The Book of Someday (6 page)

The taste of it, the smell of it—is intoxicating. Exhilarating. The heart of it—is wild. And fiercely physical.

Andrew is, as a lover, what he is as a man. Powerful. And confident. He has a voice that’s clear and low—effortlessly commanding. And a body beautiful beyond description. He’s a deeply sensuous male with a devilishly boyish grin. He’s a rogue. A charmer. Master at being both playmate and seducer.

And in his steel-gray eyes there is a fascinating, complicated mix of information. Intelligence, and infinite caring. And just beneath the caring, a hint of something darker. Something unpredictable. A little bit dangerous.

But the only things Livvi can see are the marvels and thrills of being in Andrew’s presence.

From the moment they left the bookstore there hasn’t been a single minute when Andrew’s hands haven’t been roving Livvi’s body. Or a microsecond when her lips haven’t been hungry for his.

Andrew and Livvi have come together in a magnetic, fevered heat. A physical chemistry that’s spellbinding.

And for Livvi, this attraction, this connection, feels miraculous. For her, this is far more than sex. It’s the miracle of being welcomed, celebrated, and safe—the priceless gift given to someone who’s been lost and has finally come home.

Her eyes are shining with happiness as they’re searching Andrew’s, and she’s asking: “How did you find me? How did you know to look for me in that bookstore?” This is an experience Livvi has never had. Someone has missed her and come looking for her. She is eager to hear the story of how, and why, it happened.

Andrew seems to be aware that she’s anxious to have this information; and yet he’s saying nothing. Instead he is turning Livvi onto her stomach, sliding his hands along the length of her back, slowly bringing them to rest on the curve of her waist, and telling her: “If I was a sculptor I’d spend the rest of my life trying to do you justice.”

Livvi raises her head and looks over her shoulder at him. She can’t wait. She needs this information. “What were you doing at the bookstore? How did you know how to find me?” She wants to hear everything, wants to savor each detail.

Andrew is stroking his cheek across the back of her neck—his breath leisurely skimming her skin—feeling like a tease, like torture. She rolls over and sits up, gathering the sheet, wrapping it around herself, and begging: “Tell me, please!”

There’s amusement in Andrew’s tone. “It’s pretty simple, really. I was in the area, over in Rhinebeck, visiting a friend. I saw a local paper next to the cash register when we were leaving a diner…and there was your picture, the information about your book signing—”

“—and then you came for me,” Livvi marvels.

“Then I came for you,” Andrew tells her.

With those words—
I
came
for
you
—Andrew has gone, like a bolt of lightning, straight to the lonely core of Livvi’s soul. He has burned himself into her and claimed her.

She can scarcely breathe as he’s saying, “I was supposed to be on a flight back to Los Angeles yesterday,” and she’s replying, “But you came looking for me instead.”

“Yes, Olivia,” he smiles. “That seems to be how it turned out.”

Suddenly, in the midst of Livvi’s joy, there’s a faint prickle of unease. The feeling of being edged toward a place she doesn’t want to go back to.

“I don’t like that name, Olivia,” she says. “No one calls me by it anymore.”

Andrew is trailing kisses across Livvi’s belly. With each kiss, he’s murmuring, “Olivia.” “Olivia.” “Olivia.” When he brings his mouth close to Livvi’s, he’s whispering: “Olivia is a glorious name. I’ll never stop saying it.”

While Andrew is nestling her into the cloud-soft pillows, a microscopic sadness is flickering through Livvi. The battle of Olivia has been lost.

But as Andrew is enticing her. Stroking her. Lowering his weight onto her—entering her. It seems like such a small defeat.

Insignificant. Compared to what she is being given.

Andrew—moving deeper and deeper into Livvi—is touching her in ways, and in places, that are sending a series of magnificent shudders through her body. A spectacular, visceral current of sensation.

Powerful pulses. From an exquisitely pleasurable earthquake.

Rippling uncontrolled rushes of pure, carnal, release.

This is Livvi’s first orgasm.

And it’s Andrew who is here—inside her.

