Red Lily

know how I can be so happy and so scared at the same time.”
    “I’m right there with you.”

    “This morning, it felt like everything crashed down on my head, like a whole bookcase, and every book smacked me with the hard edge. Now it turns out it was flowers falling, and I’m covered in all these soft petals and perfume.”
    He took her hand, the left, the one where her thumb kept rubbing along her third finger. The ring was in its box on the dresser. “I’ll get it to the jeweler tomorrow.”
    “I don’t know how I’m going to feel about being married to somebody who reads my mind.” Then she rolled over onto him, tossed back her hair. “I think I can read yours, too. And it goes something like this.”
    She lowered her lips to his.
    Soft and smooth, that’s how she felt with him. Lovely and loose. And most of all, loved. Whatever tried to darken her heart, whatever brewed in the night, she could, she would, hold off and have this time with him.
    Safe, secure. Seduced.
    She could trust him to hold her, as he did now, with their bodies warm, their lips tender. She could trust herself to be strong with the taste of him teasing her tongue.
    They moved together, slow and easy, while the rain drummed musically on the stones of the terrace. Her heart drummed, too. Pleasure and anticipation. She knew him so well. Friend and partner, now lover. Husband.
    Overcome, she laid her cheek on his. “I love you, Harper. It seems like I’ve already loved you forever.”
    “We’ve still got forever.”
    He brushed his fingers over her face, her cheeks, her temples, into her hair. He could see her in the gloomy dark, the shape of her, the gleam of her eyes. Witchy and mysterious in this storm light, but nonetheless his. He could look at her and see the long roll of the future. Touch her, and know the simple beauty of the now.

    He sampled her lips, skin, the long line of her throat, the subtle curve of her breast. Her heart beat under it, steady as the rain. And quickened as his mouth possessed.
    Slowly, guided by her sighs, he took his hands and lips over her. The narrow torso, so white, so delicate in the dim light, and the jump of muscles as he passed, the quivers, told him she was roused.
    He laid his lips, gently, so gently, on her belly, and laid his cheek there just a moment, in wonder of what grew in her. Her hand brushed over his hair, stroked.
    “Its middle name has to be Harper,” she murmured. “Boy or girl, whatever we choose for the first name, it’s important we pass the Harper name on.”
    He turned his head to press another kiss over their child. “How about Cletis? Cletis Harper Ashby.”
    He fought to keep his lips from curving against her skin when her hand stilled. “That’s a joke, right?”
    “Little Cletis, or Hermione, if it’s a girl. You just don’t see enough Hermiones these days.”
    He kissed his way back up until his lips hovered over hers.
    “You’d be sorry if I fell in love with those names and insisted on them. Wouldn’t be so funny then, would it?”
    “Maybe Clemm.” He dropped little kisses at the corners of her mouth. “Or Gertrude.”
    Her fingers drilled into his ribs. “Looks like I’m going to have to be sure I’m the one filling out the birth certificate. Especially since I’m thinking we’ll stick with flower names. Begonia’s my personal favorite.”
    “But what if it’s a girl?”
    She grabbed both of his ears and pulled, then gave up on a laugh.
    And was laughing when he slipped inside her.

    S HE WAS SO warm, so content, snuggled up beside him, drifting off to sleep. The patter of rain was music, a lullabye to float away to dreams on.
    She imagined herself walking toward him, her long white dress shimmering in the sunlight, lilies, bold and red lying in the crook of her arm, like a child. He would wait for her, wait to take her hand, to make promises. Take the vows that meant forever.
    Till death do you part.
    No. She shifted with the quiver under her heart. She wanted no mention of death on the day they married. No promises tied to it.
    Death brought shadows, and shadows blocked the sun.
    Empty promises. Words spoken by rote and never meant to be kept. Clouds over the sun, and the rain turning her white gown to dull, dingy gray.
    It was cold, bleak. But there was such heat in her. Hate was a furnace, rage the fire that stoked it.
    How strange, how extraordinary that she should feel so alive, so viciously alive at last.
    The house was dark. A