Becoming Calder (A Sign of Love Novel)(47)
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Eden
I was walking on air. Things were going on around me, I supposed, but they all had a distant, dreamy quality. I was lost in my own head, at our spring, Calder's lips on mine, his tongue claiming my mouth, his hard body pressed against me. I shivered just recalling the feel of him—overwhelming, delicious, beautiful—everything I'd ever dreamed of and more.
A few days after Calder kissed me, I put a handful of butterscotch candies in the bush in front of the lodge for Xander to take to Maya and my hand touched a folded up piece of paper. I grabbed it and stuffed it in the pocket of my skirt, looked around, and quickly returned to my room.
I sat down on my bed and opened it with shaking fingers. I recognized the thick paper. It was a piece from the pad we left at the spring, torn in half to make it smaller.
Eden,
A pebble. That's the answer to the question you asked a while back about what the male penguin uses to propose to the female penguin. He sifts through all the pebbles until he finds the smoothest one he can to give to his chosen female. Then he presents it to her as a token of his love. If she takes the pebble and places it on her nest, that means she accepts him as her mate.
I asked a girl I took classes with and you were right. That was, of course, the part she remembered.
I feel your lips on me, Eden. When I close my eyes, when I'm awake. I taste you. You are my first breath, and my last. I feel you, and I hope you still feel me, too. I need to see you. Can you meet me at our spring? Leave a note for Xander and he'll bring it to me. It will seem like a thousand years until then.
Yours, Calder
Yours. I sat there holding Calder's note to my chest, a dizzy smile on my face. I was somebody's. I was Calder's. I belonged to him. And he belonged to me. It seemed so simple, but of course for us, it was anything but.
I turned the note over and laughed out loud when I saw the entire back side of the paper was filled with a sketch of a penguin nosing a small, shiny pebble along the snow-covered ground toward another penguin sitting up straight on a nest, her head turned away from him. In that one quick sketch, he had managed to put a look of pure hopefulness on the boy penguin's face, and a haughty indifference on the girl penguin's face, as she waited to be impressed. I laughed again, quietly.
I looked around my room for a piece of paper, but realized I didn't have any in my room. There'd be some downstairs. I glanced at Hector's Holy Book on my bedside table and bit my lip. Then I picked it up and opened it slowly, hesitating. I quickly turned to the back and ripped a page out. My eyes widened in disbelief at my own small act of rebellion. But I sat down on my bed and used the cover as a hard surface to write my note.
I used the empty margins of the page, and I had to keep it short, as the empty space was limited.
Calder,
Who could have guessed that penguins are so romantic? This world really is filled with love in the most surprising of places, isn't it?
I feel your lips on mine, too. I taste you. I breathe you. I long for you like I've never longed for anything in my life.
Meet me at our spring on Sunday, after Temple? Hector has another council meeting and I'll tell Mother Miriam I'm ill so I don't have to attend the Sunday meal.
Always yours, Eden
**********
I walked as quickly as I could in my sandals and skirt down the trail. My heart beat harshly in my chest, not just from the exertion, but from the excitement of knowing I'd see Calder in a matter of minutes.
I ducked through the opening and straightened up. There he was, reclining on our rock, his arms behind his head, his wet clothes clinging to him. I stood there for a minute simply looking at him. He sat up and his wet shirt showed his stomach muscles bunching underneath the fabric. He grinned at me and I moved quickly to the edge of the spring.
I waded through and Calder offered me a hand, pulling me up on the rock. I lay back next to him. We lay there for a minute or two, our breathing and the splashing of the water the only sound around us. Then we both moved at once, turning toward each other, Calder taking my head in his hands and weaving his fingers through my hair. He paused for only a second as he gazed into my eyes, his own dilating and darkening, hungry. A tingling started between my legs and I squeezed them together to relish the sensation. And then his mouth met mine and the taste of him was all I knew. I moaned, a wordless confession of my desire and complete willingness.
He tilted his head and our kiss went deeper, our tongues dueling gently. The scrape of his rough jaw against my cheek was so perfectly masculine. It inflamed me and I moaned again, pressing my body closer to his.