The Ninth Step by Barbara Taylor Sissel Read Free Book Online Page B

mouth. She stood up, went to the sink. A smear of blood where she’d bitten the inside of her lip netted the creased cup of her hand. She put it down into the cooling soapy water, fished around and found the washcloth, picked up a plate, clinging to it as if she could anchor herself to what was ordinary and routine. But her mind wouldn’t cooperate. Her mind wanted to remember things . . . the crazy way they had met, for instance,  in a near collision over a parking place at a crowded restaurant. Livie had gone there to meet Kat. Cotton had been meeting a date. They’d both been late, both been in dire need of the single available parking space. She had thought Cotton was so gallant when he backed up, and with a sweeping gesture of his arm and a wide grin, indicated she should have it. Livie had been so impressed that to Kat’s open-mouthed dismay, she’d detoured by Cotton’s table after lunch to thank him. He’d stood up at her approach; he seemed to have eyes only for her. She took his extended hand and at once felt a fine tingling in her fingertips, a tight warmth of desire low in her belly. She wanted him to kiss her; she wanted to brush her nipples against his chest, to flatten herself against him. The sensations had been so vivid and absurd, and so unlike her.
    But from the beginning, he had opened doorways to mysterious rooms within herself she hadn’t known were there. The first time they made love it had been in the upstairs bedroom of a furnished model home of all places, where she’d been working as a sales representative for a friend who, like Cotton, was a builder.
    She hadn’t been expecting him; he just came there late on one rainy winter day when the light was going. There’d been no other traffic all that long afternoon and she’d been surprised to find him waiting for her when she’d walked from the kitchen into the dining room where she officed. He’d brought her beignets that by then he knew were a particular favorite and a bottle of white wine, a crisp refreshing Riesling called Bloom--he had thought she would appreciate the name more than its quality, he’d said--and more unbelievably, he’d presented her with a dainty bouquet of violets wrapped in a ribbon-tied lace doily. He’d never told her where he’d found them and it was later in their relationship, when she was teaching him the language of flowers, that she explained their meaning, that violets meant faithfulness.
    But on that day, she had called the gesture romantic and been touched when he blushed. He said he hardly recognized himself around her and made her promise not to tell anyone what a sappy fool he was, especially she wasn’t to tell her boss, Cotton’s competition. It might give him ideas that Cotton was losing it, going soft in the head. He made her laugh. That was his gift. One of them.
    He awakened her to desire and at first, her response to him had disconcerted her. She couldn’t understand how it was that she allowed him to overcome her natural reserve and lead her into the master bedroom of the model home where she was employed, lay her down on the king-size bed against the soft bank of silk encased designer bed pillows and undress her. Livie had had boyfriends, she’d had sex, but she wasn’t experienced; she wasn’t impulsive or daring.
    She had never known it was possible to take delight in her own body, her own nakedness, not until Cotton took such delight in touching her. He had begun so slowly, taken her so carefully, watching her as he trailed his fingertips from her cheek down into the hollow of her neck.
    Asking, “Is it okay?” and waiting for her nod before he went farther down to outline the contours of her breasts, number her ribs, trace the inner curve of her thigh. He explored her with his mouth, tasting her as if she were some exotic dessert and she shivered, forgetting herself, becoming the aggressor, guiding him into her, and still, when he entered, he came gently as if she were sacred