Chapter 1 #2
The suite opened up behind him, orchids on the coffee table by the window, a champagne bucket, the city spread out through the floor-to-ceiling windows, and she looked at all of it and then looked back at Mason in his suit and then down at herself in the dress she had brought from home and back up at him.
“Where are we going?” She heard the slight panic in her own voice. “Mason, I'm not dressed for anything—”
He pulled her inside and into his arms and kissed her, slow and deliberate, the way he kissed her when he wanted her to stop talking and just be present, and it worked; it had always worked for twenty-two years and she did not see that changing.
When he lifted his head she was not entirely sure what city she was in.
“Come here,” he said, and walked her into the bedroom.
She stopped in the doorway.
Four boxes sat on the bed in a row, each with a bow, and she stood there looking at them and then looking at him and feeling the particular mix of confusion and delight and mild alarm that came from knowing Mason Gault had planned something.
“What have you done.” It came out more as a statement than a question because she could already tell it was too much. She could feel it from across the room. “Do I need to open them in any order?”
“Start with the big one.”
She sat on the edge of the bed. She lifted the lid, pulled back the tissue paper and went completely still.
Silver. Streaks of deep blue. Simple and elegant and nothing she would ever have chosen for herself in a hundred years.
She stood up and held it in front of herself and she was moving toward the bathroom before she had consciously decided to, needing to see it in the mirror, and when she did she made a sound she couldn't entirely account for.
“My God, Mason.” Her voice bounced off the bathroom tiles. “This must have cost the world.”
She carried it carefully back out and sat back down on the bed. The next box was smaller and flat. She lifted the lid and found a clutch, it was silver, with just enough blue in it to be perfect. She held it against the dress.
“It matches perfectly.” She looked up at him. “How did you even know—”
“I had help.”
She set the clutch down and reached for the next box.
She lifted the lid and the color came into her face immediately.
A demi-cup bra in ivory lace. Lace panties.
A garter belt and stockings. She looked up at Mason and he was watching her with an expression that was entirely too pleased with itself.
“Mason Gault,” she said.
He said nothing.
She set that box aside very carefully, then reached for the last one and lifted the lid and just sat there.
She reached in and turned the shoe over in her hand. When she saw the red sole she understood exactly what she was holding and set it back down in the tissue paper like it was something that could break.
“I can't wear these,” she said. “These need to be kept under glass. These need to be admired from a safe distance and never actually put on a human foot.”
Mason laughed out loud, the real kind, the kind she had been collecting for twenty-two years.
“I'll be in the living room,” he said, and pulled the bedroom door mostly closed behind him.
She sat on the edge of the bed for a moment in the quiet and looked at everything spread around her. The dress. The clutch. The lingerie she was absolutely going to wear. The shoes she was apparently going to put on her actual feet tonight.
She thought about the girl she had been at twenty-two, eating cup noodles on a beach blanket and thinking she was not worth very much.
Then she got up and started getting dressed.
Everything fit like it had been made for her.
She stood in front of the bathroom mirror in all of it and thought, with complete sincerity, that she was never taking any of this off.
Not ever. She leaned toward the orchids on the nightstand and breathed them in, and she loved him so much in that moment it was almost difficult to contain.
When she walked out into the living room, Mason turned from the window and looked at her. He didn't say anything for a moment, and that silence was its own kind of compliment.
“The rooftop restaurant,” he said. “That's where we're going.”
She felt the delight move through her from her stomach outward.
She crossed to the sofa and opened her purse to get her phone and gift for Mason to put it into the clutch so she could give it to him at dinner. The phone fit, but not the thick envelope.
She dropped the envelope back into her purse.
He crossed the room, reached for her hand, and tangled their fingers together. She looked up at him in his charcoal suit and felt, not for the first time and not for the last, like the luckiest woman she knew.
He opened the door to the suite and they headed for the elevator.
The elevator was taking too long.
Mason stood beside Sophia with the small box of leftovers from the restaurant in one hand and her hand in the other, watching the floor numbers change with the waning patience of a man who had very little to begin with.
“You know,” he said, “this chocolate cake is not going to taste anywhere near as good as anything your bakery produces.”
Sophia tilted her head and considered this with the seriousness it deserved.
“You never know. It's always good to check out the competition. I can always learn something.” She paused, and when she continued her voice had dropped into something that was not quite her normal register.
“Anyway, we're probably going to need something to eat later.”
Mason looked at her.
She looked back at him with an expression that was perfectly composed and completely innocent but really not innocent at all.
He laughed.
When the doors finally opened he ushered her down the hallway at a pace that had purpose behind it, and after about four steps Sophia said, “Mason. Slow down. I am not used to shoes this high.”
He stopped. He turned and looked at her, and then he looked at the shoes, and then he looked at all of her, the silver dress and the clutch and her hair and the way she was looking at him with laughter just behind her eyes, and he felt something that was equal parts affection and desire and gratitude.
He had no idea how he’d gotten so lucky to find and marry Sophia, but he hoped he would never take her for granted.
“I'm sorry,” he said. “You look incredible. You look—” he searched for the right word and landed on the true one —arousing. You look completely arousing and I am finding it difficult to be patient.”
She smiled. “Did you think the dress was too short?”
“The dress is perfect,” he said. “You’re perfect.” He offered his arm properly, and she took it, and he walked her the rest of the way to the suite at a pace that was respectful of the shoes.
He unlocked the door and held it open. She walked in ahead of him, and he took a moment to admire the view from the back.
“The dress,” he said, “needs to go.”
Sophia gave a low, sultry laugh that did nothing to help his situation. “Are you sure?” she asked looking over her shoulder. “You seem to like it an awful lot.”
