She felt her gaze slide away, but forced it back. She owed it to him to meet his gaze straight on. “But it’s nothing as . . . as amazing as shifters. In fact, it’s pretty much the opposite, but there it is. And it comes to, well, I’m afraid you’ve got to steer this canoe. Because I’m probably the only female over the age of consent in California who can say this, but I’ve still got my V-card.”
“V-card?” Joey repeated.
“Virgin,” she said, and blushed. “I’m still one. I had a close call a few years ago, but luckily, or unluckily, depending on how you look at it, I found out he was a jerk, and cut that off fast. And so.” She flung out her hands. “Here I am.”
Joey hid the urge to exclaim Is that all? Though it didn’t matter to him, it clearly mattered to her, and that was what was most important. He said, “I see it as, here we are.”
“Yes, but I have no idea what I’m doing.”
“That,” he said, “makes two of us. Oh, sex itself is something I know. And it’s simple enough. But I’ve never yet been with my mate. Shall we learn this together?”
For answer, she led him straight up to her bedroom, with the old creaky bed and the faded quilt with the ballerina dancers.
Her shy, inviting smile hollowed him to the heart.
And so it was the most natural thing in the world to kiss her, and then again, to taste her, and then to let his lips drift over her face. Eyelids. Cheek. Chin. The spot behind her ear. Her breath hitched, and he explored the sensitive skin where her jaw met her neck, and then moved downward at a leisurely pace until she rewarded him with a whimper of passion.
Her hand rose at last, and traveled slowly along the line of his jaw, and down again. He’d already shed his coat—she slid her fingers inside his shirt, and he paused only long enough to make very short work of those buttons, inviting further explorations.
Slowly, ever so slowly, the barriers of shyness, and then of clothing vanished one by one. He’d thought earlier his self-mastery was put to the test, but that was nothing to his effort now to go slow, to hold his mounting need at bay as she kissed him uncertainly, as if unsure of her welcome while he waited for her to pull back again. Each waiting on the other, ready to withhold their own desire, until at last they understood that they were completely in synch.
And then the joy began, breath heating and tangling, limbs tangling, and he found himself falling into the sweet softness of her being. Her hands speared into his hair and he held himself back enough for her to take the lead. The choice of what to do, and how slow or fast things would go, was up to her. The moment she understood that, he felt her exultation in her power, as the hot shocks of pleasure detonated in that deep place.
It was
she who could utterly undo him, and she did.
The heat zigzagged in lightning shards of intensity as his hands found, and worshipped, her secret places until at last, at last, she tightened her legs around him as he buried himself inside her. And they rode the waves together, skin to skin, lips to lips, until the sun obliterated the world.
Then he tumbled down in a fountain of bright sparks, and they lay together, limbs tangled, holding one another as breath steadied, and the quiet evening closed in around them once again: the chirp of birds, the sough of the pines.
Then she turned her head to him, her brow puckered as she whispered. “I wish I could give you kids. If you wanted them. But that ship sailed twenty years ago.”
“Doris.” He said her name slowly, savoring it, savoring her. “You’ve brought me an entire family.”
EPILOGUE
DORIS
“ … and when he said that he likes my family, and even looks forward to seeing them again, I knew it was the real McCoy,” Doris said.
She was half-joking, and the other three women gave her the grins that made it clear they understood.
It was a week later.
Bird, Jen, and Godiva had just arrived at Doris’s house.
Doris had asked Bird to let them know she was back, of course, but she’d had to go straight to work the morning after her arrival home. After that, she and Joey had traded off going to each other’s houses to spend the night for the rest of the week.
But Godiva called after Doris missed Friday’s writers’ group, just to make certain she was all right—and being Godiva, had insisted on coming over to see for herself.
Naturally she brought Bird and Jen. So here they were, sitting at her kitchen table while the water boiled.
Godiva looked around at the half-packed kitchen. Boxes stood by the far wall, ready for the twins to take on their next visit—they’d insisted they would move her stuff.
“That’s why I missed the group,” Doris said. “We’re trying to get me moved this weekend, as the new semester has begun and I don’t dare miss a day.”
“You’re moving in with him?” Godiva asked. “After what, barely a week? One week you meet the guy and run like you’d spotted lice in his pretty blond hair—”