by Elise Faber
“Hands on the headboard, Mrs. Stephens.”
The tip of her tongue danced along her bottom lip, flicking off tiny bits of frosting as her eyelids fluttered. Her nails made a scraping sound as she gripped the wood. “What are you going to do to me?”
Brock smiled and settled himself lower over her body. “Anything I want.”
Keely sighed as his lips caressed, taking the treats and leaving nothing but pleasure behind. One bite, then two became twelve. She seemed to vibrate with an anticipation that mirrored his own. He slowed down as he moved lower, taking his time to enjoy every last morsel.
Drops of cream consumed in long slow sucks, sticky pecan pie filling nibbled away, bits of praline gobbled off, the puddle of lemon ice resting in the space between her belly button and the valley between her hipbones had been slurped away with a contented sigh.
“Enough,” she moaned, the headboard creaking as her arms shook with the stress of holding back.
“I’ll never get enough of you,” he murmured against her stomach that had started to rise and fall with panting breaths. “And you of me.”
“Yes,” she whispered as he twisted the bottle slowly back and forth against her. He gently tugged it free, and she gasped. He caressed her cold flesh, and she moaned. Her skin had been chilled by the golden liquid and glass but not numbed. His every nerve ached for her inner warmth and other things.
When Brock’s superheated breath brushed her wet skin, she arched, and her eyes grew glassy, lost to the sensation. He stilled her with one hand to her hips. Breath, tongue, skin, the rasp of his beard on the inside of her thighs. With each flickering touch and hot pierce of tongue, she writhed and drove him faster and higher. With a shudder, she turned boneless and electric all at the same time.
“Keely,” Brock’s voice somehow cut through the heavy fog they lay wrapped in, but she couldn’t seem to open her eyes.
“Hmmmm?”
His hands drifted over her body, each connection solidifying the thing he wanted most. To be with her. To be hers always. To be owned by her and let her own him right back in every way possible.
“I love you, cher.”
Her sigh caressed his ear as he closed that last door between them and claimed her again. When he lay shivering with her fingers raking gently through his hair, he not only heard the echo of her words but felt them in the pieces of his soul.
CHAPTER TWELVE
A pale sliver of sunrise spilled over the curve of her lower back as he drew a fingertip down her spine to where the sweat-dampened sheet lay pooled on her hips. They’d shoved the chocolate and pie-smeared blanket to the floor to stretch out on the bare sheets. The smoldering ache of missing her roared to life under his ribs and burned its way deeper than ever before into the core of his broken soul.
How will I be able to endure this again? Tiny cracks had already started to weep misery. A slow dripping torture of she’s leaving… she’s leaving…
Every year, every single time he’d had to watch her walk away in the morning, the parts of his heart that kept him sane cracked a little more. And nothing could stick the pieces back together, nothing but seeing her again the next year. Even then, the shards never exactly fit. The gaps left behind seeped darkness and that terrified him.
What if there’s too many broken pieces that I can’t fix without her?
Brock laid his cheek on her pillow, tips of their noses almost touching, so that her breath brushed his lips.
What if I forget this face because everything is all scrambled by time and missing her?
Keely’s lips parted as she had obviously reached the step in sleep that swims the mind closer to waking. He could sense her coming back, slow, heavy and sated with pleasure, as one side of her mouth curled into a smile.
“Bmhpph,” she mumbled and tucked one arm farther under the pillow.
Was that my name on her lips? His heart stuttered. Does she dream about me?
In all their secret nights together, he’d never paused to think of her with someone else during the 364 days they were apart. Until this moment. The horrible loneliness waited to take him back, so could he really fault her for taking comfort in another? After all, their deal had been until death do us part. And it had.
“Brock,” she whispered, and her hand slid across the bed as her eyes opened.
The first solid edge of sunrise over the Gulf broke as she moved up onto one elbow and turned toward the window. When she faced him again, tears hovered on her lids.