“I do.” He set the cake box on the entry table and crossed to her. “But it's in the way of what I have planned. But the shoes stay on.”
She laughed again, full and warm, and it was still one of his favorite sounds in the world after twenty-two years together and twenty years of marriage.
He bent and scooped her up into his arms and carried her into the bedroom. The turndown service had been through, the duvet folded back, the lamps low, two small chocolate candies on the pillows.
He set her down slowly, letting her slide down the length of his body until her feet touched the floor, and she was standing before him in the silver dress and the shoes and all of it, looking up at him with blue eyes that had always seen him more clearly than anyone else ever had.
He reached around and found her zipper and drew it down slowly. The dress slipped from her shoulders and fell to the floor and pooled around the shoes.
She reached for his jacket and pushed it off his shoulders.
Then his tie, unhurried, her fingers working the knot with the ease of long familiarity.
Then his shirt, button by button, her hands warm against his chest as it opened.
He shrugged it off. She reached for his belt and he let her.
Soon there was nothing left as he stood before her, and she looked at him the way she had always looked at him, like she liked what she saw.
She glanced at the pillows, saw the chocolate candies, and laughed softly.
“Those can wait,” he said. “I have other plans.”
He kissed her, walked her back toward the bed, and she went willingly, the way she always did. He laid her down carefully against the pillows and looked at her. The ivory lace, the garter belt, the stockings, the shoes, and took a breath.
Then he reached for the lace panties and drew them down slowly, carefully working them over the heels of the shoes, and set them aside.
He lay down beside her and she rolled toward him and then up and over him.
Her long blonde hair fell around them both like a curtain, enclosing them in their own world, just the two of them the way it had always been.
Just the two of them even in a life that was full and loud and abundant with the people they loved.
She looked down at him through the fall of her hair and smiled, and then she leaned down and kissed him.
His hands moved down the curve of her back and further, finding the lace of the garter belt and then the warmth of her skin below it.
He cupped her and squeezed gently and felt her breath catch against his mouth.
She whimpered softly and he did it again because he had always loved that sound, had been collecting that whimper of passion for twenty-two years.
She broke the kiss and he moved her, shifting her up so he could draw her breast free of the demi-cup bra, and he pulled the tip into his mouth and felt her gasp.
Then the other, slow and deliberate, and she was moving against him, restless and warm, her hips rocking with a rhythm that was making it very difficult for him to take his time.
He looked up at her. Her blue eyes were dark, her skin flushed, and she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen in his life.
She reached between them, found his needy cock, and he closed his eyes for a moment, just breathing.
Then she rose above him, positioned herself, and lowered down onto him slowly, taking him in inch by slow inch until he was fully seated inside her hot, tight sheath.
Then they both went still for a moment, just feeling it, the way they sometimes did, this specific miracle of being this close to one another.
Then she began to move.
He held her hips and let her set the pace, and she did, finding the rhythm that was theirs, the one they had built over twenty years of marriage and two years before that, slow at first and then a little faster.
He watched her face the whole time, the way her eyes closed and her head tipped back and her lips parted, and he thought, not for the first time, that he would do absolutely anything to keep this woman happy for the rest of his life.
He felt her tighten around him and heard the soft, broken sound she made and he let himself go, pulling her down hard against him as they came apart together, her name in his throat and her hands braced on his chest and everything else in the world fell away.
Afterward they lay wrapped together in a tangle of sheets, her head on his chest, his hand moving slowly up and down her back, surrounded by silence.
“I think,” Sophia said eventually, in the unhurried tone of a woman who was completely and thoroughly satisfied, “that it gets better every time.”
Mason laughed. “It was the shoes.”
Sophia's head came up off his chest.
She looked at him.
Then she was out of the bed, the shoes still on her feet, moving through the suite toward the living room with a purposefulness that made him prop himself up on one elbow and watch.
Hell, he’d pay good money all over again to have her walk around their bedroom at home in just those shoes. His wife was a knockout.
She came back with an envelope in her hand. She stood at the foot of the bed and looked at him with an expression that was somewhere between excitement and nerves, which on Sophia was a rare combination and therefore worth paying close attention to.
“There is absolutely no way I can outdo what you did tonight,” she said. “I want you to know I know that.” She held out the envelope. “But I hope you'll like it.”
He frowned, then sat up and took the envelope from her and opened it.
Inside was an itinerary. Four names. Him and Sophia and their daughters. Ten days. Maui.
He read it through once and then read it through again.
The flights, the rental, the surfboard rentals for two of them at Launiupoko—for the session at Ho'okipa he would need to be on a board that size.
He looked at the dates again, did the math, and looked at Sophia standing at the foot of the bed watching his face. Ten days.
“You've never taken ten days in a row off,” he said.
“No.” She sat on the edge of the bed and looked at him steadily.
“But with your promotion coming through, you're not going to be called away on missions anymore. Which means we can actually plan. We can make commitments and keep them.” She paused. “Family time, Mason. Real family time, all four of us.” Her voice was quiet and certain and completely Sophia. “And dammit, that’s important.”
He looked at the itinerary in his hands. Him and Lisa on surfboards in Hawaii. Kayla and Sophia on a beach for ten days with nowhere she needed to be. The four of them, together.
His whole chest felt like it was expanding.
He set the itinerary on the nightstand, reached for her, and pulled her in. He held her face in both hands and looked at her.
“You know what just happened?” he asked.
“What?”
“I just fell in love with you all over again.”
Sophia's smile started slowly and grew until it was the smile he had first seen at a diner in San Clemente twenty-two years ago, the one that had undone him completely the first time and had never once stopped.
She leaned in and kissed him.
Outside the window, San Diego went quietly about its night, indifferent to the fact that Mason Gault was, at this particular moment, exactly where he was always meant to be.