A Minute to Smile (20 page)

Her own room stank with smoke, but nothing had been damaged—at least she didn’t think so until she opened the closet to get her clothes. But here, the fire had played the same game as with the boys’ mattresses—her clothes were chewed and scorched by fire. Anything unburned was sodden and smelled horrible.

But again, her careless habits were a boon. On a chair near her bed were several favorite skirts and blouses. She’d taken them out yesterday with the intent of ironing them, and when she ran behind, never got around to putting them away. Her favorite Indian cotton was there, and her yellow blouse. She picked them up, hugging them as she’d hugged the books. Thank God for small favors.

By evening, she was exhausted and touchy. Alexander, with typical sensitivity, seemed to sense her mood and after supper left her alone while he went to the dojo.

After he left, she wandered into the backyard. Unlike her own garden, full of overgrown tomato plants and unruly herbs, his beds were neatly laid out, the colors and heights of the flowers meshing in meticulously planned order. She trailed through thick, emerald grass along the edges of the garden, pausing here and there to admire a rose or lily. He had an extravagant collection of tiger lilies that were bursting now into full bloom—and she would have bet quite a sum of money that it had been Susan’s idea to plant them. She could see Alexander taking pride in his beautiful roses, which were a difficult flower to grow well, but the tiger lilies were frivolous, ruffly blossoms in shades of peach and white and pink. Somehow, she couldn’t imagine the lion man bothering with them.

Toward the back fence was a small wood-and-iron bench. Esther settled there, looking back over the yard to the house. The order of the flowerbeds somehow gave her a feeling of serenity she would never have expected. She thought she preferred gardens, like life, to be a little disorderly.

But as she eyed the weeded rows between soft blue ageratums and a healthy stand of marigolds behind, she wished faintly that she had enough foresight to plant a garden that looked like that. Blue and small, yellow and bushy, red and tall. There was nothing even faintly compulsive about his neatness—the water hoses were coiled in a haphazard heap near the faucet, and a collection of rakes and other long-handled tools leaned negligently against a tree.

Serene. The gardens were serene—a calm place to which you could retreat from the tangle of life. Here, there was order, beauty, calm.

Had Susan sat here, once upon a time? Esther looked toward the house, expecting with half her mind to see a transparent face at the window—a presence protesting Esther. Instead, a curtain pulled out by a breeze flapped against the painted brick wall. If anything, there was a sense of benevolence here, an odd sense of welcome and sympathy.

“Do you mind?” Esther said aloud softly. Her sense of reality was so distorted by the long, long day that she didn’t even think it was odd to be speaking aloud to no one. She looked at the sky, and back to the window with its lace curtain and thought of the ceramic pitcher in the front window that had always struck her with its sense of peace.

“Do you mind?” she asked again, and now she knew she was not speaking to no one, but to Susan, who had once admired the tiger lilies, had once sat on this bench, her ankles tickled by long strands of uncut grass.

“I’ll mind.” Her eyes filled with tears. “Not because I’m afraid, but because of all the things I’ll miss.” She took a breath, unable to stem the rising emotion. “I’ll miss my children, even if they’re grown up men by then. I’ll miss flowers and coffee and morning rainstorms. It’s all so incredible and it goes so fast—and you just never know what will happen, do you?”

She closed her eyes and just let the tears roll over her face, tears of release and joy and sorrow. She listened to birds chirping and the last whirring of insects before twilight closed in. She smelled roses and wet grass, felt the cool mountain air on her arms and the gentle clasp of leather sandals upon her feet.

Then, cutting through everything else, was the scent of Alexander. She opened her eyes to find him standing silently before her, the mane of dark hair tumbling around his face. An expression of such soft passion lit his features that she nearly wept again for the tenderness she saw.

As he reached down to take her hand gently in his own, drawing her into his arms, Esther felt her heart expand until it seemed it would burst her chest.

Do you mind, Susan, that I’ve fallen in love with him?

She wrapped her arms around him, feeling an ache as he brushed the wet from her cheeks with his fingers, and thought she heard a sweet answer ringing through her.
Love him,
it whispered.
Love him.

