SOUTH
For the second time that night, Nora’s jaw hit the ground and stayed there.
“Wes.”
“Nora?”
“Seriously?”
“What?”
“You said you stayed in the guesthouse.”
“This is the guesthouse.”
“It’s bigger than my house in Connecticut.”
“We have a lot of guests.”
Nora dropped her bag in the foyer and gazed around. The guesthouse looked nothing like the main house, but was no less grand in its own smaller way. The rough stone exterior masked an exquisite interior replete with plush tan and black furniture, well-matched and comfortable. Nora counted two stories, although she sensed a basement lurking underneath them. One entire wall in the living room consisted of a massive stone fireplace that climbed all the way to the ceiling.
“Wesley, this is a little ridiculous. What is this place?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Tell me anyway.”
“These are the old slave quarters. Refurbished, obviously.”
Nora’s eyes went wide. “Are you serious?”
He nodded. “Kentucky was a slave-holding state. We didn’t secede during the Civil War so the Emancipation Proclamation actually didn’t apply to us.”
“You’re telling me that you live in actual slave quarters? Actual slaves lived in this house?”
Wesley grimaced. “Well…if you can calling it living.”
Nora gazed around and nodded in approval. “Kinky.”
“Come on. I’ll show you your room.”
“Is it a slave room?”
“Probably.”
“Are you going to beat me and make me change my name to Toby?”
“How racist are you, Nora?”
“My lone female friend is Haitian, Wes. We like to watch Roots together and chug our vodka every time someone says Toby.”
“That’s it. Motel 6 time.”
Laughing, Nora threw her arms around Wesley again and pulled him into a hug. She couldn’t seem to stop doing that. The reality of him still shocked her. Fifteen months apart and suddenly…here he was right in front of her. In her arms. All six feet of his beautiful, twenty-year-old body. Nora sighed against his shoulder and basked in the warmth of him, the scent of him.
“Summer…” she whispered as she inhaled deeply. “You always smell like summer. Did I ever tell you that?”
Wesley chuckled and Nora smiled when his chest vibrated with the sound.
“You have. You told me that the first night I stayed at your house. You were out on the back porch sniffing the air. You said it smelled like…”
Nora looked up at him. “Søren.”
Wesley nodded. “Yeah. That guy.”
“You met him. Finally. What did you think?” Nora pulled away and sat on the back of the couch.
“I think he’s too tall.”
She crossed her legs at the ankles and smiled. “You can tell me the truth. There is no horrible thing you can say about him that I haven’t already heard or already thought and probably already said to his face.”
“Fine, then. I think he’s an asshole. He’s arrogant and cold, and he really truly believes you are his property. You get that, right? I know you kinky types like to play the property game. ‘He’s my slave.’ ‘She’s my pet.’ It isn’t that. He thinks he owns you. A hundred and fifty years ago, you’d be staying in this house when it was real slave quarters, and he would rape you and whip you whenever he felt like it.”
“Probably.” She didn’t argue, couldn’t argue. “Good thing it’s the twentieth century, right?”
“Twenty-first.”
“He’s not a bad person. He isn’t. He is, in fact, the best man on earth, not that anyone ever believes me when I tell them that.”
Wesley exhaled slowly. Nora cocked her head and smiled at him. She wasn’t sure if he saw the smile and she didn’t care. She just couldn’t look at him without smiling. That face of his, so sweet and handsome. Those sweet eyes. That goddamn too-long hair she was going to cut the second he let his guard down.
“I’ll say one nice thing about him,” Wesley finally said. “He did let you come with me.”
Nora swallowed. “There was no letting me. Wes, just the thought you were within a hundred yards of me…no army in this world or the next could have stopped me from getting to you.”
She met his eyes and saw the surprise in them. The surprise quickly changed to something else.
Wesley took a step forward. Then another. Nora didn’t make him take the third step. She stood and reached out for him and was in his arms once again. But this time no one stopped them when his lips crashed down onto hers. He tasted like summer and his touch burned her body like the sun.
His tongue sought hers with such tentativeness she nearly giggled. Poor kid. He had no idea how much he could give her, how much she would take from him. Digging her hands into his too-long hair, she pulled them even closer together, sighed into his mouth and rejoiced silently when Wesley took the hint. His hands slid down her back and cupped her bottom gently. The intimacy of his touch resonated deep within her. Some part of her had missed this…whatever it was, this tenuousness in him, this respect she felt in his hands, on his lips. He was careful with her. That was it. He touched her as if he worried he’d break her.
She’d never been with a man who hadn’t wanted to break or be broken by her.
This would take some getting used to.
“You’re so beautiful,” Wesley whispered in her ear. “I haven’t stopped thinking about you since the second we broke up.”
He wove his hands into her hair and held her to his chest.
Okay, she was already used to this.
“I missed you, too. I know you might not believe that, but I missed you every damn day. I…” Nora held on to Wesley as if her life depended on it, and in that moment she thought it might. “I love Søren. I won’t lie to you. You don’t get what we have, and that’s fine. Very few people do. But when I was with you…. Wesley, I liked who I was when I was with you. You make me a different person, a better person. And then you were gone and that Nora was gone, too. I missed you, yes. So fucking much. But I missed who I was with you just as much.”
Wesley kissed the top of her head. Taking her by the shoulders, he stared down at her.
