At Last (25 page)

“Your design is stunning. You deserved to win.”

“You know, that’s the problem with you...” Kevin stopped and shook his head. “What did you say?”

“You deserved to win. Your design is amazing.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought you said. Are you sick or something?”

Susan shook her head. “No. I feel great.” She moved closer to Kevin. Just being near him was making her warm all over, to hell with the bitter cold winds. “I feel better now that you’re here.”

Even in the dark, with the moon as their only light, Susan could see Kevin’s eyes filling with want. Then he looked up and moved back another step.

“What do you mean, now that I’m here? I’ve been here the entire time. You’re the one who left.”

Susan felt a hot wave of anger rise up and roil in her chest, searing her lungs with its intensity. She charged forward, her finger jabbing hard into Kevin’s chest. “You don’t get to say anything about leaving!” She started beating on his chest with her fists, and he grabbed her by the wrists.

“Whoa, wait a minute. What are you talking about?”

Since pushing against Kevin proved to be fruitless--he wasn’t budging--Susan pushed herself away from him, stumbling backward. When she spoke again her voice trembled, and each word had the heightened edge of a hysterical sob.

“You’re the one who left me! You just left, got on a goddamn plane and left.” Susan’s emotions crashed around her, shattering like pieces of crystal on the ground. She took some deep breaths, panting. “You left me all alone!”

She sounded freaking hysterical. She held her hand over her mouth, trying to hold her grief in. All that grief she’d been holding back for six whole months. Grief over Kevin leaving her. She was shaking so violently she was sure she was going to lose it.

“You weren’t alone.” His voice sounded hollow in the darkness. “Liz was there. I wouldn’t have left if you’d been alone.”

“What a pal,” she said, losing control. “Where’d you read that? In
GQ
? That it’s okay to leave the woman you’ve been bedding high and dry as long as she’s got a friend on hand to cry to! Hell, she thought I was crying about goddamn Mark!”

Kevin stood there in the dark, his eyes wide and very bright in the moonlight; they seemed to tremble. “I didn’t know you cried.”

“Because you left!”

Kevin straightened and shook his head, closing his eyes. “Yeah, but you certainly didn’t try to follow me. Hell, you didn’t so much as text me for a whole month. What was I, just an afterthought?”

Susan tore his tuxedo jacket from her shoulders and threw it at him, spitting her next words at him. “So, I’m inconsiderate for holding myself back to give you time. What a bitch I am! But since you didn’t even text me again for six fucking months, what the hell does that make you?”

They were standing so close, Susan seething, her eyes burning with rage, Kevin staring down at her, looking guilty. Susan didn’t wait for him to say anything, she just started yelling at him, not caring what she said. “And I couldn’t even tell Liz. I couldn’t tell her that I’d started lying to her. And then I started seeing that shrink Dr. Garvin, and I bored her so badly that even
she
broke up with me!”

Kevin laughed, just a little laugh, and he cleared his throat. But he leaned back and smiled as he laughed harder and bigger, until his chest shook.

“It’s not funny!” Susan could feel the tears that had begun to sting her eyes suddenly evaporate. She was so angry with Kevin that she was a heartbeat away from slugging him.

“Your therapist broke up with you? How does that even happen?”

Susan’s mouth tightened into a thin line, and she knew she was scowling something fierce. “Instead of talking to her about my problems, I talked to her about work.”

Kevin gave out a whoop and clapped his hands together. “Yeah, that would do it.”

“It’s not funny!” But even to Susan it did seem pretty funny, and her voice didn’t fool even her. “It’s really not.”

Kevin had taken one step forward and was now close to Susan, looking down on her with those burning eyes, his unique Kevin-scent permeating her senses and soaking her brain with him. She made a fist with her hand, ready to punch him in the chest, but instead she opened her hand and hesitantly, delicately, placed it over his heart, feeling it beating against her palm. Hard and fast and strong. She gripped the smooth white cotton of his shirt as he reached out and took her into his arms again. She shook but couldn’t tell if she was just cold or if her emotions had just gone wild.

