The One In My Heart

On the tail end of those words, he pushed into me. I expelled a lungful of air. God, that felt good. I wrapped my legs around him; he drove so deep my breath shook. He lifted me higher and licked my nipple. Pleasure rippled through me.

The next moment something else rippled through me: incredulity, as if I’d just woken up and realized what I was doing. I’d been entirely seduced by this man, in a way that had never happened to me before.

He braced one hand under my bottom. With his other hand he touched me again between my legs. Sensations flooded my nerve endings, drowning out everything in my head except a raging need for more.

More of the deftness of his fingers, more of the strength of his hold, more of the thorough penetration of his body into mine.

More of this very grown-up enchantment—a separate reality altogether. I didn’t want it to end. I didn’t want to leave its soft cocoon. I didn’t want to head out to the night, back to my own reality.

Or my actual self.

But already I was crying out, throaty, desperate sounds. Already my sensations were gathering and cresting. I plunged my fingers into his hair, buried my face in his shoulder, and held on as my orgasm steamrolled over me, leaving me trembling in its wake.

Bennett was nearing his own peak, his thrusts hard and forceful. His breath caught. His teeth sank into my shoulder. And suddenly I was coming again, a climax that picked me up like a rogue wave and crashed over me just as violently.


MODERN ENCHANTMENTS WERE BROKEN NOT by the strike of midnight, but the wallop of ferocious orgasms.

I loved standing in Bennett’s embrace afterward, listening to the sound of his breath slowly returning to normal. I loved the small drop kisses he left on my jaw, my neck, and my shoulder. I loved the way he sighed, cupped my face with one hand, and murmured, his lips brushing the shell of my ear, “Sweetheart, you blew my mind.”

But I already knew our time was at an end.

His scent was that of the night—cool rain and summer foliage. I trailed my fingers up the musculature of his arm. My other hand I laid against his heart, feeling its strong and still-wild beat.

He kissed me on my temple. “Can I get you something? More tiramisu? A smoke?”

I played with his pendant. It was a glasswork semiabstract sea turtle about an inch across—the sort of souvenir one might bring back from Hawaii for a teenager. Not at all what I’d expected.

Which only made me more curious. “You smoke?”

“Officially not anymore, but I have a secret stash—you can’t be a doctor unless you are a hypocrite about your own health.”

I wanted to see that secret stash of cigarettes. I wanted to hear the story behind his pendant. I wanted to know whether he could still make me laugh when the sun was high in the sky.

“I should go,” I said quietly. “You have to work tomorrow. You need your sleep.”

He pulled back and traced a finger along my brow, a tender gesture, yet with a hint of melancholy. “True. You don’t want to be subpoenaed to testify at my malpractice trial because you kept me up all night and caused me to remove the wrong lung from Mrs. Johnson.”

That wrung a small smile from me.

We fell silent. Not an awkward silence, more like the kind that comes when two friends watch a spectacular sunset together. And then he broke away, disposed of the condom, and pulled on his clothes, giving me a view of his taut gluteal muscles.

When he was dressed, he picked up the bathrobe from where it had landed on the floor and handed it back to me—I realized only then that I hadn’t moved at all. “Let me go check on your clothes,” he said.

My clothes were warm and dry. I put them on. We walked out and got back into the Roadster, this time with him driving.

The rain had stopped. The clouds were parting—who knew there was a full moon tonight? Moonlight shimmered on wet leaves and glistened on the dark asphalt path. It limned Bennett’s chiseled features, making my breath catch.

Collette’s house was barely a quarter mile from his. All too soon he pulled into her driveway. “I’ll watch you from here.”

I let myself remain where I was a moment longer than necessary before I leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. “Thanks for showing me a great time.”

“You’re very welcome,” he said. Then, after a pause, “I hope whatever was bothering you earlier won’t look so bad when the sun rises.”





Chapter 2





THE NEXT MORNING, WHEN THE sun rose, I was already packing. At noon Collette walked in—she’d canceled the vacation she’d planned to tack onto the end of her assignment and returned early, so I could go back to Manhattan. An hour later I was on the train, phone in hand, scrolling through the brief backlog of texts between Bennett and me.