Rachel Goddard 01 - The Heat of the Moon

Rachel. What is it?”
    I turned my head, focused for a moment on his chin before raising my eyes. His gaze mixed tenderness and desire. The moment of anxiety melted away, and without answering him I drew his head down and covered his mouth with mine.
    He began to move inside me. I locked my legs around him and buried my face against his shoulder as he made love to me.
    ***
    Afterward I lay in his arms, knowing that everything had changed.
    He brushed a damp strand of hair from my cheek and kissed my forehead. “Are you okay?” he asked softly.
    I skimmed my fingertips over the scratchy blond stubble on his cheek, my voice stolen by a clutch of unnameable dread. How easily he had become precious to me. How easily he might wound me, even unwittingly.
    For a moment he rubbed my back, his hand moving up and down in a gentle caress, then he said in a quiet voice, “What are you afraid of, Rachel? I can tell you’re afraid of something.”
    I pulled away and sat up.
    “You’re not still worried about this affecting your job, are you?” Luke said.
    I shook my head, but said nothing because I didn’t know what to say.
    “I wonder,” he murmured, almost to himself.
    His fingers traced the bumps of my spine. Suddenly wanting to cover myself, I tried to draw the sheet around me, but it was caught underneath us. 
    He sat up beside me. His hand massaged my shoulder. “Have you been involved with somebody who hurt you?”
    I shook my head. No one had ever hurt me because no one had ever gotten close enough. I thought fleetingly of the other men I’d been with, two of them, guys my own age, totally wrapped up in working toward their futures, as self-absorbed as I was. A lot of fun, no demands, easy partings. We hadn’t made love; we’d had sex. No other man had touched my heart the way Luke did.
    “Whatever’s bothering you, I want you to tell me,” he said. He cupped my chin in his hand and turned my head toward him. “I’m falling in love with you, Rachel.”
    I stiffened. “How can you be sure of that? It’s too soon—”
    “It’s about time, I’d say. I’m thirty-six years old and I’ve never found anybody I wanted to be with, till now. I don’t jump into things like this. I’m sure about how I feel.”
    “But you hardly know me. Maybe I’m not the person you think I am.”
    “I doubt that. And we’ve got all the time in the world to fill in the blanks. I want to know everything about you, nothing left out.”
    Oh, do you? I could tell him a few things that might break his fall and send him off to find some nice uncomplicated girl with a normal family. If he recoiled—well, better now than later, when it would hurt me more.
    But I said nothing. I swung my legs off the bed. Where was my underwear? I scooped panties and bra from the floor, then sat still for a moment before I shifted to face him. “I’ve never been seriously involved with anybody before. I’m just feeling a little overwhelmed.”
    “Okay. I understand.” He touched my hair. “I’m not scaring you off, am I?”
    He laughed a little, but his eyes were filled with an apprehension that wrenched my heart. I put my arms around him.
    “Let’s take it one step at a time,” I said. “Please. For now. And just see how it goes.”
    He smiled with obvious relief and kissed my bare shoulder. “Sounds good to me.”
    Then his hand was on my breast, gently rubbing the nipple erect before gliding over my stomach and urging my legs apart.
    ***
    It was so late. I had to get home. I cleaned up as best I could in the bathroom, then pulled on my clothes.
    Luke was coming into the living room from the kitchen, two glasses in his hands. I took one, sipped cold tingly ginger ale, washing the taste of him out of my mouth.
    “Come on, sit down while you finish that,” Luke said. He gestured at the couch.
    “I’ve really got to go.”
    He frowned and smiled at the same time. “Your mother got you on a curfew, or what?” he said, then laughed as if to soften the question.
    I shrugged, dropping my gaze to conceal my embarrassment. “She’s a real worrier, that’s all.”
    I set the ginger ale on the coffee table and turned away from him, looking for my purse. My gaze fell on the cardboard cartons against the wall, big brown boxes with thick black words on the sides: clothes, sheets & towels, dishes.
    I stared at the boxes, the writing, as the image of another room struggled to take form in my mind. An unfamiliar room filled with