Suddenly he was kissing her. His mouth so wet, so gentle, so very delicious. Better than she had remembered. Better than she had even dreamed about late at night when she woke in a sweat with the sheets twisted around her legs. His hands slid up her rib cage and around her back, pulling her into him until her breasts pressed hard against his heaving pecs. She felt their bodies melding together as he picked her up in his arms to kiss her all the deeper, all the wetter, his tongue slipping into her mouth, flicking against her tongue, making her whimper with want.

Abruptly he pulled away, breaking their lip-lock, making her whimper all the louder, like a puppy begging for a treat.

He was holding her at arm’s length, looking hard into her eyes.

“I’ve got to know, before we go any further--” His voice quivered as he spoke, and he paused for a moment, his expression nervous. “I’ve got to know that you love me.”

Was he asking her a question? Susan’s mind was still bending and swirling around in her head, still drunk from the kiss. And hadn’t she already told him she loved him, that she was in love with him?

The look on Kevin’s face told her she hadn’t.

Oh, right, they’d started fighting instead.

Susan grabbed hold of the untied black bow-tie that hung around his neck and pulled him closer to her.

“Yes, Kevin Mathew Jacobs, I really do love you.” And she pulled him the rest of the way to her, until her lips crushed his, and he was whimpering this time.

She feasted on Kevin’s beautiful mouth.

She wrapped her arms around his neck, and his hands glided down the back of her dress, cupping her bottom as he pulled her further into him. Susan felt something burst into flame inside her, worse than any burning she’d ever had for him. This was hot enough to kill, it was going to incinerate her on the spot.

Kevin’s lips were no longer kissing her, and his arms were disentangling her from him. The sudden loss of contact made her both annoyed and confused. Did he want her or not? Or was this all just some joke to him? She could feel the heat of her want change, flickering back to the heat of being pissed at him.

Kevin stepped back and held her where she was standing, just for a moment, and he knelt on one knee. He reached up and grabbed absently at the thin air over his heart. Susan felt the skin between her eyes crinkle.
Is he having a heart attack?

Kevin looked down to where his hand was still searching for something, and he made a noise somewhere between a laugh and a grunt. “Don’t move!” he said, springing to his feet and grabbing the tuxedo jacket Susan had taken off and thrown at him. He jogged back, skidding to a stop right where he’d been kneeling, and fell to one knee again, this time reaching into the pocket of the jacket and pulling out a small black velvet box, which he opened and held out to Susan.

His voice was rasping with exertion, but his words were crystal clear. “Marry me.”

Susan stood stone still for a few beats, not knowing whether she should answer or not. Had it been a question? Or had he just told her to? Either way, Susan was going to say yes, yet she couldn’t quite get enough air in her lungs to say the word.

“Not for any of the reasons I could think of, but because you really want to be my wife.”

Wife? The word seemed to glow and shimmer in the moonlight. The way Kevin seemed to be moving closer, even though he was still on one knee, made Susan’s heart flutter in her chest. That’s when she realized she was moving closer to him, and that she was now on her knees, looking up into his beautiful face, close enough to feel the warmth of his breath.

“Of course I want to be your wife.” She leaned in to kiss him.

Kevin leaned back, pressing his forefinger against her puckered-to-kiss lips. “That was a yes, right?”

Susan smiled against the press of his finger and nodded, springing up and kissing him deep and hard and wet, tasting him as if it were the first time, and he was the only thing she wanted in the world.

Somehow Kevin slipped the ring out of the box and onto Susan’s finger. Somehow he got her off the terrace and through the crush of the party and down to the lobby where Francesca’s car was waiting for them, the driver holding the door open as they wafted out on a stingingly cold gust of winter wind neither of them seemed to feel.

After the driver closed the door and jogged around to angle himself into the driver’s seat, he said, “Mrs. Costa said to take you two wherever you want to go…so, where to?”

