Part 34 (1/2)
”But I'm too tired,” we both said simultaneously.
We barely managed to crawl under the covers before we both fell asleep.
The next morning we were awakened by an insistent tap on the door.
”Did you order anything?” I grumbled.
”How could I?” he answered. ”I was asleep.”
He stumbled to the door, still in the dirty jeans and T-s.h.i.+rt he'd worn the night before. A hotel employee was waiting with a plate under a silver dome and a pot of delicious-smelling coffee.
”That smells awfully good,” Derek said, ”but I didn't order it. Besides, there's two of us here.”
”Oh!” The young man looked chagrined as he checked the ticket. ”This is for the room next door. Please accept my apologies, and if you would like breakfast today, of course it will be on the house.”
Derek shut the door on his retreating back and turned to me. ”Do you want breakfast?”
I lifted a corner of the duvet. ”Maybe later.”
Derek didn't immediately climb into bed. Instead he treated me to a slow striptease as he removed the clothes he'd been too tired to take off the night before. We had forgotten to close the curtains, and the sun gleamed through puffy c.u.mulus clouds, surrounding Derek with a honey-colored halo. When the T-s.h.i.+rt came off my gaze lingered on his taut chest muscles and chiseled abdomen. He turned slightly, revealing the tattoo of the Celtic cross on his bicep that I'd first seen at the hospital. Then I'd tried to avoid looking at his sinewy back and high, round b.u.t.tocks, but now I was free to feast my eyes. My mouth went dry as he unb.u.t.toned his jeans, tantalizing me with their slow progress down his jutting hipbones. Finally he revealed his manhood in all its glory.
”That is a beautiful picture,” I said.
”Do you want me to stay like this?” He flexed a bicep and struck a pose, turning his head so that the sun burnished the long waves of his hair.
”h.e.l.l, no, I want you to come here.”
He slid between the sheets. After a bit of scrambling I was divested of my own clothes, down to my bra and panties. Derek kissed me so deeply I felt it all the way down to my curling toes, which he trapped between his own feet as he flipped me onto my back. He held my hands down, rendering me immobile. I could do nothing but gasp as he slid up and down, pressing himself into the cleft between my legs, the silk of my panties generating a delicious friction between us.
”Oh, yes,” I moaned, as he stripped the panties off my legs. ”Come inside.”
”No, not yet.” He freed my hands so that he could slide down the length of my body, kissing and licking all the way. ”I'm going to make sure this gets done right.”
I tossed the duvet aside so that I could look at him. His hair fell in a curtain around his face, and the ends swept my skin, causing a tickling pleasure that was so exquisite it made me laugh out loud. Digging my fingers deep into his curly hair as he dove between my legs, I started to guide him with my hands, but quickly realized he needed no a.s.sistance. He found the spot where I wanted him to go and worked it expertly with tongue and teeth until shooting stars appeared behind my eyelids. My world contracted until nothing was left but that tiny k.n.o.b of flesh and the sensation pulsing through it. Then everything exploded. The world expanded again, and I felt it all, in every part of me. I sobbed with the pure joy of it, of being alive and having Derek with me, wholly and entirely himself.
”Are you okay?” he asked, lifting his head. ”You're crying.”
”No, I'm not,” I said. I hauled him up, locking my ankles around his thighs and pulling him in hard, so that he had no choice but to slip inside me.
He gasped as he went in. ”Are you sure?”
”Yes. Move with me, Derek.”
He did. We rocked together in flawless rhythm and perfect harmony, performing a duet that was timeless, ageless, shared by all humans and yet entirely unique to us. It was our song of love.
Epilogue.
Six months later The music seemed to be coming from inside my head.
For a moment this sensation frightened me, until I realized I'd fallen asleep with the iPod headphones on, listening to the latest track of Derek's new alb.u.m. It seemed I was falling asleep all the time now, but that was understandable, since I was six months pregnant. I stood up slowly, to avoid the dizziness that hit me every time I moved from horizontal to vertical. Being pregnant had slowed me down considerably. Or maybe it was being back in New Orleans. Something about the thick, magnolia-scented air seemed to cause everything and everybody to move at a more leisurely pace.
I checked the clock and was startled to realize I'd been asleep for an hour. I was seeing a client at two o'clock, a half hour from now, but since my commute was only about sixty steps I had plenty of time. I went to the bathroom, combed my hair, and touched up my lipstick. Standing sideways, I checked out my belly in the full-length mirror. As always, I was awestruck at the miracle that was occurring inside me. The baby had started kicking a month ago, and since then he or she had kept up an almost constant marathon of calisthenics that made my belly ripple and pucker like Eva's bag of snakes.
