Water From the Moon by Terese Ramin Read Free Book Online Page A

into her pants, pulling her forward, settling her against—
    Stop it! she commanded herself silently.
    With a violent jerk, she shut off the water. Cupboard doors slammed together as she flung them open in a blind search for the liquor that would, she prayed, put her to sleep and help her not to think. Above all else, she did not want to think!
    * * *
    In the tiny bathroom that boasted barely enough empty space to turn around in, Cameron stripped off his clothes, stepped into the shower and tried to will the tension from his body. The day had given him too much to think about, too much to absorb. What had he done by coming here? What can of worms had he opened without intending to? He’d come down here to escape himself and, paradoxically, to find himself. Seeing Acasia again had flung him headlong into himself, into fantasies dreamed at sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, of who he’d be, and what. She was a rude reawakening, salt rubbed into a raw wound, reminding him of promises he’d made to himself, to her, the all–or–nothing vows of youth.
    At seventeen, she’d given him the best ten months of his life. She’d been a piece of forbidden fruit made more tempting by the fact that his Boston Brahmin parents found the daughter of a former jewel thief and a self–proclaimed Welsh witch unsuitable company for their sheltered, shy,  genius son. Once apprised of the situation, Acasia, never a stranger to either trouble or rebellion, had thrown herself with joyful abandon into Cameron’s war for independence. He’d fallen in love with her because she was everything he wasn’t: unconstrained, sophisticated, ready for anything and entirely lacking in the inconvenient inhibitions that prevented Cameron from doing the things he’d most wanted to do.
    He’d loved Acasia passionately and without reserve. On their last day together, she’d become his first lover and he’d become hers. Cameron remembered the moment in acute detail, with wonder and satisfaction, with a sudden hard sting of desire.
    You never forget your first
. Wasn’t that what they said?
    He lifted his face to the shower’s spray and the water beat down, awakening him, bringing his blood down from a boil to a simmer. It’s been too long, he thought, too many miles. It’s too late, but I want…
    He turned, rubbing water violently through his hair, attempting to marshal his wayward thoughts. He deliberately reminded himself of her faults, especially the way she’d walked away from things—from him—without looking back. He thought he’d finally closed the book on her on New Year’s Day thirteen years ago with the aid of a navy commander who hadn’t taken kindly to his computer specialist going AWOL for a week and returning so drunk that four days in the brig had barely begun to sober him up. It had taken a week more of intensive staring at two–tone gray walls and the coverless john in the corner to convince Cameron that if Acasia had still loved and wanted him, she would have made their rendezvous in London.
    In the last sixteen years she’d flitted in and out of his thoughts at odd intervals, always unexpectedly, just when he thought he was ready to make a lifelong commitment to another woman. She’d ruined four perfectly satisfying relationships for him, because he couldn’t help but wonder if loving her again would be as good as he remembered.
    He picked up a cake of soap and began to work up a lather in his hands. Everything he’d felt today for Acasia Jones might be only some long–repressed remnant of the past startled out of him by the intensity of the day.
    Or it might not.
    He worked the soap across his chest, over his belly and down through the bristly, dark triangle between his thighs. She had touched him. He’d felt her. And there was still so much heat!
    He rinsed, letting the water cool him a bit, then stood listening to it trickle down the drain. A single swipe of his hand wiped the moisture from his face and slicked the hair