Dream Lake (Friday Harbor #3)(78)

His quiet laugh vibrated against the most sensitive part of her, causing her legs to quiver. “You haven’t been overworked,” he murmured. “Yet.” He nuzzled against her, his shaven cheek gently rasping the delicate skin. She struggled to breathe, her heart pounding in a violent rhythm.

“Turn off the light?” she pleaded, a fierce blush racing over every inch of her.

A slow shake of his head, his mouth nudging deeper. She fell back with a little yelp, startled by the slippery-hot stroke of his tongue.

“Shhh,” he whispered, right against her, and the rush of his breath inflamed her even more. Another stroke … a teasing flutter … a swirling taste inside. She gripped handfuls of the flowered duvet, her thoughts dissolving in the burning physical awareness of what he was doing to her. He played with her deliberately, paying attention to every moan and twitch and squirm.

Eventually he lifted his head and whispered, “More.” But the word was tipped upward in a question, and he waited for her reply.

“Yes.” Anything he wanted. Anything at all.

Alex left the bed, and she heard the sounds of his jeans dropping to the floor, and the efficient rip of one of the foil packets on the nightstand. He returned to her, lowering his body over hers, the hair on his chest teasing her br**sts. Her breath hastened as she felt the intimate pressure of him.

He settled deeper, every movement careful and easy. She moaned as she felt her body yielding to the steady pressure.

“Am I hurting you?” she heard him whisper.

She shook her head blindly. The sensation was overpowering, but he was so gentle, filling her slowly, letting her take him by degrees. And all the while he brushed kisses against her mouth and throat, whispering that she was sweet, soft, beautiful, that nothing had ever felt this good, nothing ever would again.

It was like a dream, this slow, inexorable possession, both of them intent on coaxing her body to take as much of him as she could. And then he was sealed against her, and her back was flat against the bed, her body weighted and impaled. She turned her face into the brutal swell of his bicep, his skin salt-flavored and delicious against her parted lips. He began to rock against her, a lascivious friction that prodded and rubbed and caressed. The pleasure was shattering. She stiffened, her legs spreading as she was thrown into a blinding cl**ax. His thrusts lengthened, centering straight and deep, and then Alex shuddered, and held her as if the world were about to end.

“Tell me,” she said a long time later, in the dark. Her voice was lower than usual, liquid, as if it had been heated to a melting point.

Alex’s hand wandered idly over her sated body. “Tell you what?”

“Your middle name.”

He shook his head.

She tugged gently at his chest hair. “Give me a hint.”

He took her hand and brought it to his mouth, kissing her fingers. “It’s a U. S. president.”

She traced the fine, firm edge of his upper lip. “Past or present?”

“Past.”

“Lincoln.” As he shook his head, she continued to guess. “Jefferson. Washington. Oh, give me another hint.”

His mouth curved against her palm. “Born in Ohio.”

“Millard Fillmore.”

That drew a low laugh from him. “Millard Fillmore wasn’t born in Ohio.”

“Another hint.”

“A Civil War general.”

“Ulysses S. Grant? Your middle name is Ulysses?” She snuggled next to him, smiling against his shoulder. “I like that.”

“I don’t. A thousand playground fights started with someone calling me by my middle name.”

“Why did your parents name you that?”

“My mother was originally from Point Pleasant, Ohio, where he was born. She claimed we were distant relatives. Since Grant was a notorious alcoholic, I could almost believe it.”

Zoë kissed his shoulder.

“What’s your middle name?” Alex asked.

“I don’t have one. And I always wanted one—I didn’t like having only two initials for a monogram. When I married Chris, I finally got three. But I went back to being Zoë Hoffman after the divorce.”

“You could have kept your married name.”

“Yes, but it never seemed to fit me.” She smiled and yawned. “I think deep down, you always know.”

“Always know what?”

Her eyes closed, an overwhelming weariness settling over her. “Who you are,” she said drowsily. “Who you’re supposed to become.”

The ghost lay beside Emma’s sleeping form, her hair and face silver-limned as a stray moonbeam slipped through the partially shuttered window. He listened to the soft flow of her breathing, the occasional disruptions as she drifted through dreams. Lying beside her, so close that they would have touched if he’d had a physical form, he could remember the feeling of being young with her, the thrill of being alive and in love, the promise that everything was still before them. With no idea of the evanescence of life.

A memory came to him, of Emma fragile and distraught, her eyes swollen from crying.

“Are you sure?” he asked, the words coming with difficulty.

“I went to the doctor.” Her hand pressed against her stomach, not in the protective way of an expectant mother, but clenched in a fist.