“I don’t want you to watch,” he whispered and pressed a kiss to her forehead before sliding over to climb out of bed. He had only a few more minutes before the sun would complete its rise. “I’ll go.”
“No wait,” she said and grabbed his hand. “There’s one last thing I need to tell you.”
He kissed her fingers to distract himself from the terror squeezing his ribs. “Okay.”
As the sun climbed past the halfway mark, the first sensation of lightness seeped into his bones. The nothingness of his fade loomed behind his eyes, made of shadows and peace, yet so much isolation too. It would come, he couldn’t stop it, but he’d damn sure save her from having to watch.
She pulled on his hand. “Come back to bed.”
“Keely,” he said and nearly choked on her name. “Please. We have to hurry.” A desperate need to run and hide swept over him as she tightened an arm around his neck. “It’s too much.”
“No, Brock, it’s okay,” she said with a sad smile. “This year you can stay.” She swallowed, and her throat clicked as a tear spilled over her lashes. “We both can.”
Keely reached over the edge of the bed and brought her bag to rest between them. She untangled a wooden box from the material, its lid delicately carved, yet it looked smooth. She stroked a hand over the lid before tugging loose the ribbon’s knot holding it closed.
The reek of magic coming off the thing zinged along his every nerve. Not the throat-closing tickle he’d encountered before. This one called to him sweetly with the voice of the most precious lover. He wanted to lay his cheek on it so maybe that magical sense of joy might soak into his skin.
“There’s no more debt for us, my love,” she whispered as she lifted the lid. The blow back of whatever had been trapped in the box washed over him in a mind-numbing rush, and he was left blinking and wordless. Newborn and raw. With the urge to bawl like a baby so thick in his throat he didn’t dare try to say a thing as he stared into the box.
The two pieces of metal glinted dully in the low light. Brock’s Purple Heart lay nestled securely in the velvet right next to a second one. He’d never seen his, of course. They were a shade darker than the irises he remembered from his grandmother’s garden, shiny yet seeming to tremble with power.
“Keely,” he said, finally clearing the clog of whatever magic this was from his throat. “What are you saying?” He frowned as the remaining lip of the sun broke free of its slumber and flooded the room with light. Red, gold, and pale peach slinked into the corners and chased the last of the shadows away until they lay bathed in nothing but daylight.
“My last tour went badly.” She smiled at the box’s contents before meeting his panicked gaze. “We were called out to assist in a village that had been hit really hard in the last set of raids. It wasn’t a large place, and we’d gotten the word it had been secured the day before and to go ahead and move in. There was a school, and their roof collapsed, all of the children were injured. Taking care of them was our main objective after our troops were triaged. A little girl, no more than seven, she was my patient nearly the whole time. She’d been hit by debris so she wasn’t critical, but she was terrified and alone.” Keely’s eyes drifted over the room as if she were seeing another place, a room filled with the cries of the wounded and dying that called so strongly to that side of her nature. “I saw the insurgents rush the building we were using as medical.” Her hand shook as she brushed a piece of hair off her cheek and tucked it behind her ear. “There was no time
to get the patients to safety. Once the gunfire started, it was too late anyway.”
Brock’s throat squeezed to the point he couldn’t have said a word even if he might have been able to muster the brains to form them.
“When I threw myself on top of her, the vest completely shielded the girl,” she whispered. “But not me.”
“The kid, she lived?”
Keely nodded with a sadder smile this time. “Her name is Maria. One day, she’ll go back to that school as a teacher for all the other little girls like her.”
Brock’s brain buzzed with a million questions. “How did you get back here?”
“Higgins and Glenda,” Keely said. “She used her particular set of skills to pave the way for me to come home to you on our anniversary if something happened to me.”
“Keely,” Brock said, his panic now palpable between them. Their time was almost up. “I’ll have to stay here in the hotel. Where will you go? What will happen to you? To us!”
