, jeans, top, and finally bra and panties, the growing ardor in her eyes warmed Pasha.
“Amazing.” Emery’s loud, ragged breathing was audible.
“My turn.” Pasha unfastened Emery’s jeans and slowly unzipped the fly seductively, then playfully pushed Emery down onto the bed. After she removed Emery’s boots and socks, she grasped the cuffs of the jeans and tugged.
Emery lifted her hips to allow the jeans to slide off and away to reveal thick scars badly marring her lean, softly muscled legs in several places. Emery watched her expectantly and whispered, “What are you thinking?”
“Only that I wish I could have been there for you through all this.” Pasha caressed the scars lightly as she climbed up onto the bed, hovering over Emery on her hands and knees. “I couldn’t be more turned on right now, Emery, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
The niggling doubt in Emery’s eyes evaporated, leaving only intense arousal. She pulled Pasha down on top of her and captured her mouth with her own, probing deeply with her tongue. Pasha kissed her fiercely as Emery’s thigh slipped between her legs and rocked against her.
Pasha’s heartbeat accelerated and her mind slipped into a fog, overcome with the sensations pouring through her body, both from arousal and the current of their connection. Her senses, especially her sense of touch, were so painfully heightened she was afraid she would come too soon.
With a groan, she pulled away, breathing hard, her chest pounding. “Get these off,” she demanded, pulling at Emery’s lace panties.
Emery sat up and obligingly shed her bra and panties, then they crawled beneath the sheets and Emery covered Pasha with her body.
“Do you feel it?” Emery asked, her face inches from Pasha’s as they gazed into each other’s eyes. “It’s incredible, but I can’t describe it. Your power’s doing this, isn’t it? Heightening everything a hundredfold.”
“I feel it, Emery. But it’s not just the power. I’ve never felt like this with anyone else. It’s my power combined with your energy or something. It’s us, not just me.”
“I can’t get enough of it.” Emery kissed her again and their naked bodies melted together.
Every inch of Pasha’s flesh that touched Emery’s came alive, the nerve endings singing with joy and arousal. She could feel herself grow wet as Emery deepened the kiss and began to rock against her, their legs entwined. The pressure for release built until it was unbearable. She broke the kiss. “Please, Emery, I’m so wet. Touch me.”
“I know. I can feel how close you are.” Emery kissed her neck, nipping softly on the delicate skin. She shifted her body and moved lower with more kisses until her mouth closed over Pasha’s left nipple and sucked.
A bolt of pleasure tore through Pasha and her muscles went rigid, her back arching off the bed as she moaned. She gripped the sheets when Emery moved to give equal attention to her right nipple, so close to climax she needed only a bit more stimulation to push her over.
Emery seemed to sense that, too, because she continued moving down Pasha’s body until she reached the juncture of her thighs. She inhaled deeply as she looked up at Pasha, her pupils huge. “I
love how you smell. How you feel. How you move.” She claimed Pasha with her mouth, teasing her with her tongue. “And how you taste.”
Pasha thrilled at the exquisite agony of trying to prolong her pleasure, but she was powerless against the magic of Emery’s tongue. She cried out as she crested and collapsed back against the bed, reeling from the magnitude of her orgasm.
Emery crawled back up the bed and curled protectively around her until Pasha’s heart calmed and her breathing slowed to near normal. “Intense, huh?”
“You could feel that?” Pasha asked.
“Sense, more than feel. I can’t explain it.”
“I think,” Pasha said as she rolled Emery on to her back, “that we should just enjoy it.”
“I’m all for that,” Emery said, grinning up at her.
Pasha put her mouth beside Emery’s ear. “Tell me what you want,” she whispered seductively.
“Everything you do is wonderful. Every touch, every word, every nuance of the way you move. I’m so pent-up right now from feeling you come that it won’t take much.”
