“Does Fionn like it?”
“He loves it. Last visit, I played Sarah Jane Smith and Zach was a Dalek. Fionn’s always the Doctor.” She raised her head and looked down at him. “Why do you ask?”
“It never would have occurred to me that he would like Doctor Who. He’s only three.” Silence again. Then, “Zachary’s a good father to him.”
“He is.”
“I hate him.”
Nora laughed. Søren did, too, a quiet self-deprecating laugh that turned into a soft groan. He rubbed his forehead.
“Being apart from him is harder than I ever dream. Why did I do this to myself? To you? To us?”
She reached across him and on the nightstand lay her keys. She grabbed them and held up a key.
“Here,” she said. “Here’s my TARDIS key. Take it. Hop in. Go back in time and stop yourself from conceiving Fionn. Would you if you could?”
He took a long breath then reached out, not to take the keys but to stroke her face.
“I thought so.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Cyrus lay down next to Paulina and pulled her to him. He kissed her. That was all. Nothing but kissing and more kissing for as long as he could stand it and as long as she could take it. Her small delicate hands moved over his shoulders and back, under his t-shirt to find bare skin to touch. As he kissed her, she made small soft murmurs of pleasure, beautiful sounds he wanted to record and put on his phone to play back tomorrow and the next day and every day until their wedding night.
They were both tangled in the covers and it was killing him not to feel her skin on his. He dug for the sheet and yanked it out of the way, found her long bare legs and stroked her thigh. She was a runner, like him, and had long strong thighs, and every time he stroked upward, toward her hip, he felt her muscle tense, and every time he stroked downward, to her knee, she relaxed.
He liked tense better. Cyrus slid his hand slowly up her leg, from knee to thigh to hip. He tickled the trim of her silky panties and the even silkier skin his fingers found everywhere he touched her. He slipped a finger under her panties, just to touch the smooth curve of her hipbone. Paulina tensed again, even took in a quick breath, but she didn’t tell him to stop.
“Nervous?” he asked her.
“Yeah.”
“It’s all right. The second you want to stop, we’ll stop. And we’re not gonna go too far tonight.”
“I’ll go anywhere,” she said, “as long as you go with me.”
He heard nothing but love in her voice, love and trust, which sounded about the same to him.
“You’ll tell me if you get scared?”
“I won’t get scared.”
“I know you won’t.” Of course she wouldn’t. Whether she’d done this before or not, Paulina wasn’t the type of woman to be scared by what she wanted, only scared of not getting it. So she had no reason to be afraid of anything because there was nothing in the world he wouldn’t give her if she asked for it.
He slid his whole hand under the fabric of her panties and started to pull them down. Paulina went still in his arms, like she’d taken in a breath but wasn’t ready to release it yet. Her eyes were closed, her thick dark lashes on her cheeks. Her face looked kissed by gold in the soft light of her bedside lamp. No make-up. Half-asleep. She’d never looked so sexy to him.
Cyrus was so hard it hurt and got harder as the palm of his hand cupped her soft round ass as he pulled her panties down and off of her. He’d patted her bottom of her clothes before, over her skirts and jeans and even her bikini bottoms, but there was nothing quite like his bare hand on her bare ass.
“Let’s elope tomorrow,” he said.
“Why wait?”
He laughed softly. Although they were alone in the house, they both were keeping their voices low, like what they were doing was a secret. And maybe it was, though who they were keeping the secret from, neither knew nor cared. It was just fun to have a secret to keep together.
Although it almost killed him to pull away from her warm soft body, he had to do it. He came up on his knees to finish taking her panties off, and threw them across the room out into the hall.
“You’re crazy,” she said, grinning. Despite the smile, he could tell she was nervous, at least a little. She’d clamped her legs tight together. He couldn’t even fit a credit card between those knees, much less his body. But they’d work on that.
“You make me crazy.” He rubbed his hands up and down her thighs again, the tops, the sides, the backs, trying to calm her, relax her. Her nightgown was long enough that it covered her. And though he was dying to see her, all of her, he wasn’t going to rush it. They’d waited almost two years to be together like this. They’d survive waiting another five minutes.
Maybe.
“You are the sexiest man alive,” Paulina said as she looked up at him.
“Damn.”
“It’s true.”
“I wasn’t arguing.”
She giggled and shook her head. “I can’t believe we’re doing this.”
Cyrus took his t-shirt off, threw it so it landed by her panties in the hall.
She looked up at him again. “Now I can believe it.”
“You’re gonna give me a big ego,” he said.
“You? I’m the one getting married to the sexiest man alive. My ego’s big as this house and getting bigger all the time.”
“I don’t know what I did to deserve you, baby,” he said, “but I’m glad I did it.”
No more laughing. Paulina wasn’t even smiling. She was dead serious when she met his eyes and said, “I love you.”
“I love you, too. And you’re gonna let me show you how much, right?”
She inhaled slow and exhaled even slower. He knew this was hard for her. Whether she’d ever done it before had nothing to do with it. She’d never done this with him. He slid his hands up and down her thighs again, and when he reached her knees, he pushed them apart.
Paulina didn’t put up any resistance. If she had, even for a second, he might have put a stop to it all. But she didn’t. He pushed and she spread her legs like she wanted to do it as much as he wanted it done.
Then it was done. He stared down at her beautiful body lying open for him in the lamplight. The soft dark curls, the slit just starting to open, the little bit of pink and red showing through.
“You better say something,” Paulina said.
“I’m speechless.”
“That’ll do.”
Cyrus slid down on top of her again, chest to her breasts, arms around her back, kissing her mouth with lips and tongue and love and need and twice of everything all over again. The way she kissed him now…he realized she’d been holding back with him. Before, her kisses had been sweet and tender, sometimes deep. But never like this. Never desperate.
Paulina lifted her hips and rubbed against him. Even through his jeans, he felt her heat. It wasn’t enough. He had to touch her. He slid his hand slowly down and up her arm, over her breasts and down her belly. Finally, he pressed his hands between her thighs, cradling her in his palm.
She buried her head into the crook of his neck and shoulder as he held her there, soaking in the wet warmth against his skin. But she didn’t close her legs. In fact, she opened up a little wider for him and lifted herself into his palm. He had to touch her and she had to be touched. With only one finger, he started to stroke her along the slit. She was wet and swollen. He’d almost forgotten how good it was to make a woman feel this way.