Roland said. “He was a kitten so...about eighteen. But the vet says he’s healthy.”
“Hi, Brien,” Allison said. The poor cat blinked sleepily. “You remember me? I remember you.”
“I remember you,” Roland said.
“I wasn’t talking to you,” she said, trying to hide her smile.
As she petted and scratched Brien, Roland looked at her.
“What?” she asked. “Do I have something on my face?”
“You look really young without any makeup on,” he said.
“Well, you look almost sixteen again now that you shaved off your scruff.”
“Don’t take this wrong way, but this all feels really weird to me,” he said, narrowing his eyes at her. “What about you?”
“I was kind of thinking the same thing. One second you’re like a total stranger to me,” she said. “The next, it’s like I never left.”
“Exactly. One second you’re this sophisticated twenty-five-year-old woman in diamond earrings and fancy suede boots. The next, you’re an obnoxious ten-year-old driving me up the wall again.”
“Who do you like better?” she asked.
“I missed the obnoxious kid. I’m enjoying getting to know the lady in suede. You sure you can’t stay longer?”
Allison propped herself up on her pillow and looked at him.
“I’m staying tonight, for old times’ sake. See Dr. Capello tomorrow. But after that, I think I should move on. It doesn’t have anything to do with you, Roland. I want you to know that.” He’d been so kind to her, so brotherly, so honest with her since she’d arrived, she hated to tell him this had to be it.
“I won’t take it personally when you leave.” Roland set Brien down on the floor and the cat sashayed out of the room, tail in the air, off no doubt to find his favorite sleeping spot.
“Never occurred to me Brien would still be around. That makes me happy,” she said, smiling contentedly.
“I saw your light on. Thought I should check on you. But you’re good so... I’ll go and let you sleep.”
“Wasn’t sleeping.” She spun her finger by her ear. “The hamster on the wheel in my brain is refusing to stop running,” she said. “I’m reading to him in the hopes he’ll conk out.” She held up her book, A Wrinkle in Time.
“I remember when we read that together,” he said.
“First night I spent here.” She held the book out to him and waved it. He took the bait.
He jerked his thumb, indicating she should move over to make room. He lay down next to her and propped himself up on the pillow. Unlike her, he hadn’t showered, and she smelled the sea air on his skin, salt and sweat. She wanted to press her nose to his neck and inhale but managed to control herself.
Roland opened the page and read the first sentence.
“‘It was a dark and stormy night,’” he read. After that one sentence, he stopped. He closed the book, sat up and turned around to face her.
“Roland?”
“I lied to you about something,” he said.
“What?” She rolled up. They were knee to knee on the bed, like they were kids again, telling stories and secrets. What had he lied about? Did he know who’d tried to get rid of her thirteen years ago? Did he lie about being a monk? Had he lied about his father’s medical condition? What was it that made his eyes so clouded and his face so solemn?
“I lied when I said I wasn’t glad you got dumped. I am,” he said.
“You are? Why?”
Roland kissed her.
Chapter 9
The kiss was quick, but so was lightning. And it struck Allison the way lightning strikes the beach, rendering sand into glass in an instant of natural alchemy. She counted one breath between the first kiss and the second. The first kiss was his. The breath was hers. The second kiss was hers, as well.
She wound her arms around his shoulders and dug her fingers into the soft hair at the nape of his neck. Before she knew it, he’d lifted her into his arms, into his lap. She wrapped her legs around his lower back and he wrapped his arms around her waist without breaking the kiss. She couldn’t break it. If she broke it, then one of them might come to their senses. Roland kissed her like he’d spent the last thirteen years waiting to have the chance again.
It was a powerful kiss, possessive and consuming. Tongues met and mingled over and over. His large hands dug into her hips, dragging her flush against him. This wasn’t a kiss anymore. She knew kisses. This was foreplay.
In an instant, she was that twelve-year-old girl again, feeling these strange, terrifying desires all for the first time. Her heart raced, her blood pumped; she ached between her legs and moved against him to ease the aching. It didn’t work. Thirteen years ago Roland had pushed her off him when she’d moved on him like that. Not this time. This time he rolled her back onto the bed. She’d been waiting for it from the moment their lips had met. With one arm around her waist, he lifted her and shifted her so that she lay directly underneath him. He bent his head and kissed her again, slowly lowering himself on top of her. She felt how hard he was against her and it was the shock she needed to snap out of the fog of lust that surrounded them.
“Roland...”
He lifted his head and looked down at her. When she didn’t say anything more, he twined a lock of her hair around his finger, brought it to his lips and kissed the tip. Then he let it go and touched her shoulder instead. He slid a finger under the strap of her camisole top and pulled it down her arm until he’d bared her breast. Allison’s whole body, inside and out, was beset with flutters. Heart flutters, stomach flutters—every nerve inside her fluttered.
