Interrupted Lullaby

She made a move to rise. “This will get us nowhere. For some reason you wanted to believe I had another man in my life before you went away, and you’re still obsessed with the notion although it never was true. It still isn’t.”

She saw him digest this. “I’m trying to understand what happened between us.”

“What happened was, we needed different things. You don’t believe in happy-ever-afters and I do. It’s that simple.”

He made a show of glancing around. “You haven’t found your happy-ever-after yet.”

“It hasn’t stopped me from looking.”

She wasn’t surprised when his expression turned skeptical. “What if you never find it?”

“You have my permission to say ‘I told you so.”’

He shook his head violently. “It won’t give me as much satisfaction as you evidently think. I want to believe in happy endings, but experience has taught me they’re a myth.”

Her sigh whistled between them. “You see? How can you hope to find something if you’re not prepared to concede it exists?”

“I came closest when we were together,” he said softly.

Shock poured through her like a paralizing drug. She felt frozen into immobility, knowing she should leave but unable to make her body obey her mind’s commands. Unwillingly, she remembered the long, dark nights when he had whispered that she was the best thing that had ever happened to him. No one else had been there for him the way she had, he had assured her.

She had taken pride in being what he called his anchor, forgetting that anchors could be cut adrift if the winds and tide were strong enough.

She felt cut adrift now, at the mercy of a tide of desire so powerful it threatened to deluge her. “Don’t do this, Zeke. It isn’t fair.”

“All’s fair in love,” he reminded her.

“What we have isn’t love. It’s…” Her voice trailed off as words failed her. War was hardly the right description. So what was between them?

He looked intrigued. Too late she realized she’d used the present tense and knew it was too much to hope that he hadn’t noticed. “What would you call it?” he demanded.

“Lust, infatuation, sex. Never love.”

His eyes gleamed. “Three out of four isn’t a bad start, considering that a moment ago you were writing us off completely. At least now I know there’s something to work with.”

“I’m not prepared to settle for three out of four this time,” she said flatly. “I won’t let you use sex to control me anymore, Zeke.”

He looked genuinely shocked. “I never used it to control you. You enjoyed our lovemaking as much as I did and you were more than willing to take the initiative on occasion.”

Her blood throbbed through her veins as she remembered only too well how much she had enjoyed it. He had taken her to heights she had never dreamed were possible. And he was right, she couldn’t claim to have been passive, either. He had said he liked a woman who was prepared to go after what she wanted.

He had spoiled her for any other lover, she conceded unwillingly to herself. As with the best of anything, once you had known it, there was no settling for less. “You can hardly doubt how I felt,” she reminded him, blushing as she remembered how he had carried her to climax after shuddering climax until she was left raw and aching, but fulfilled beyond her wildest dreams.