At Last

Prologue

. . . and his eyes blazed, searing my skin through to the depths of my soul. Hands, strong and relentless, took control, igniting every nerve as they expertly traced the path to my pent-up heat.

A shiver trickled down my spine as I remembered those hands, their smooth, bronzed surface, and slow, masterful movements. I rolled away from my journal onto my back, the old mattress squeaking in protest. Air fluttered against my skin as I watched the ceiling fan above me paddle an easy breeze through the room. This room had become my sanctuary since the breakup. From all sides, it reflected me. Posters of the Beatles and Monet’s Water Lilies hung side by side. Jane Austen’s novels shared a shelf with J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye. An orange traffic cone, stolen for me by my first love, sat on the floor next to a desk with drawers jammed full of cards holding flowers pressed and dried as a remembrance of important events all but forgotten.

How could I have let it happen again? Once, well, it happens. But twice removes any doubt that I’m a fool. True, Rick was the most exciting man I’d ever met. And when it came to looks, he was off the chart. But I wasn’t born yesterday, so how could I have been so blind, so naïve, so. . . gullible?

It’s not as if I hadn’t questioned his motives, because I had. I had questioned them from the very beginning. What is blatantly obvious now had been easily explained away. Perhaps I had blinded myself to the truth because, had I known, I would have missed the most glorious time of my life. I would never have drifted on a wave of desire that crashed through the barriers I had built, leaving me floating helplessly in a sea of love, to be tossed and pulled, dipped and dragged at will.

He had pursued me relentlessly, carefully courting me, plying me with attention, skipping not one detail of the planned seduction. And it had been perfectly calculated, and perfectly executed.