“Esther,” he breathed, pressing her head into the hollow of his shoulder. He held her tight and rocked her in an ancient gesture of comfort. They stood there swaying for a long time in the pale lavender gloaming. Esther rested against him and closed her eyes, as messages, too deep and primal for words, passed between their bodies, between their cells, between their souls.

When Esther lifted her head, he looked at her a long moment. There in his changeable eyes she saw the turquoise of his passion mixed with the gray of his long loneliness, and something as expectant as the emotion she felt now in her heart.

He kissed her. A slow, gentle kiss, one of supplication and healing, of hunger and tenderness. His lips told her he knew this moment was not one to be undertaken lightly. It was the velveteen runner spread below the chalice and gold plate at church; it was a pledge of honor.

Esther returned it, holding his face against her palm, feeling the tiny movements of his jaw below the silkiness of his beard. She answered his gentle question with a promise of her own—she knew the night would change her. And she was ready.

He led her through the quiet yard and upstairs into his broad bedroom. There he paused, holding her hand. “Do you mind being here?” he asked softly.

“No.” She reached for the buttons on her dress, but he covered her hands with his own, stepping close.

The room was filled with pearl-gray light as she dropped her hands to her side. A hush of waiting fell and Esther looked into Alexander’s face. He loosened her buttons one by one in his unhurried way, his fingers skimming the exposed few inches of flesh each time a button freed more of her. When the dress was open to the waist, he bent his glossy head to kiss the hollow between her breasts, his touch as light as the dying sounds of day beyond the window.

And when he lifted his head once more, Esther let her eyes wash over the newly beloved face in wonder, her gaze touching his strong, high brow and the blunt nose, his full lower lip and the powerful line of his jaw below the silvered beard.

Her dress, then her undergarments fell away, leaving her naked before him. Alexander ran reverent hands over her shoulders, down her arms, over her breasts and rib cage and belly. “You are beautiful beyond words, Esther,” he murmured, his hands lightly stroking her waist. He bent his head to kiss her shoulder, his hands cupping her breasts, and she heard his breath stir raggedly in his throat, a rough sound of wonder, of hunger, of pain and joy.

Her legs quivered and a slow fire of awakening began to burn through her body. She grasped his head in her hands, feeling the curls spring up to embrace her fingers. His clothing rasped against her naked body, and Esther stepped back.

She unbuttoned his shirt, smiling at him. “What’s good for the goose,” she whispered, pushing the fabric from his lean, muscled torso, “is good for the gander.” She leaned forward and took a flat nipple into her mouth, her hands working with the buttons on his trousers. She was careless with her hands, letting them brush the rigid heat of his erection below the cloth as if by accident. She laughed low in her throat when he growled softly, his fingers digging into her shoulders.

Then he, too, stood naked in the still room. Esther felt a physical pain pass through her at the splendor of his body—his broad shoulders and tapering torso and leanly muscular hips. She opened her palms on the crisp hair of his chest, feeling supple skin and firm muscles below her fingers. She touched the rise of his biceps and his forearms and let her hands roam the outer curve of his thighs.

She wanted to tell him that he looked like a lion with his wild mane of curls and his tawny flesh. She wanted to tell him that she had never felt such a longing for the touch of anyone in her life as she longed for his now. Instead she swayed forward into his kiss, feeling his arms slip around her back, his naked chest touch her breasts, his bare stomach press into her own. He took her head almost savagely into his hand as he clasped her hard into him. She fell against him, tipping her head back into his palm and opening her mouth for the forceful thrust of his tongue.

She let herself be propelled toward the bed, where he laid her down gently. For a long, silent moment, he towered above her, his eyes washing over her body with unmistakable heat. He knelt beside her and with his hands touched the swell of her breasts and the belly she thought too fat, and thighs too strong and big to be feminine. Under the approval of his hands and eyes, Esther felt herself grow beautiful, delectable. She opened her arms and beckoned him.

And then he was with her, covering her with his hands and mouth, running his hair-furred leg over her smooth one, his hand over her rounded belly, his tongue over her lips.

A wild, primitive hunger beat a steady thrumming in Esther’s veins and she found herself nearly biting his shoulder, his neck, his ear; she curled her leg around his and pressed herself upward.