When I first found out I was pregnant, three weeks after the exorcism in the forest, I was worried that I would conflate the experience of being pregnant with being occupied by Edgar's ghost. After all, the only experience I'd ever had of having another soul inside my body was a profoundly distressing one. But after the first sonogram, when the tiny, ghostly white apparition of our baby appeared on the screen and its rapid heartbeat echoed out of the sonogram machine, and Derek and I cried together, I knew that I would welcome this soul, and nurture it happily inside my body until it was ready to make its own way in the world. This baby, and Derek, had given me my life back and allowed me to shape it into just the right life for me.
After locking the apartment I crossed the balcony, running my fingers along the ornate eighteenth-century iron-work, and waddled downstairs. Derek's music studio was on the first floor of our carriage house, which was behind a brick-lined courtyard containing a burbling fountain and several overarching oak trees. I didn't bother to knock, since I knew he'd have headphones on, and I was able to watch him undetected as he sat at the recording console, adjusting dials and sliders while his head bobbed in time to the music.
I snuck up behind him and put one hand on his chest. He startled, and then relaxed, leaning back into his chair. I slid my fingers under his T-s.h.i.+rt, cupping his hard pectoral muscle. Even six months after Edgar had left Derek's body, it was still rea.s.suring to feel his steady heartbeat under my hand. I pinched his nipple lightly and it tightened at my touch.
”Can't you see I'm working?” he groaned. ”You pregnant women are insatiable.”
”Don't flatter yourself,” I said. ”I have a client in twenty minutes.”
He pulled my hand until I bent over him, and then he grabbed the back of my head. He kissed me, long and deep, until the fluttering in my belly made me wonder if he was right-if I was, in fact, insatiable.
He stood up so abruptly the headphones pulled off his ears and fell onto the console. He put both arms around me and grabbed my behind, pulling me tightly against him, fitting himself expertly around the swell in my belly. All the while he kept kissing me, his tongue alternately swirling and probing, first soft, then hard and insistent. I stumbled backward until I hit the wall, and still he was grinding against me, ma.s.saging my flesh, pulling my skirt up my legs...
”Derek, Eva's waiting for me in the store. Maybe if I hadn't fallen asleep, or if you'd woken me up, but I don't have time to go back home.”
”Who said anything about going back?” His hand slipped insistently down my abdomen. He lifted the upper edge of my panties and then paused, his lips on my neck, hot breath blowing down my collar.
”What are you waiting for?” I moaned.
”For you to say yes.” His fingertips tickled my hair, skimmed my outer lips.
I waited, torturing myself with the pleasure of antic.i.p.ation. He bit my neck, just fiercely enough for me to cry out. There was a yes in the cry, and his fingers plunged downward. I came instantly, and he supported my weight with his other arm as my legs gave way underneath me. He held me tenderly, whispering how much he loved me into the cup of my ear, until I stopped shuddering. Then he straightened up and adjusted his jeans to accommodate the extra bulk at the front. There was a wicked smile on his face.
”What about you?” I said, reaching for his belt buckle.
”Oh no.” He spun toward the console and picked up his headphones. ”Let it be known that I did not make Dr. Maggie Fielding late for her appointment.” He turned back and kissed me once, lightly. ”I'll see you tonight.”
I eyed him like he was a plate of the French Market beignets I'd recently rediscovered.
”You're evil, Derek Fielding. But in a good way.”
The water in the fountain sparkled in the shafts of bright summer sunlight that found their way through the shelter of the oak trees. I dipped my hand in the water and splashed it onto my hot face, drying it with the sleeve of my s.h.i.+rt. We allowed customers to sit in the courtyard, so there was a sign on both the front and back doors.
Two Sisters House of Spiritual Counseling I had voted against the drippy gothic lettering, but both Derek and Eva liked it, so I'd been outvoted. And now that I'd lived with it for a few months, I realized that it did fit the French Quarter milieu better than the sterile sans serif font I had wanted to use. I was still getting used to my new ident.i.ty as the ghost-whispering psychiatrist, whose a.r.s.enal included everything from Prozac to pentacles, but as each day pa.s.sed I became more comfortable and more accepting that this was my true calling.
Even though it was shaded, the courtyard was blisteringly hot, so I was happy for the cool blast of air conditioning as I entered the store. I breathed in the heady aroma of incense, herbs, and candles. Carmel, the clerk I'd spoken to from California, was at the counter unpacking a box of jewelry. I picked up a necklace of a.s.sorted semiprecious stones and worked it through my fingers like a rosary, happy to find I could recount the healing and spiritual properties of each of the stones. I was wearing a necklace of carnelian and citrine. Carnelian was a.s.sociated with reproduction, rebirth, and reincarnation, and citrine was useful in helping people find their way along the path of life. Eva favored malachite because it was a money attractor, and Carmel was into moss agate because she was on the hunt for a decent boyfriend.