“No?” Pasha kissed Emery below her ear, then at the base of her throat, circling the prominent scar with the tip of her tongue. “Never rush the sweetest things in life, Emery. Savor them.” She worked Emery higher with delicate kisses and nips, exploring her body with her mouth. Collarbone. Magnificent breasts. Flat abdomen. When she reached a scar, she moved over it lightly with her tongue, often eliciting a groan of pleasure from Emery.
She took her time with her teasing touches until Emery’s muscles grew taut and the power told her orgasm was imminent. Parting Emery’s legs, she delivered her with fevered strokes of her tongue, her arms clasped around Emery’s thighs.
They curled together, Pasha snuggling into the crook of Emery’s shoulder in a reverse of their positions in the plane. Beneath her cheek, she could feel the strong pounding of Emery’s heart begin to calm. Neither spoke for several minutes.
Emery broke the quiet. “Could I stay here with you? Move out of the Den, I mean?”
“I meant to ask you to, but wasn’t sure you’d want to.”
“Silly girl. Who wouldn’t want this?”
Who wouldn’t indeed? Pasha thought. This was heaven on earth. She never wanted to move. But Emery would, one day. Probably one day soon. Living together until then would make their parting all the more impossible. Her eyes grew moist and she blinked to keep from crying.
“Pasha? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Tell me.”
“I don’t want to ruin this moment.”
“You can’t. Impossible. Tell me.”
Pasha caressed Emery’s stomach. “I’ll miss you, that’s all…when you leave here and go off bungee-jumping and God knows what else on the other side of the planet. I know it’s stupid to think about such things right now. I should be fully in the moment, not worrying about the future.”
Regardless of what Emery might do or think about what she said, Pasha had to speak from her heart. She rose on one elbow and looked down at Emery. “I’ve believed, from the first moment I saw you, Emery, we’re destined to be together. Not just for a few weeks, or months, but always. Getting to know you only strengthened my belief. And now, after making love? I’m so hopelessly in love with you I can’t bear the thought of being apart from you.”
Emery pulled Pasha close and hugged her fiercely, Pasha’s words reverberating through her mind, soul, and body. The current shooting through her was even more powerful than her orgasm, making her boneless with joy and filling the hollow emptiness with her since birth.
Being in love felt like this? She marveled. Suddenly all those stupid love songs made sense, and all her illusions about herself drifted away.
Her epiphany in the hospital during her long recovery—to change her life, chase her dreams—seemed minor league compared to the revelation that she loved Pasha so completely she couldn’t fathom life without her.
“When I checked out of the hospital in Sofia,” Emery said, “the doctors told me I’d never be a hundred percent. They said I’d defied all odds just by walking and would have to rely on painkillers the rest of my life just to do normal things. I didn’t believe them, not until months passed and nothing changed. I’d plateaued in my healing, but I didn’t want to admit it.” She lightly stroked Pasha’s back. “Then I met you, my little miracle worker. You don’t have to convince me we belong together. When I’m with you, I forget all the pain. Not just the physical kind, either, but the emotional kind—the pain of knowing I’m different from everybody else, incapable of love.”
“What are you saying?” Pasha asked.
“I can’t be without you. And I’m so glad to finally know what it’s like to fall in love. I’m crazy about you, Pasha. Surely you know that?”
Pasha answered with a passionate kiss, the prelude to another round of passion that lasted well into the night.
Hours later, Emery dozed briefly, and when she awoke, the other side of the bed was empty. “Pasha?”
“In the kitchen. You hungry?”
“Starved.”
“Midnight snack coming right up.”
Emery’s idea of a late-night snack was potato chips, maybe, or a bowl of ice cream. Pasha’s was a gourmet omelet with bacon, herbs, and aged Gouda cheese, served on a tray with fresh-squeezed orange juice and some of the Den’s homemade sourdough toast.
“So, any idea where we go from here?” Pasha asked as they fed each other playfully.
“I’ve been thinking about that,” Emery said. “Here’s my idea. We stay here through the high season—say, April or May through October, right?”