***

Livvi’s night at the St. Regis in New York is followed by a morning flight home to California. The reassuring weight of Andrew’s shoulder, which has been resting against Livvi’s since takeoff, suddenly isn’t there anymore. The plane has just touched down in Los Angeles. Andrew has leaned away to check his phone.

This has sparked a memory, a twinge in Livvi. “Why did you leave without saying a word?” she’s asking. “Why did you walk out on me?”

Andrew looks baffled. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about when we met. The first time I saw you. When you took me away to the butler’s pantry and the caviar.”

Andrew rests his head against his seat back. His tone is conversational, relaxed. “Something came up…a text I needed to take care of. You had to know I wasn’t gone for good.”

“But I didn’t know.” Livvi is worrying—just a little—that their new connection might turn out to be as tenuous, and as easily broken, as it was on that first night.

But Andrew is giving her a sweet grin, assuring her: “This is crazy. You know I told you to wait, I said it right when I was going through the door.”

“Then why didn’t I hear you?” Livvi asks.

“The noise from the party must’ve been drowning me out.”

Livvi is in the window seat: Andrew, sitting beside her. He has loosened his seat belt, and hers—and is swinging the armrest up.

He’s turning toward Livvi. Leaning across her, shielding her from view—and kissing her. His kiss is slow and deep. All-encompassing. Erasing everything but the ferocious attraction they have for each other.

And just as it did on that first night, Livvi’s hand is coming to rest on the cool smoothness of Andrew’s shirtfront. Beneath the coolness, she can feel the heat of his skin—the heat of his desire.

Andrew is caressing the outline of Livvi’s leg, just above her knee. His fingertips are resting on the fabric of her skirt, traveling steadily upward in lazy, insinuating circles. The movement is so subtle, and blatantly sexual, that it’s sending shock waves through Livvi—arching her spine, parting her lips, and leaving her eyes only barely open.

Andrew’s breath is warm and urgent on Livvi’s cheek. While his hand is purposefully gliding over the rise of her hip.

The teasing circles being made by Andrew’s fingertips are now lingering at the waistband of Livvi’s skirt. Exploring the side button and the zipper. Tempting her. Exciting her. Making her shift and squirm. Building a lust in her that is beyond her control. A need that’s making Livvi frantic—for Andrew to peel her skirt away, and give her the feel of his skin on hers.

He is setting a fire in every fiber in Livvi’s body.

With the deliberate, leisurely movements of his hand Andrew is generating a wantonness in Livvi. A blind, animal urge to have him strip her, and take her. Here. Now. In the middle of this crowded plane.

Andrew’s voice is low, intensely intimate, as he’s telling Livvi: “That night in the butler’s pantry, you were a stranger. Now you’re the woman who has given me the most incredible twenty-four hours of my life.”

While he’s saying this, his hand is continuing to move in those seductive, sensuous circles. The fever it’s creating—the need for him, the rampant desire in Livvi—is becoming unbearable. She’s on the brink of lifting out of her seat—moaning, and crying out.

And in this same instant Andrew is slipping his hand beneath the fabric of Livvi’s blouse, and the satin of her bra. Andrew is stroking her breast. In a quick, masterful way that is bringing her an ecstatic relief.

***

It is as if in the days and weeks following their return from New York, Andrew has put Livvi at the center of his universe.

He is opening the world to her. Introducing Livvi to a flow of miracles and wonders—wonders that exist solely because Andrew exists.

A little more than two months into her relationship with Andrew, Livvi is rising into air that is crystal-clear—floating toward a glow of rose-colored light. From time to time, just above her head, there are bright bursts of flame and an exhilarating rumble of noise. A roar. As if she’s being lifted away from the earth on the wings of a dragon.

Livvi is looking up, gazing into the vault of a towering dome patterned in crayon yellow and neon green, and shimmering like silk.

She is in New Mexico. With Andrew’s arms wrapped around her waist. Ascending into the dawn sky in a hot-air balloon. Believing that for as long as she lives, there will never again be a moment as breathtaking as this one.