Roland lowered his head and took her nipple in his mouth and sucked it deeply and slowly and for a very long time. She caught his hair in her hand again and held him to her chest. He’d been the object of her first fantasies and she’d wanted him to be her first. That hadn’t happened, but now she had the chance and the choice to let him be her second. She wanted that and he clearly did. Was it wrong? Maybe. But she wasn’t going to worry about that now. Plenty of time for second-guessing later.
Allison let him undress her completely and watched without comment as he took his clothes off. He had an impressive body—muscular arms, stomach, thighs. And if there was any part of her that still thought of him as a kid, it was long gone by the time he joined her on the bed again.
She reached for the lamp to turn it off and he stopped her with a hand on her wrist. It shocked her into awareness again, and she looked at him in confusion.
“Leave it on,” Roland said softly, though it was clearly an order and not a request. “I want to watch you.”
There was a world of difference between the statements “I want to see you” and “I want to watch you,” and Allison felt that difference right in her core. The first was flirtatious, a compliment. The second would scorch the earth to bare rock and the smoke would smolder for days if you let it. Allison let it.
Oh, no, they were definitely not kids anymore.
He parted her legs with his knees and pressed two fingers inside her. His hands were large, his fingers thick and long and rough from work. The slow penetration was pure erotic pleasure. As he explored inside her, stroking her carefully but deeply, her head fell back. She noticed for the first time that hanging from the ceiling was a green glass dragon, with its delicate wings spread wide. The window had been left open a crack and a cool breeze snuck inside and set the dragon to flying. Beautiful, it was all so beautiful.
“It feels so good inside you,” Roland said into her ear. “Too good. Makes me forget things.”
“Like you’re a Brother and I’m your sister?”
“Yeah,” he said. He almost smiled, but didn’t.
“I’ve already forgotten both.”
Though she knew she shouldn’t, she couldn’t help but compare him to McQueen. McQueen had sex the way other men went on morning jogs. It was physical. Exertion plus release equaled a happy, healthy Cooper McQueen. He paid for the use o
f her body the way other men paid for gym memberships and personal trainers. He used her; he used her well and often. His pleasure was paramount, hers was peripheral. She’d never minded, even enjoyed it if she were honest with herself. But it was different with Roland. The way Roland touched her, looked at her, held her... This was important to him. This mattered.
Roland moved over her slowly, kissing her breasts again and her stomach, before lying between her open legs to kiss her inside. He murmured a sound of approval at the first taste of her.
And he was in no hurry, either. He lingered between her thighs, licking and kissing and opening her until she was nearly out of her mind with impatience.
“Roland,” she said, and that was all it took. He rose up and crawled over her, nudging her legs wider with his knees until he rested into the cradle of her thighs. Slowly he pressed inside her, inching in, turning the tumblers one by one until they were locked together, locked and joined, joined and coupled. He pressed into her again and she wrapped her legs over his hard thighs. She lifted herself against him to tell him she wanted this as much as he did. As much and more.
For those first few taut moments of penetration, Roland didn’t kiss her. Allison lay back on the pillow and he held himself up on one arm over her, and they simply watched each other.
“You okay?” he asked. She nodded. “This isn’t too weird, is it?”
“Nah,” she said, smiling up at him. “It’s just weird enough.”
His knuckles grazed her cheek. She felt simultaneously aroused and sleepy. Now that they were over the initial awkwardness, it felt perfectly natural having Roland inside her body. They fit. They fit so well she wondered if this was how it had to be. She had to leave as a child so she could come back to him a woman. Thirteen years ago, a moment of awkward fumbling had left them both miserable and ashamed. Now as adults, there was nothing in their coupling but pleasure, utter pleasure, and no pain or shame at all.
Roland lowered himself onto her again and kissed the breath out of her. When she tried to run her fingers through his hair, he caught her by the wrist and pressed it into the bed. His hands were large and powerful, but gentle, too, so that it didn’t feel like he was holding her down, but simply holding her. She turned her head and kissed his inner bicep, a long, lingering kiss that left him panting, lips parted and eyes closed. He was so beautiful. For a second she was that twelve-year-old girl again, discovering for the first time how beautiful her eldest foster brother was, how handsome and strong. She needed him like she’d needed him that day, and he put up no fight when she pushed him on his back and sat astride him.
She sighed his name and he lifted his head to smile at her, pleased with her pleasure. This was a new smile, too, an erotic smile. Allison licked the hollow of his throat as she moved her hips in a slow oval. The breath he took stole hers. She should have come back years ago.
“That was obscene,” Roland breathed, his head falling back on the pillow.