Susan and Kevin were already lip to lip, arms wrapped about each other, her legs swung up into his lap. Kevin disengaged his lips from hers long enough to smile and tell the driver, “Four twenty-nine East Coulter Ave.”

Susan smiled. “My place?”

“I’ve been wanting to have you in your own bed ever since the first time in Cancun.”

She licked her lips and smiled.

God, he
’s
something else.
She was about to ask herself if she’d even made her bed, but as Kevin leaned in and kissed her, again and again and again, whether she made her bed or not, whether there were dirty clothes strewn all over the floor or not, it didn’t matter. Having Kevin in her bed--and tonight--that was all that mattered.

~*~

Kevin stood behind Susan as she tried to unlock her door. His hand on the back of her neck, his strong, warm fingers slowly caressing her flesh, caused ripples of delight to travel up and down her body. Needless to say, Susan wasn’t going to get the key in the lock anytime soon. Kevin took the key from her trembling hand and inserted it into the lock and turned. The door swung open and Susan just stood there, as if Kevin’s fingers had magically paralyzed her.

“Would you like to go inside?” Kevin finally whispered, his breath hot as it tickled her ear. “Or would you rather make love in the hall?”

Susan gasped as Kevin’s hand moved from her neck and trailed down her bare back. Susan nodded her head toward the door. Kevin gave her a faux look of disappointment. “And I was so looking forward to giving Red over there--” He motioned behind him, to the neighbor across the hall. “--a show.”

“You’ve met Mona?”

He took Susan’s hand and pulled her into the apartment, closing the door behind them, plunging them into near complete darkness. Susan reached for the lamp by the door, but Kevin took her hand and pulled it to his mouth, kissing her fingers as he spoke.

“Met her a couple weeks ago, when you blew me off.”

“I didn’t mean to--”

“She let me into the building, thought I was the Chinese delivery man.” He nibbled on her fingers, making Susan groan. “She really likes the delivery man.”

Susan was shaking all over, and her knees got weak and wobbly when he took her index finger into his mouth and sucked so very gently.

“How do you...know that?” Susan didn’t really care, she just knew that if she stopped talking she would start howling like a wolf in heat.

Kevin lingered for a moment, sucking on her finger, his tongue swirling around the flesh. Finally he let her finger fall from his mouth and pulled her near.

“You should’ve seen the outfit she was wearing. Victoria’s Secret gone wild.” And he kissed her, lightly at first, more of a teasing grazing of the lips. But then he pulled her so tightly against him that she could feel his hard want for her, and his heart beating wildly in his chest. His teasing lips locked onto hers, his mouth opening to devour hers.

And his hands, one cupping her ass, holding her to him, the other glancing over her bare back, fingers delicate and maddening as he caressed them up and down her back. She trembled, she shivered and quaked, and finally she had to pull away, not able to take it any longer.

Kevin watched as Susan slowly pulled the spaghetti straps of her dress off over each shoulder and let it fall in a shimmering puddle on the floor. She stood there, her eyes locked in his dark gaze, wearing only one of her sexy bras and a pair of French cut panties that left less to the imagination than she really cared to think about.

Yet the effect was exactly what she’d been going for. Kevin couldn’t take his eyes off her. She reached back and unhooked her bra, then let it slowly slide from her shoulders, leaving her naked, except for the panties. She smiled as she backed up and saw Kevin moving forward with her, looking for all the world like an absolute beast. For a shimmering hot instant she thought he was suddenly someone else. He’d never looked at her like he was looking at her now--like he owned her.

Susan suddenly backed up against a wall, missing the doorway to her bedroom completely. She jumped with surprise--the smooth, cool paint of the wall almost felt like someone grabbing her. She didn’t have a chance to turn around, for Kevin was upon her, his hands sliding up her sides and doing that teasing flesh play to the tingling mounds of her breasts. His weight suddenly pushing her against the wall, his mouth slowly kissing a trail from her bruised lips, down her jaw line, to the sensitive flesh around her ears. She latched her arms around his neck, and then started clawing frantically at his shirt, trying to get it off, but having no effect at all on his buttons.