“Wait!” He held up a finger, his secret smile spreading across his face. “I have a surprise for you.”
“A surprise, but—”
“Come on.” David offered me his hand, suddenly standing, when a second ago he so was not.
“Hey, how did you…?”
“Come on.” He reached down and grasped my fingers, hoisting me off the ground. All protest stopped instantly with the feel of his smooth skin on the side of my face, my collarbones, and the back of my forearms as he directed them around his bare waist. Little bumps rose over my cheeks and across my shoulders, making me shiver, but not from cold, though. I’d never felt them from touch, but I was sure—
“Shh,” David said.
“I didn’t say anything.” I rolled my face upward to smile at him, but the second I saw his tightly closed eyes and the ultra-still mask of concentration, it slipped away. “David, what’s wrong?”
“Shh.” He opened his eyes for a second, winking at me before closing them again.
I exhaled a laugh, burying my face against the small hollow at the centre of his chest, where that sweet, kind of chocolaty smell dominated the powdery cologne under his arms. And my cheek felt moist suddenly, the heat of the day slipping past the canopy, making the air damp and almost hard to breathe. “Wow, it just got really hot,” I said, looking up to see the rainfall I could hear all around us. But there was no rain, only the soft pattering sound.
“Stay calm, okay.” David pressed one hand to my lower back, rolling my hips toward his, and the other to the base of my neck, forcing my face against his chest. My cheek squished up into my eye, making my lip jut out. I really hoped he didn’t look down—this was so not my sexy face.
“Why do I need to stay calm?”
He didn’t answer; he just held me close, his eyes shut tight, his beautiful dark-pink lips, set perfectly into his golden brown skin, twitching. The pattering sound around us became louder then, drowned out for a second by a flock of birds bursting through the canopy above us—colouring the sky in reds and greens. When silence fell over the island again as the birds disappeared, I saw something move from the corner of my eye, yanking my arm back when a light feathery touch brushed my skin.
“It’s okay,” David said in a low voice. “You’re safe here.”
“I know,” I said, “I just thought I felt a spider on my arm.”
“My love.” He gently kissed the top of my head, tangling his fingers in my hair. “Look up.”
It took a second for my eyes to adjust, but as the blurry cloud of yellow and pale blue became the fluttering of hundreds of tiny wings, my mouth dropped. “Oh, my God.” I watched in amazement, the cloud filling the space around us like pastel snow. “How is this possible?”
“Anything is possible.” David smiled.
I smiled back and reached out as the glowing sun filtered down through the leaves, lighting the winged creatures in a soft, misty glow. They flitted across my skin with tiny silk kisses, forming a circle around us, like we were in some magical orb of nature. But the gem-like green of David’s eyes stood out among the pale colours, as if he was backlit by the brightest star in the sky. His head turned, unlocking the hold of his gaze, and he nodded to the tip of my finger, held way up into the magic. I laughed, staying ultra still so as not to scare the blue and black butterfly there; it fluttered its wings for a single moment, before flying away.
“David, this is so beautiful.”
He cupped my chin, pressing the tip of his nose to mine. “I know.”
The heat stole my breath then, so humid and wet, but the distance of David’s lips to mine, just enough to slip a finger between, made the air hotter, thicker, scented sweetly with the taste of his honey breath blowing against my tongue every time I breathed him in. I couldn’t do it anymore. I had to let myself imagine the way his kiss would feel.
Then, the dream left my thoughts and touched reality. David’s lips skimmed across the surface of mine, so softly, so hesitantly, coming to rest just in front of my mouth as he breathed for the both of us.
The world stopped. Every sound, every brush of air disappeared until only he and I existed.
His fingers tightened on the small of my back, my dress lifting a little in his closed fist, then he pressed my spine, sweeping me onto my toes until our faces aligned—lips finally touching. He kissed me deeply, drawing a breath so full it stole mine. I felt the wet soil and grass beneath my toes, the sweat trickling down my back, soaking into my dress, felt everything as if this one moment brought me to life, lit everything in stark contrast—making it real, me real, him real, the world, somehow, a place I never thought existed.
He broke away for a single moment and slipped both hands along the sides of my face, pressing our lips together again after, hungrily catching my bottom lip against his, drawing it in, breaking only to release and drink it in again.
I had to open my eyes—to savour this moment forever—but while the kiss felt like a reality so stark it couldn’t possibly become just a memory, when I looked up and the golden beams of sunlight shone through the cloud of butterflies, it felt more like a dream. This had to be a dream.
With his hands pressed firmly to my cheeks, he gently drew my face away, smoothing his thumb over the moisture of his kiss. “Are you happy here?” he whispered.
“Yes, but it’s only for the moment.” I closed my eyes, resting both hands on his shoulders. “You’ll be gone soon. And I won’t be happy anymore.”
“You will forget about me one day,” he said in his soft, deep voice. “I promise you that.”
I shook my head. “No, David, I’ll never forget you. I’ll love you for the rest of my life.”
One corner of his mouth quirked up. “That, my love, is what I’m afraid of. Because I…will love you…until the end of time.” He wrapped his fingers around my wrist, drawing my hand down until it rested over his heart, then, with his other hand, pressed my face into his chest again.
We stood together in our timeless embrace and watched the miracle of life swarm around us for a while. But all it did to feel him so close was make me fall so much deeper in love with him—so much that I was sure I’d die when he went away.
Chapter Thirteen
My fork scraped the plate where the absence of a potato mound left the ceramic bare. Even though I’d managed to create something worthy of special mention in Art Weekly Magazine, I couldn’t lift the heavy weight I’d carried to the dinner table with me. I was losing David. He’d be gone by winter and there was nothing I could do about it; not even a magical first kiss could save our happily ever after.