“Sorry,” she said, grinning and unrepentant. “I’ve waited a long time to do that.”
“What else have you waited a long time to do?”
“So much,” she said. “This...” She traced the lines of his shoulder blades with her fingertips. “And this...” She scoured his stomach with her fingernails from neck to hip. “And this...” She lifted her hips into his as slowly as she could, making him feel every inner muscle that held him inside her and surrounded him with heat. He said something that might have been “God help me,” but she couldn’t tell. All she knew was that it was good so she did it all again. She moved harder against him, faster, and Allison gave herself up to him, let go, surrendered entirely. She came first, lost in waves of pleasure and happiness, and he came shortly after, shuddering in her arms and breathing her name.
It was over. She knew it was over when Roland turned off the lamp and the room was plunged into darkness. But he didn’t leave. She’d expected him to leave, but instead he lay on his side and pulled her back against his chest.
He kissed the back of her neck and pulled her a little closer. They were silent for a few seconds before Allison thought to ask him a question she’d had ever since she’d received his letter.
“Why do you think of me when it rains?” she asked, wondering if it was for the reason she remembered.
“You don’t remember? I guess it didn’t rain much where you grew up,” he said. “And rain out here right by the ocean can be loud. Whenever it rained, and the wind was blowing, it shook the whole house. So you would come crying to me, asking if you could sleep in my bed.”
Allison grinned. She recalled those autumn storms, those winter squalls and the wind wild enough to make you wonder if you would wake up in Oz. Sometimes they could only tell the day from the night from the color of the rain—gray by day, black at night. And in January the ice would come and frost The Dragon so that his green scales shone like silver.
“I don’t know why me,” Roland said. “But it had to be me. Not Dad, not Thora, no one but me. And you’d always fall asleep about five minutes after I let you in bed with me. And then I’d pick you up and go put you back in your own bed. Every single time it rained. Finally when you were about ten you grew out of it.”
“You want to know a secret?” she asked.
“Of course.”
“I was never afraid of the rain.”
“You want to know my secret?” Roland asked.
“Sure.”
“I always knew that.”
Chapter 10
Roland fell asleep in seconds, it seemed. Allison listened to his steady breathing, so peaceful and contented. She envied that contentment.
Carefully she eased out from under Roland’s heavy arm and went to the bathroom to clean up. She was on birth control so she wasn’t worried that they hadn’t used a condom. She never kept any on her, and she doubted a monk, on medical leave or otherwise, would, either. Roland, a monk. Roland, her first love. Roland, her former brother. The whole thing was so utterly surreal that she couldn’t bring herself to go back to bed yet. That would mean treating what had happened as nice and normal, and she wasn’t yet sure if it was either of those things.
She slipped back into her pajamas and snuck out of the room. In the quiet, dark house, she tiptoed down the stairs and walked out onto the deck. Calm hit her at the first kiss of night air. The breeze blew through her and over her, tickling every inch of her bare skin. Her toes tingled in the cool of the night and chills passed through her, delicious chills like the gentle touch of a handsome stranger. She leaned against the deck railing and stared out at the water, breathing in the air, breathing out her confusion. With the vast horizon shrouded in darkness, it seemed so much smaller, like her own private ocean. She was tempted to walk out onto the beach and go wading. The ocean was always warmer by night, wasn’t it?
She went to the steps and started to walk down.
“Leaving already?”
She turned around and saw Roland coming out the deck door.
“I was thinking about going to the water.”
“You’ve been gone too long,” he said. “You need a flashlight or you might step on something.”
“A rock?”
“A jellyfish.”
“Oh,” she said. “I should wait till morning, then.”
“Not a bad idea,” he said. He’d thrown on his pajama pants again but he was shirtless, and she fought off the urge to wrap her arms around him and steal his body heat.
“Are you okay?” he asked, shutting the deck door behind him and walking over to her. She returned to the deck railing and resumed her night watch.
“Seems I’m not supposed to sleep tonight,” she said.
Roland stood next to her, his elbow touching her elbow at the railing.
“I saw you out here,” he said, “in your little white pj’s with your hair down, and I remembered something.”
“What?” she asked.
“Why I believe in a loving God.”
She grin
ned.
“You’re too nice to me,” she said.
“Not possible.”
“Possible,” she said. “I don’t know if I deserve it.”
“You sound more like a monk than I do,” Roland said. “I think you’re being a little hard on yourself. We had sex. People do that sort of thing. Monks, too, even though we’re not supposed to.”
“Do they?” she asked. “You’re my first monk.”
“Ah...when I left,” he said, “my abbot gave me a long sex talk.”
“Like the birds and the bees?”
“More like the ‘You’re young and taking care of a dying parent