Page 57 of Dream Lake

“If I did kiss you,” Alex said, “the only reason I’d do it would be to make you sorry as hell that you asked for it.” He gave her a hard look, willing her to back down. “Still want it?”

“Yes,” Zoë said promptly, and closed her eyes and lifted her face.

***

Alex was right, of course. Any kind of relationship between them was a bad idea, for many reasons. But she still wanted him to kiss her.

She stood with eyes closed, braced for whatever he would do. An electric quietness surrounded them. She felt him move nearer, and his arms went around her so slowly that a shiver crossed over her like rough light. There was the curious sensation she remembered from before, of being absorbed, drawn in, as if he were feeling her with all his senses, drinking in every breath and blush and heartbeat.

One of his hands came up to her face, angling her jaw upward, his fingers shaping over the fragile bones. A soft brush against her mouth, and another, ephemeral kisses that made her lips feel swollen. Her balance faltered, but he gripped her against the support of his body and held her steady. Bending his head lower, he dragged his mouth along the thin, blood-heated skin of her throat. She felt the tip of his tongue rest against a pulse point, and she went weak, her hands clutching at his shoulders. Slowly he kissed his way up to her jaw, while one of his hands cupped the back of her head to lift it, and finally she felt the full, hard pressure of his mouth on hers, making her dizzy with wholesale relief.

Soft plangent sounds rose in her throat. She reached up to grip his head with her hands, anything to keep his mouth on hers. But the kiss dissolved with a muffled laugh, and he looked down into her dazed face with a tender, mocking amusement she had never seen from him before.

She struggled to speak between ragged breaths. “Alex… please…”

“Shhh.” His lashes half lowered over eyes that were startlingly bright in the heightened color of his face. His gently restless hands moved over her hair, her body, her back.

“I want…” she tried to say, but the dazzle of heat made it impossible to think. She tried again. “I want…”

“I know what you want.” The hint of a smile burned out, and his head bent again.

He opened her mouth with his, sent his tongue deep. The kiss turned rougher, wetter, acquiring a subtle erotic rhythm. To her mortification, her hips began to roll forward, seeking the hard pressure of him. She couldn’t stop herself. If only she could be somewhere else with him, some quiet and shadowy place where nothing would bother them. Just the two of them away from the rest of the world. The pleasure thickened, her thoughts dissolving. Sensations blended into a sweet ache that seemed to come from outside and inside at the same time. She arched feverishly, trying to bring herself closer against him.

Alex pulled his mouth from hers, and crushed her against his chest. “No more,” he said, sounding shaken. “Zoë… no… be still…”

She shuddered as he held her, his breath rushing in hot bursts against her hair. Linking her arms around his lean waist, she let her fingertips make a timid foray into the top edges of his back pockets, while his heartbeat pressed against hers. It felt as if she might fall to pieces without his hard grip holding her together.

“We’re even now,” she heard him whisper.

She managed a nod, her face hidden.

“I didn’t mean to do it that way.” Alex nipped softly at the outer curve of her ear. “I was going to make it hurt, just a little.”

“Why didn’t you?”

A long, wondering hesitation. “I just couldn’t.”

He eased her away. Zoë forced herself to look into his eyes, and saw that the same force of will that had impelled him to stop drinking was now being repurposed.

This wouldn’t happen again. He wouldn’t allow it.

An oven timer went off again, and she jumped at the piercing sound.

Alex smiled slightly, breaking their shared gaze, and turned away.

Zoë went to the oven without looking back. She heard the back door open and close.

Neither of them had said anything.

Sometimes silence was easiest, when the only word left was good-bye.

Fifteen

A month passed, and somehow the new direction of Alex’s life held. The ghost had not expected to learn anything from Alex during their enforced association, but as it turned out, he did. Alex had to wrestle his addiction hour by hour, sometimes even minute by minute, but he was about as stubborn as it was possible for a man to be. To the ghost, quitting drinking looked a lot like jumping into the water and hoping that somehow you’d figure out how to swim before you went under.

Alex distracted himself with work, and plenty of it. He did such meticulous handwork on the Dream Lake cottage that any master craftsman would have been proud to claim it. Alex worked long into the nights, sanding, buffing, staining, painting, and in the process he consumed enough candy bars to send a normal person into diabetic shock. Thanks to the ghost’s nagging, Alex also ate regular meals throughout the day, although he would have to eat a lot more to make up for the deficit of calories he’d been used to consuming in the form of alcohol.

Alex saw Zoë on two occasions, once to collect paint swatches. That had lasted about a minute and a half, and then he was gone. The second time, Zoë had come to the cottage for Alex to show her the progress on the remodel. He had been businesslike. Zoë had been restrained. Gavin and Isaac, for their parts, had been so mesmerized by Zoë that neither of them had so much as hammered a nail while she was there.

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