“Easy, love,” she crooned and stroked his cheek. “I’m not going anywhere. Saving Maria by my sacrifice earned me major points.” She pointed to the ceiling and wiggled her eyebrows. “So I used them for us and bought back the broken pieces of your soul.”
The sheet that had been tented by her body slowly drifted down through her faded torso until it lay still on the mattress. The bullet wound scars had started to rise on her skin. They went from white lines he’d paid no attention to earlier to a blush of pink-starburst exit wounds across her chest, and then to grayish purple slashes that had been stitched closed in death. Emotions, so many Brock had no names for them, welled and spilled out from his core in a wave of tremors as he stroked one of her scars with a shaking finger.
“When I said until death us do part I lied,” she whispered and kissed his lips that had started to quiver with shock and were wet with his tears. He blinked in surprise as hers stayed firmly under his this time, even as his own fade began to take hold. “Now not only did I get the chance to love you for my whole life, but into death and beyond.”
EPILOGUE
It had been a very long night but worth the effort if everything happened to go as planned. Knowing Brock Stephens, Higgins had no guarantee it would, the dirty bastard. For Keely’s sake, he hoped and prayed their plans had now come to fruition. Higgins opened the suite’s door to the quiet shush of the air conditioner, the lingering spiciness of love, and the bouquet of a very expensive champagne. Sunlight blanketed the room in glaringly bright light and heat from the open curtains. The room sat empty except for a key card and a small wooden box on the bedside table with a folded piece of hotel stationary balanced on top. The paper opened and closed in the turn of the fan as if it were a lazy butterfly. Opening the box, the two hearts winked back at him with purple light. He smiled and tucked the box safely into his breast pocket. He laughed as he read the note then closed the door with a final click of a job well done.
Dearest Higgins,
Thank you for everything, and WE will see you next year on our anniversary.
Love,
B & K
WISHES
By C.C. Ravanera
Lovingly dedicated to my sister Mrs Elvira Calahi Tintero,
one of the bravest women I know.
CHAPTER ONE
Michele
Crying would not solve my problem right now.
Frowning in confusion, I looked down on my map for the hundredth time. I was so sure I followed the directions to the hotel to the letter but after scouting establishment windows on every block, checking all the signposts, asking the endless throngs of people walking up and down the street, I still ended up in front of the wrong hotel.
To make matters worse, a wheel popped off one of my suitcases when the bus driver carelessly dropped it on the ground. This was just before he announced he couldn’t enter the French Quarter after five o’clock (everyone knew that, why didn’t I?) and cheerfully drove away. So, I had been dragging my things up and down five blocks for the past hour with my trusty tote bag slung over my shoulder.
Blinking away tears of frustration, I craned my neck to read the sign above me: Hotel Toujours.
My knowledge of foreign language wasn’t very good but that didn’t sound like Noveau Hotel to me, which was the hotel I had booked a few weeks ago. Sighing, I looked at my wristwatch and the digits 11:03 blinked back at me. P.M.
I was beyond tired. God only knew how long I’d been sitting in that bus to get here, followed by the shock of having to drag my belongings for several blocks over, but still, I kept going. Now, the voice in my head that had been guiding me throughout this journey whispered: “Even if you’re not at the hotel you’d made reservations with, you’re where you’re meant to be. New Orleans. You’ve made it!”
A smile crossed my lips. Yes, I made it.
Finally accepting my fate, I hitched up my tote bag higher on my shoulder and prepped myself to pull my heavy bags again. Maybe one more go. I think I missed the sign of my hotel because I had been gawking at the people walking past me. Some of the clothes were very… educational.
Then without any warning, the heavens opened up and poured rain from above. Lots of it.
Shrieking, I hurriedly pulled at the handle bars of my luggage and forced my way into the doorway of the hotel in front of me. Even though both bags announced they were waterproof, I had some precious equipment in my belongings which I didn’t want to get wet. Then I found out that forcibly dragging two big suitcases through a doorway wasn’t a clever thing to do when one of the handle bars came off… from the one with the good wheels.