Pasha nodded.
“November to March, we travel. Together. Do all the things on my itinerary. Well, except maybe for the bungee jumping and cliff diving and a couple of other things too ambitious for my battered body. Which, by the way, is feeling ever so splendid right now.”
“I’d love to, but—”
“But?”
“Dita would give me the time off. We don’t have much to do over the winter and will have a part-timer beginning soon, anyway. But I can’t afford it, Emery. I mean, I have some savings, sure. But airfare these days—”
“I guess I forgot to tell you I have something like six-million frequent-flier miles,” Emery said. “Which will keep us in first-class tickets for a long, long time. And you’d be surprised how cheap you can see the world if you’re willing to settle for a clean bed instead of a four-star hotel, and have a baguette and brie for lunch instead of steak. So, you game?”
Pasha pounced on her with a kiss.
“Whoa!” Emery juggled the tray to keep the juice from spilling. “Don’t be wasting this omelet. I take it that’s a yes?”
“An absolutely, positively ecstatic yes.” Pasha took another forkful of omelet and held it up toward Emery’s mouth. “I can’t wait to see where we’re—” Suddenly, she blanched white and dropped the fork, her mouth a large circle.
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
With shaking hands, Pasha wordlessly got a mirror from her bedside table. “You want more evidence we belong together?” She held it up in front of Emery’s face.
The scar beside Emery’s lip had vanished.
Epilogue
Sofia, Bulgaria
Eight months later, February 2012
“Give me your hand?” Emery said as the taxi started away from the curb.
“We can turn around. You don’t have to do this.” Pasha had sensed Emery’s unease and trepidation building as soon as they got off the flight from Moscow, but it began to calm with her touch.
“No. This…” Emery squeezed her hand. “Is all I need.”
Pasha had been surprised when Emery said she wanted to stop in Sofia on the way to their Kenyan safari. She rarely talked about her accident. And when she did, she always had nightmares that could only be assuaged by spooning closely. The experience clearly still haunted her.
In the three months they’d been traveling since the trip season ended, they’d visited twenty-four countries on four continents, stayed in countless hotels, and seen more of the world’s wonders than Pasha had imagined she’d encounter in her lifetime. Each and every place had been a treasure, the joy of discovery redoubled by sharing it with Emery, her soul mate and the world’s best traveling companion. She had no idea Emery had studied so many languages until she saw her in action, and Emery always seemed to know where to find the perfect romantic restaurant or quaint café, no matter where they went.
But Emery had never gotten on an elevator. Not once. Sometimes they really had to go out of their way to avoid them. The upside was they had learned to travel extremely light, shedding clothes when they needed to and replacing them with new. And taking all those stairs had given Pasha legs of steel and a stamina she’d never known.
Emery had said, “I need to do this. I never thought I’d be able to. But I think I can, if you’re with me. I need the closure. It’s the only thing I’m afraid of…aside from losing you.”
And Pasha sensed she was ready, despite the simmering undercurrent of terror emanating from Emery’s hand. The healing power of their connection had transformed her in ways neither of them could have imagined. She hadn’t taken a single pain pill since the first night they’d made love. She didn’t walk up the stairs. She ran. And, most astounding, the scars had faded from her body, even the round, rough one at the base of her throat, which had taken the longest.
“We’re nearly there,” Emery said as they passed over yellow-cobblestone streets, the tires of the taxi making a soft thump-thump-thump that sounded like Emery’s racing heart.
Pasha put her arm around Emery’s shoulder, closed her eyes, and pushed her power into her lover.
It had become more focused, more intense, as if Emery’s energy fed it. Pasha had begun to learn how to use it to see things more clearly, to sense when they might be in danger, and to direct its healing warmth into Emery when she needed it.
“Thanks, love,” Emery whispered.
The taxi stopped in front of an upscale hotel, the Arena di Serdica, as snow began to fall.
