“Turning into a hippie?” I asked, lifting a hand to push the heavy dark strands away from his face.
“Just didn’t care, these past few months.”
My heart twinged, and I reached out and touched his hand, not saying anything. He gripped my fingers for a few seconds before letting them go so he could open the door.
Nothing seemed to have changed since the last time I entered the hallway. It still smelled of mildew and damp, still looked as if someone needed to get into the corners with a good stiff brush and some heavy-duty cleaner. In silence we climbed the stairs to the second floor. Connor opened the door to the apartment, and I held my breath. It felt like years since I’d been here, and I didn’t know what to expect. Maybe he’d let the place go after I left. Maybe it would be a total disaster.
But as I entered the familiar short hallway and glanced around, it seemed as if nothing much had changed. Everything looked neat and clean, nothing out of place except the usual collection of finished paintings stacked up against the walls in various spots. Some of them I didn’t recognize, which meant he’d kept working after I was gone. Good. I hated to think that our separation might have affected his art. I remembered then that he’d had another gallery show scheduled for the end of April, and wondered if he’d gone through with it, or whether he’d canceled the whole thing. Since quite a few paintings I remembered seemed to be gone, it looked as if he’d had the show after all.
“Connor — ” I began, but didn’t get much further than that, as he’d reached out and pulled me against him, brought his mouth against mine, pushing my lips open with his tongue, tasting me.
The purse fell from my suddenly nerveless fingers and dropped with a heavy thud against the wooden floor. At the same time, Connor scooped me up in his arms and headed for the stairs, moving up them so quickly that I didn’t have time to think about anything except the strength of his embrace and the thudding of my heart in my chest.
And then we were in his bedroom, and his hands were on my blouse, pulling it over my head, and his fingers were working the front clasp of my bra before he slid the straps down my shoulders and pulled the whole thing away from my body, tossing it onto the chair under the window. His hands cupped my breasts, and I moaned, needing his touch, needing the magic of flesh against flesh, his lips and tongue caressing me even as he undid the button and zipper of my jeans and pushed them down. I kicked off my flip-flops and did the same with my jeans, and then his hand was sliding down over my backside, cupping it as he pulled me against him, lifting his head from my nipple so he could kiss me again.
I went to work on his shirt buttons, undoing them one by one until his beautiful chest and stomach were revealed. Slipping my hands over him, I caressed my way down his torso until I came to his jeans and undid those as well.
Oh, he was so ready, so thick and hard it looked almost painful. A groan wrenched its way out of his throat as I moved my hand up and down his shaft. “Not too much,” he warned me. “It’s been a while.”
“So you don’t want me to do this?” I teased, lowering my head so I could take him in my mouth, taste the familiar salt of his skin, run my tongue over the silky yet rock-hard flesh.
“No — yes — Angela — ”
I took pity on him then, pulling him against me as we sank down onto the bed. His fingers brushed their way up the inside of my thigh, feather-light and yet awakening more fire, more heat, before they reached my core, stroking me, caressing me. I cried out, knowing I was close, so close, because it had been so long. An eternity without him.
But now he was here, and I was here, and it was the most natural thing in the world for him to slip into me, to fill the aching emptiness that had been a painful void ever since he sent me away from him. Two into one again, not Wilcox and McAllister, not prima and primus, not even Connor and Angela, but simply two souls merging into a perfect, ineffable one. There was no need for me to say the charm, because we had already kindled a life between us.
In that moment, I refused to believe any evil could come from such joy.
4
Beginnings
We dozed in each other’s arms afterward, maybe for only five or ten minutes, maybe as much as half an hour. Neither one of us was paying much attention, but eventually Connor stirred and said, “So did that work up an appetite?”
I realized it had. By then it was past one, and my stomach was telling me that I had better put something in it. “I think it just might have.”
With a groan, he rolled over, then bent to retrieve his discarded underwear. I did the same, afterward going to the bathroom to clean up as best I could. It wasn’t like before; I didn’t have a change of clothes here with me. Still, I straightened my hair and patted some cool water on my flushed cheeks before returning to the bedroom for the rest of my clothes.