“Luscious and firm.” She pulled his lower lip between her teeth. “Beguiling, enticing, calling to me.” She ran her tongue over his whiskers, feeling the stiff prickles of them. “A Siren’s song, Pied Piper’s flute.” She kissed his mouth, then moved her lips to his lower one. “I dream of it asleep, awake. To touch it, caress it, kiss it.” She put her lips to his. “The tip of my tongue,” she whispered and followed the words with action. “Breaths mingling.” For a moment she opened her mouth under his, then pulled his lip into the warm cavity of her mouth. “To draw it in, to caress it, to feel it against my own. Ah,” she said in a throaty whisper. “Jared’s lower lip.”
When he looked at her, his eyes were dark with lust. That blue fire she’d come to love. In the next second he stood up in the tub, lifting her with him, his arm tight around her as he took her out of the tub and carried her into the bedroom. He stood over her, nude, and looked down at her warm, wet body, and the smile he gave her made her grow even warmer.
“There are parts of your body that I especially like too,” he said as he stretched out beside her.
“Such as?” she asked as he began kissing her neck, his hand at her waist.
“I’m better with action than words.”
“Are you?” she whispered. “Then perhaps you should show me.”
“I would love to.” He began to move down her body, his mouth following his hands.
Chapter Eighteen
“You’re sure you’ll be all right without me?” Jared asked Alix for what had to be the twelfth time. It was seven A.M. on a Wednesday and they were at Downyflake awaiting their breakfast. The very pretty Linda had waited on them and the always cheerful Rosie had stopped by to chat. It was the fifth or sixth time they’d been to the restaurant and Alix had run into a few acquaintances that Jared didn’t know. Knowing people separately from him made her feel like she was beginning to belong on the island.
“I’ll be fine,” she told him again as she moved her hand across the table to touch his fingers. She was still in a daze after the night before. They’d made love for hours, taking their time with each other. Even though Alix knew that something had happened, she couldn’t get him to tell her what it was, but all last night and this morning he’d acted as though Alix might walk out the door and never come back. She was concerned about him and didn’t want him to worry. “Dad will be here, and Lexie and Toby. What are you so afraid of?”
He wanted to say, “My grandfather and your mother,” but didn’t. This afternoon he was going to board JetBlue and fly to New York to begin making arrangements for the purchase and shipment of the materials to build Alix’s chapel. “Sure you don’t want to go with me?” he asked.
“I’m not sure at all, but …” She didn’t really understand why she felt that she had to stay on Nantucket but she did, and she went with her instinct. “I’m going to learn what I can about Valentina. And who was the other woman you asked me about?”
“Parthenia.”
“And you don’t know her last name?”
“With a first name like that she doesn’t need another one.” He looked down at his coffee and thought that it was his grandfather
who’d put this idea of remaining behind and working on the papers into Alix’s mind. If it was, Jared knew why he was doing it. One month from today Captain Caleb Kingsley would depart from this world forever. The last close attachment of Jared’s life was going away. Forever.
Alix reached across the table to put her hand over his. “I wish you’d tell me what’s bothering you.”
“I would if I could.” He gave her a half smile. “What have you heard from your mother?”
“She’s finished her book tour and is back home now. The last time we spoke, I started to let her know just what I thought about her lying to me all these years.”
Jared genuinely grinned. “How hard did she laugh?”
Alix groaned. “I hate that you know both my parents so well. Mom said it was all done for art and therefore was permissible.”
“Did you tell her I was going off-island?”
“I did, actually.”
Jared took a drink of his coffee. “Then she’ll be here within twenty-four hours after I leave.”
Alix started to speak but paused when Linda appeared and put their food before them. When they were alone, Alix leaned toward Jared and said softly, “Why would my mother need to wait until you left before she came here? What other secrets do you two have?”
“You mean like sex on the chamber pot staircase, like you and I had last night?” he asked, eyebrows raised. “My back still hurts.” Alix didn’t like his joke.
Jared realized his bond with Alix was much more important than any loyalty to her mother. “Victoria wants the last of the Kingsley women’s journals, specifically Aunt Addy’s, so she can make a novel out of them.”
Alix ate a few bites of her breakfast quesadilla as she thought about what he’d said and how it fit so well into what she already knew. “Then it wasn’t Aunt Addy’s storytelling—there are journals.”
“Yes. Lots of them.”
“Is this one of your two secrets?” she asked. “It is.”