“There’s only one Nora Sutherlin—the smart, funny, sweet, silly running-around-in-penguin-pajamas Nora Sutherlin who cares about writing and me and getting in two naps a day. The Nora you were with me was the real Nora, is the real Nora. Not the sadist Nora. Not the infamous Nora. Just…my Nora. If I don’t do anything else this week, I will convince you of that.”
“Good luck.” She smiled at him through tears. “That’s going to take a lot of convincing.”
“Then I better start right now.”
“It’s kind of late. Bedtime, kiddo.”
Wesley cupped the side of her face and brushed a tear off her cheek with his thumb.
“You’re right. It is late.” His hand moved from her face to her neck and down to her waist. His fingers hesitated only a moment before digging into the fabric of her T-shirt and starting to pull it up. “Let’s go to bed.”
Nora inhaled in shock and almost coughed. “Really?”
Wesley nodded and grinned.
“Really. Seriously. And I need you to believe that, ’cause I’m not going to be able to get this off of you without a little cooperation on your part.”
“Oh, yeah. Sorry.” Nora lifted her arms and let Wesley pull her shirt off. She stood in front of him in the living room in her jeans and a black bra. She felt grimy from driving, exhausted, sore…and so turned on she could scarcely see straight. Reaching up, she unbuttoned the top button on Wesley’s wrinkled French-blue oxford shirt. “You know, I’ve always loved this color on you. Don’t know if I ever told you that.”
“You did once,” he said, running his hands up and down her arms. His fingertips on her suddenly bare skin sent shivers through her entire body. “Two years ago. That’s why I wore it.”
“You bought a French-blue shirt just to wear for me? Not even knowing if you’d see me again?”
“No.” Wesley dipped his head and kissed her quickly on the lips. “I bought five of them.”
Nora didn’t speak. She’d lost all power to. All she could do was keep unbuttoning. With each open button she pushed a little more of his shirt off his shoulders, until it came down his arms and hit the floor.
“Looks even better there than on you,” she said.
“I think all your clothes will looking amazing on the floor.”
Nora kissed his bare shoulder. “Let’s go find out.”
She reached for his hand and started to drag him toward the stairs. But he yanked her to him instead and lifted her in his arms.
“You’ve got to be kidding, Wes. I weigh a lot more than I look.”
“Yeah, you do. What’s up with that?” he asked as he carried her to the steps.
“Muscle. Pure muscle. And a pretty big ass.”
“Perfect ass.” He slapped it awkwardly and Nora giggled with luxurious, decadent happiness.
“You’re really going to carry me up the stairs? That’s so Gone with the Wind.”
“Never saw it.” Wesley mounted the wide, carpeted stairs.
“It’s a classic,” she chided. “Civil War stuff. Big dresses. Overacting. Hot nonconsensual sex.”
“It’s also four hours long. I got stuff to do.”
They arrived at the top of the stairs without incident.
“What stuff do you have to do that’s more important than watching the most legendary movie about the South ever filmed?” Nora asked as Wesley used his foot to push open the door to his bedroom.
He half laid, half threw her onto the bed, which was dressed in red-and-white sheets, and Nora sank deep into the covers.
Wesley met her eyes and slipped a hand into her hair. “Well, tonight I need to make love to you.”
Nora’s hands went momentarily numb at his words. The sweetness of them coupled with the look in his eyes crashed over her like a wave.
“Good excuse.” She ran her palms over his bare shoulders. He had such beautiful arms, such young, supple skin. For a moment she actually felt self-conscious of her thirty-four-year-old body.
“What?” he asked as she swept her fingers through his long, dark blond hair. “What’s wrong?”
“Your hair.”
Grinning, Wesley shook his head. “I’ll get it cut tomorrow. I swear.”
“Good. But that’s not it. You don’t have a single gray hair.”
Wesley rolled his eyes. “Neither do you, Nora.”
“Yeah, and I pay three hundred dollars every six weeks to keep it that way.”
For a moment his smile faltered. “I didn’t know you colored your hair.”
She shrugged. “Have to. Trademark black hair. Not trademark black-with-more-gray-than-I’d-care-to-admit-to hair. I’m thirty-four. You know that, right?”
“Of course I know. I don’t care about our age difference. I was just…. I didn’t know you colored your hair, is all. Can you go red next time? I have a thing for red.”
Nora grinned. “How about we trade? I’ll get blond hair and you can go black.”
“Would it bring out the brown in my eyes?” he asked, and playfully batted his eyelashes.
“Don’t do that,” she teased. “You look like you’re having a seizure.”
“Oh, sorry.” Wesley’s eyelashes started behaving themselves again. “Where were we? I think we missed talking to each other so much, it’s getting in the way of the…you know. Not talking.”
“We don’t have to do this tonight. If you’re tired or if you want to talk…. I’m not leaving you. I’m here. I’m with you. I don’t care if your dad already hates me. I’ve been hated by the best. I can take it.”
“No. I want to do this. I’ve wanted to do this since the day I saw you at Yorke.”
Nora pressed her lips to the hollow of his throat.
“Okay. We can do this. If you’ve been waiting for two years now…”
“Two years? I’ve been waiting twenty.” Wesley grinned sheepishly at her.
For the third time that night Nora’s eyes went wide with shock and her mouth dropped open in surprise.
She pushed back against the bed and scrambled into a sitting position.
“Nora…what?”
“Wesley? You’re still a virgin?”