Alexander grasped her shoulders. “It will be worth the wait,” he whispered, pressing his lips to her forehead gently as his hands massaged the tight muscles of her neck. The edge of panic she felt began to ease away and a completely new sensation spread from the point between her eyebrows where his lips rested, radiating outward into her muscles. It was a warm tingle, a balm to the frantic ache. She still felt the press of his arousal against her belly, and the hunger to open to him did not ease, but the odd tingling freed her to explore him more slowly, and be explored in return.

He kissed her eyelids and her check and her jaw, moving without hurry. At the hollow of her throat, he paused, brushing it first with the hair of his beard, then his lips, and finally with his tongue. Esther let her hands run over the silk of his back, felt his hair brush her chin.

And still the hunger snaked through her limbs and cells and nerves, but it became like a dance—thrumming here, jumping wildly there.

As he moved to her breasts, he followed the same slow pattern, his beard grazing one gloriously sensitized tip, then the other. His lips touched the swelling flesh, following the curves one way now, another direction this time, and still Esther floated.

But when his mouth opened, wet and hot, to close over her nipple, she cried out with the sudden frenzy of dancing in her cells. He suckled there firmly, then flickered over her with his tongue, teasing and tugging with his lips until she writhed against him, lost.

His hand crept down her belly and spread her legs, his mouth still teasing her breasts. Esther went rigid for a moment, but he shifted to kiss her mouth just then, sliding his tongue between her lips as his hand slid exquisitely between her legs.

“Alexander,” she said in a voice she barely recognized as her own. “Please.”

And still his fingers toyed with her, creating a slow, building pressure. She reached for him in hunger and a desperate need to give pleasure even as she received it. She restlessly caressed his hips and thighs and back, then let her fingers graze his erection lightly. He groaned against her mouth and she dropped her fingertips lower still, to that soft, most vulnerable place on him.

With a powerful movement, he shifted over her. There, braced on steel arms, he looked down. His eyes glowed a vivid turquoise and his hair tumbled in wild disarray from the raking of her fingers and Esther realized her vision of him had come true—it was the lion who braced himself at her opening. His eyes locked on hers for a long, sober instant, and then he moved and they were joined.

Now there was no play. The sacrament was ready, and they partook. Alexander moved with fury and hunger and love. Esther met him with healing and passion and hope. In the growing darkness of the coming night, they moved together toward a pinnacle from which there would be no retreat or return. As they climbed and met the peak, Esther felt her heart knit with his, felt her soul and his mingle until there was no beginning of one or end to the other. As they tumbled from the pinnacle into the other side of their lives, they were one.

It was holy and perfect and shattering.

* * *

Cradled within her, shaken by the power of the moments just past, Alexander raised his head and cupped Esther’s face between his hands. Her heavy-lidded eyes opened. He kissed her, tasting her ripe pink lips and the satin of her tongue. “I love to kiss you,” he whispered and tasted her mouth again. He pushed his fingers through the soft cloud of hair tangled on the pillow. “And touch you.”

Below him, her body was pliant and giving. He lifted himself a little and stroked her breast. He felt her tighten around him, felt his own body respond instantly. “Ah, Esther,” he said, kissing her again and again. “You’re a goddess, a queen.”

She smiled and lifted her arms to wrap them around his neck, her fingers crawling into his hair. “And you are my king.” A bubble of soft laughter rose in her throat and the sexy somnolence flooded her eyes.

“With kingly arms and kingly lips and a kingly—” she lifted her eyebrow wickedly “—sword.”

“You like that, do you?” he replied, moving against her.

Her eyes drifted closed. “Mmm.”

Without breaking the contact between them, he rolled over, taking her with him until she sat astride him, her hair tumbling around her face. Her white shoulders glowed with reflected light and her breath came in shallow, quick bits. He lifted his hands and spread his fingers open over her breasts, feeling an ache rise hard again at the sight of his dark fingers splaying over her pale flesh. She arched and the motion thrust the aroused tips of her breasts into his palms. Roughly he pulled her close, and sucked the tempting flesh into his mouth, rolling it over his tongue until she cried his name.