“I can’t say that they did,” I say with a shrug. “Perhaps Liz—er, Miss Lucas—is just a good partner.”
I deliberately ignore the woman when she fixes me with that all-knowing stare of hers.
“If you say so,” she says. “Though I’m hardly going to argue with you about the partner thing. Girl’s good people. She’ll make a man mighty happy one day.”
“I don’t think she’s looking.” I murmur.
“Ha!” Mrs. McKitrick snorts. “A woman might never be looking, but she’s hardly going to say no when romance is thrown her way. Even if it ain’t permanent.”
I’m surprised by such an open comment from the primary school teacher and I raise my eyebrows at her.
“Oh, grow up Caleb Walker. A woman doesn’t need a ring to have a satisfying love life, these days.”
I don’t trust myself to reply to that one at all, so I distract myself by pouring a cup of soda.
Internally, however, I can’t shrug the thought away.
“I’m a healthy woman who enjoys sex…”
Lizzie made it perfectly clear she’s able to carry on a physical relationship without commitment. Without emotional strings. That kiss we’d shared proved it.
Heat blasts through my body as I finally allow myself to remember what that kiss was like. What it had done to my jaded heart and chaste soul. I’m almost ashamed to admit it, but it had set me aflame. From head to toe and without missing a single significant organ along the way. Kissing Lizzie had been like kissing a bolt of lightning. Hot, electrifying, and downright dangerous for my heart. My chest had cramped, my muscles had tensed, and when she’d moaned my name against my lips? I’d been ready to mount her like an animal.
I’d launched myself at her, every inch of my skin wanting contact, wanting hot and wet nakedness. Wanting to be inside her.
It was the most incredible kiss I’d ever had. And then I’d completely ruined it by assuming that Lizzie needs a gentleman in her life more than she needs a lover.
Because I am a total and complete idiot.
Looking out over the crowd, I spot Lizzie easily. My eyes are trained to her now, picking her out from the crowd like she’s my own personal homing beacon. Dressing in a flurry of white, she shines brighter than anyone else in the room, now dancing a complicated two-step with Dr. Grayson. I watch as her shape changes with every movement; how her hips shift, one higher and then the other; how her flat belly moves back and then forward like the shadow of a thrust. How her legs tense and release with every carefully chosen step. Her arms shift from defined to supple whether they’re held high or resting in Dr. Grayson’s classical hold. Her face brightens, her hair flies, her skirts flare.
The woman is like the rolling sea. Never static, never taciturn. Always moving, loving, enjoying.
What would it be like to make love to a woman like that?
No, not love. She didn’t want love.
What would it be like to take her to bed? To claim her body with my own. To move in fluid unison. How would all that energy, those beautiful molten moves translate into passion?
“I’m a healthy woman who enjoys sex… I’m not looking for a knight in shining armor…”
Before I know what I’m doing, one foot is carrying me forward and then the other.
She’d said it herself, hadn’t she?I move another step toward the dance floor. She had made it perfectly clear that the physical alone was all she wanted?
And if it’s only physical, where is the risk to me? Why would I grieve the inevitable loss when she goes back home if all we’d shared was bodily pleasure?
I move through the first row of dancing couples, spotting the white of Lizzie’s skirts a few yards over.
Everyone leaves in the end. I know that.
Everyone disappears eventually, one way or another. But that doesn’t mean the here and now has to mean nothing. It doesn’t mean I have to ignore all things and all people. Did I refuse to eat today because the diner might close tomorrow?
I swallow as Lizzie and Dr. Grayson spin closer and I then take the final step toward them.
As I reach out, I have the strangest sense that I’m reaching for something more than I’m promising myself. Something that is going to change my world irrevocably.
And still… I can’t resist.