Martin made a sudden growling sound as silly and as hot as anything that had come out of her mouth during all this. Good to know they were both losing their minds.
He reached up and pawed the skirt off of her, so decisive about it that Tiffani could hear one of the buttons snap off and roll away on the floor.
“I’m sorry,” he said, though Tiffani had never minded anything less in her entire life. “I just want to see you. I need to see you.”
“Then look,” Tiffani said.
He did. He stroked her, her belly and back and breasts, and he dipped his hand down between them and rubbed gently at her clit. She could feel his eyes on her as she came and she knew he was memorizing the look on her face. She knew that however undignified it was, he loved it.
She squeezed him tight with all the muscles she had and his climax followed hers, his fingers hard and careless and gorgeous against her thighs as his hips thrust up into her again and again.
He loves me, Tiffani thought, her mind still dazed and almost drunk on the sex. He doesn’t just love looking at me, he loves me, and it doesn’t matter if it’s too soon. It’s happened.
Chapter Nine: Martin
After they’d made love, Tiffani was quiet. She kissed Martin on the cheek and slid out of bed, donning an ivory silk robe over her bare, apricot-colored skin. He wanted to trace the line of its hem where it was suspended like cream against her darker skin, but when he saw her make her way to her desk, he left her alone. He had promised her whatever steno practice she wanted. He wasn’t going to break that, no matter how lonely it suddenly felt to be in her bed without her.
“Should I sing something for you to type?” he said.
Tiffani didn’t turn around. He didn’t have so much as a twitch of her tawny, sun-streaked hair to help him read her mood. And when she answered him, her voice was level. Careful.
“
No, that’s okay. Tell me a story instead.”
“What kind of story?”
“Any kind. A fairy tale. Family history. The last episode you saw of Law and Order.”
She paused, even though he had the feeling she already knew exactly what she wanted to say. Then she added in the same tone:
“The story of whatever you’re thinking about right now. Where you see this going. I know men hate it when women ask that.”
“You’ve known too many bad men,” Martin said.
“That’s true. But it’s not a story.”
She needed reassurance, he thought. Men—particularly Gordon Marcus—had treated her like an object. She wanted to know that he had her feelings in mind and that he saw her as something other than a good time. Something more than just fun.
Was it time to tell her? He had the feeling it would never be the right time.
There was no good way to tell the woman you loved that you could turn into a mystical horse and that that same power meant you knew that your love for her would never fade and never fail. There were, however, less bad ways.
And there were times when it would be actively bad to hold your tongue. He had the feeling this was one of those times.
“All right,” Martin said. “A story. This ties into what I was telling you earlier about my parents—about ancient Rome and ancient Greece.”
The soft clicking of her steno keys was reassuring: a promise that she was listening to him. Whatever she was thinking, she hadn’t closed herself off completely.
“There was a legend back then about pegasi. Winged horses. People said that they were real but that sometimes they looked like ordinary men and women, that they could change at will. Everyone was content to let it just be a story, one of those beliefs that adds a little magic to everyday life. But then someone started another rumor. Another myth. This one was about Daedalus and his son Icarus. Do you know the story about Daedalus and Icarus?”
“Something about melted wings,” Tiffani said in between the clacking of the keys. “I don’t remember for sure.”
She sounded more awake now. Intrigued. And she hadn’t pretended to already know exactly what he was talking about, the way she had once pretended to have been anywhere her husbands’ friends mentioned at parties. She was trusting him with her dignity.
He wasn’t going to let her down.
“They were father and son and they were imprisoned together. Daedalus, the father, was an inventor, so he made these wings that the two of them could strap to their arms. They’d be able to use them to fly away.”