“Oh please, no.” I cried out to nobody in particular while using the other bag to wedge the door open before hauling the second one in.
Once I was safely out of the rain, feeling my wet clothes sticking to my skin, I finally allowed myself to cry. The tears were not of regret about deciding to make this trip in the first place. No matter what, I would still do this. It’s just been a horrible day. My friend, Amanda, would have scolded me several times over if she knew what I’ve had to do to get here. She would have–
“Are you all right, cher?”
A raspy female voice rang out next to me making me jump. The sight I saw proved just how tired I was when the person who spoke looked like she had solid black eyes with hair flying behind her while she was suspended in the air. Hastily, I wiped the tears from my eyes, blinked, and looked again.
The woman standing in front of me had gray hair which was stylishly swept up behind her head. Her dark eyes were gazing kindly at me and were definitely not like stuff from my nightmares. She towered over me, like most people do, and her expensive looking shoes were undeniably touching the carpeted floor of the hotel lobby. Behind her, the hotel was far more stylish inside than from what it appeared like from the outside. Boy, I was more exhausted than I thought.
“Oh, hi, I am so sorry for getting your carpet wet. It was raining and I’m lost,” I stammered in embarrassment.
“You’re not lost,” the woman told me with a smile. Her voice didn’t sound raspy at all. “You’re exactly where you need to be.”
Confused by her words at first, then deciding it was one heck of an advertisement for her hotel; I smiled back to her and tried again. “I need to find the hotel I booked with three weeks ago but I’ve been walking up and down the street for an hour and I couldn’t find it. Do you know where I can find Noveau Hotel?”
The woman shook her head and replied with, “There isn’t a Noveau Hotel on Bourbon Street.” Then she turned away and started beckoning me to follow.
“But I – they gave me this address… hold on, I’ve got– “ I sputtered, struggling to pull my bags behind me as I trailed her towards the reception desk.
Warmth and a scent of jasmine greeted me as soon as I walked into the main lobby of the hotel. Gentle lights greeted my eyes as they greedily took in the interior decoration which pleased me to no end. The lobby was quietly elegant with its mahogany furniture sca
ttered around artfully. It was accentuated perfectly by the cream and golden hues of the wall and curtains without seeming too opulent. I didn’t feel under-dressed in my trench coat and skinny jeans. There were several receiving chairs following the cream and gold theme but gave one the impression of stepping into a nice, comfy home instead of an exclusive hotel.
Feeling my weariness slowly ease from my body, I deposited my belongings in front of the reception desk thinking if the rooms here were as nice as the lobby, I might just cancel my bookings with the other hotel.
“Oh, I do hope you will love our rooms.” The woman’s voice floated over to me causing me to give a start since I didn’t realize I had spoken my thoughts out loud. I gave her a timid smile feeling unsure of myself. “After all,” she continued, “we’ve designed the hotel specifically to your needs, cher.”
I gave a short laugh, feeling nervous all of a sudden. “I hope so, too.”
CHAPTER TWO
Not Michele
Of all the visitors I’ve had, this one was the strangest of them all.
When Floriza Higgins, the hotel owner, receptionist, and bane of my existence, escorted her into the room, my interest was stirred when I saw she was female. From where I was, I heard rather than saw the two of them as they disappeared into the kitchenette and bathroom areas which were adjacently located to the door leading out to the hallway.
Faint voices carried over to me. “Wow! This is wonderful. I’ve never seen such a big bathtub!”
Coming back into the bedroom and into my line of view, the woman gawked up to the chandelier hanging at the center of the ornate, recessed ceiling. To see the dangling crystals better, she did a wide twirl and bumped against a desk and the end of the king-sized, four poster bed. A small, thin face with a button nose and pink lips flashed briefly under the soft glare of the light. Delicate hands lovingly touched one of the bedposts, piquing my interest.
