Chapter 28 #2
He lifted the bag and set it on his other side, and they reached for each other, and then their lips were crashing together, their kiss deep and wild from the start.
They were themselves again, together—demanding, pushing, delighting.
The taste of Claire, the heart of Claire, bold and powerful, guarding her longing to be seen and prized and held.
Tai pushed his fingers through her hair, dipped his mouth to kiss the mostly-healed mark at her collarbone.
His lips so near the dip of her shoulder, the need to place his bite stirred deep inside.
Knowing now that he could safely give them both what they most wanted made it harder not to.
But he wouldn’t, not on a swing in the middle of a public park.
And not until he knew he wasn’t hearing a difference in her only because he wanted to.
Claire drew back a few inches to cup his face between her hands.
She whispered, “I believe you,” then kissed him again, gently.
Drew back, whispered, “I trust you,” and left another brush of a kiss on his lips.
Drew back a final time, whispered, “I’m listening now, and you are enough, Tai Aksel.
Your word is enough. Your heart is enough. ”
Enough. Just him, no covenant. His word and his heart. She said the words now from the core of her own heart, nothing taken for granted or brushed off. Yes, this was different.
They cuddled quietly on the swing. Tai’s longer legs pushed them gently, and Claire curled hers up on the seat and rested her head on his shoulder.
The breeze rattled the stiff twine handles of the shopping bag, and a few Canada geese flapped their wings in the middle of the river and honked at each other.
After a little while, as the sun began to set behind the distant mountains, Tai said, “Thank you. I needed to hear you say that.”
“I mean every word.”
“I know you do. I can hear it. And I forgive you. And if everything I withheld three years ago—if that contributed to this, then I’m sorry too.”
“I don’t think it did,” she said. “I think it was the voice in my head of my fickle dad.”
Maybe her ability to see it, to say it aloud, was a sign she could heal, just as he had.
Well, had started to. He had a way to go, but he was on the path now.
He was dropping fears along the way so fast he’d begun feeling light in a way he’d never thought possible.
So many things he’d never thought possible.
“So…” he said, resting his chin on the top of her head. “Song lyrics, huh? I bet that was an impressive apology.”
“It would have been, if I’d finished it. Or started it. In the last two days I’ve listened to Keane, Jukebox the Ghost, Brandi Carlile, Billy Joel…”
He laughed. “All my hoodies.”
“I guess all I really need to say is…I walked all over the wounds in your heart with my stiletto heels on. I know I did. I know I’ve said things that left you in pain.”
“Claire.” Tears surged into his eyes, and he pressed his fingers to the corners.
She tilted her head up to meet his eyes, and hers were shiny too. “Yes, I did, Tai. I didn’t mean to, but I did.”
“I’m not wounded,” he said.
“All of us have wounds inside. I’m figuring out we don’t have to be ashamed of them.
It’s what makes us whole people, real and deep people.
And if someone offers those wounds to us, and we don’t treat them with the care they deserve, then…
Well, we can walk away from their hurt or we can stay and make it right.
Whatever you need, I’m ready to make this right. ”
“You’re doing it now. Naming the hurt and believing me. Really believing me.”
“Hmm. Doesn’t feel like enough.”
“Well, it is.”
She stretched up on the bench and kissed him, and all the care she’d spoken of for the wounds inside him came through in the gentleness of her lips on his. She said, “I love you so much.”
“I love you too. And I’ll stay for the rest of our lives.”
“I know you will.” She kissed him again, harder this time. “I. Know. You. Will.”
Taste. Bite. Pledge.
Not now, not here.
“Tai?”
“I… Claire, I talked to Peter. Saturday night—well, Sunday morning—after the fight.”
“And?”
“And I’ve been terrified of something I never needed to be. He knows bloodbound couples where one of them is a bloodfiend. He talked me through it, and it was so clear to me that he’s right. That I can be. Safely.”
“Wh…at?” The word came on a nearly silent breath. “Tai… We could be…?”
He nodded, and Claire shook her head, and he laughed.
“I don’t need it now,” she said. “I faced things. I decided.”
“Well, in that case, let me know if you ever change your mind.”
“Oh, shut up.”
Their next kiss was a shower of icy sparks that fully glitched out his thoughts as pleasure and overwhelming love exploded from his chest outward, all the way to his fingertips and toes.
His inner melody was a joyful reprise of their song, arranged to sound like delighted laughter.
This woman. Claire Elisabeth. His. And being hers was the greatest feeling he’d ever had.
“I know the streetlights are on now,” she whispered against his mouth, “and I know we’re off the main path, and the willow branches help too, but I think we might need to head back to your place.”
“Yes,” was all the reply he could manage.
She brought the shopping bag with her, and he wondered idly what was in it. Was there an artist that had spoken to her the way Mariah Davis had to him?
She drove ahead of him, and they met in the elevator.
Tai punched in the code for his floor, and Claire let the shopping bag fall softly at her feet as she took hold of his jacket lapel in one hand and drew his head down with the other for another electric kiss.
She ran her palm down his aquamarine silk tie while the elevator carried them up too slowly.
“Do you know how much I enjoy the way you embrace color?”
“Um, no?” he said.
“Your ties are hot.”
“That doesn’t even make sense,” he said around a laugh, then planted his palms against the wall of the elevator on either side of her head and seized her mouth with his.
“It does make sense,” she said as the elevator door slid open. “Because we make sense.”
He lifted her into the cradle of his arms, and she gave a little squeak.
“Don’t forget your apology present!”
Without missing a stride, he swept up the bag in one hand, and Claire wrapped her legs around him rather than land on her feet. They exited into his foyer, and as the elevator chimed and its door slid closed, the bag dropped to the stone floor between them and they were kissing again.
“What”—he asked between pressing her mouth with his—“is my—apology—present?”
“Stop—kissing me—long enough—to open it.” But she didn’t stop kissing him. Now she was pulling at the knot of his tie. “Tai’s ties. Are so hot.”
By the time they made it to his couch, he’d lost his tie and his jacket, and Claire had kicked off her heels.
But they stopped here, though he wasn’t sure why.
He could have offered all of himself to her in this moment, would have treasured what she offered in return, the beauty of the curves beneath her blouse, the curves hugged perfectly by her boot-cut pants.
Something drew a line, though, for both of them at the same time.
They sat back slowly, and Tai kissed the tip of her nose.
Claire sprang up from the couch and darted at full-speed to the foyer and back again. She held out the shopping bag. “Present. Now.”
She was the only present he cared about.
Her mind and her heart, her mouth on his, her hands splayed on his chest, her fingers digging into his back when their kisses drove her further.
Tai could never need any gift but the woman who stood in front of him, waiting for him to accept the shopping bag from her hands, eyes sparkling purple with anticipation.
He took it and sank onto the couch, and Claire plopped beside him and watched as he lifted a tissue-wrapped box.
“It was a hard shape to package, but she did a great job,” Claire said.
The cardboard box held no identifying labels. He popped one end open, easily breaking the packing tape with the strength of his fingers. He slid out a cocoon of bubble wrap and more tissue paper. More snapping of tape, slow unwrapping, and then, resting in his palms…
“Melody from an Open Hand,” he said.
“So you did notice this one! Oh, I’m glad. It totally reached out to me and said, ‘this is Tai.’ But if you’d prefer a different—”
“Claire, I went into the gallery tonight to buy this.”
“Oh…” She nestled into his arm and skimmed her fingers over the butterflies. “Well, what did I tell you? We just make sense.”