***

And then on that same day, just before midnight, Andrew is giving Livvi the astonishing thrill of rushing along an empty desert road in a black Porsche convertible, with the top down, under an ocean of glittering stars.

Andrew has one hand on the wheel of the speeding car and the other firmly on Livvi’s back. She’s standing tall—braced against the glove compartment, clutching the rim of the windshield. The night wind is racing across her face. Whipping through her hair. Whirling the fabric of her dress. Sailing it up and away from her legs, like the flying skirts of a dervish.

And now Andrew’s hand is moving from her back and sliding under the lace edge of her underwear. His touch, on this hot night, is remarkably cool. Light and inviting. Its upward slide deft and swift.

Then when Andrew has found the velvety harbor that is his goal, he becomes watchful. Careful. Every movement being timed, perfectly, to Livvi’s pace.

Livvi glances down and catches the briefest glimpse of Andrew’s expression. A look of supreme satisfaction. As if he is taking great pleasure in the pleasure he’s so expertly giving.

With one hand firmly on the steering wheel of the speeding car and the other nimbly guiding Livvi, Andrew is driving her toward a rapturous euphoria. A place where Livvi is wild and free. He’s creating a shout in her. That’s spontaneous. Uncivilized. A shout of ecstasy.

***

In the motel room, later, when both of them are sleepy and sated with sex, Andrew is spooned against Livvi’s back.

As she’s lying on her side, with her knees bent, she’s remembering that she used to lie curled in this same position when she was a frightened little girl who believed in fairy tales. When she used to slide her arm under the crook of her knees and pretend she was being carried to safety by one of the knights in her storybooks. Someone tall and strong. A man with the power to tame dragons—and create magic.

And while Andrew is sleepily kissing the back of her neck, Livvi is asking him: “Out there, in the dark. How fast did we go?”

“You don’t want to know…”

His voice has trailed off; he’s yawning.

Livvi, too, is drifting into sleep.

“If you hadn’t talked me into it,” she murmurs, “I’d never have done it. I was scared.”

“I like how wild it made you.” Andrew’s murmur is husky, full of innuendo.

The sound of it rouses Livvi; her eyes flutter open, briefly. Then she wills herself back into sleep. Into a reverie where she’s again hurtling toward the thrill of the open road and the burn of the night wind.

And Livvi is beginning to smile.

The discovery that she has an appetite for wildness, for freedom, is coming as a surprisingly delightful revelation.

***

In each new place, with each new pleasure that Andrew brings, Livvi is continuing to encounter revelations and surprises.

She’s also encountering unexpected information. About Andrew. About who he was, and who he is.

The initial surprise comes after they’ve been together for a little over three months. When Livvi and Andrew are on a trip to Canada, to Vancouver Island, where they’re celebrating Livvi’s birthday. She and Andrew are on a rented sailboat, at sunset. The air is brisk and chilly, and the smell of the sea is salty clean. Both Livvi and Andrew are in jeans and cable-knit sweaters. Livvi’s birthday present from Andrew is the diamond bracelet on her wrist—and for Livvi, almost as dazzling as the gift is the wonderfully playful way in which Andrew presented it.

“I love how you gave this to me,” she’s telling him.

It isn’t clear whether or not Andrew is hearing what Livvi’s saying; he’s struggling to adjust a sail that has come loose.

While she’s watching him bring the sail under control, she’s letting her thoughts wander, letting them take her back to the way the day began…
She’s waking up to a boisterous rendition of “Happy Birthday” being sung by a trio of male voices. At first she’s confused, startled. Then all at once she’s laughing. Because it’s Andrew and a pair of room service waiters who are serenading her. One of the waiters is standing beside a breakfast cart laden with chocolate croissants and cold champagne; the other is presenting her with an enormous stuffed animal. A Paddington Bear in a whimsical red hat and matching boots and a blue pea coat.

Andrew
has
delivered
another
miracle, another wonder. He has made all of Livvi’s childhood birthday dreams come true in this one, singularly lovely moment.

She’s thrilled. Holding on to the bear. Crying and laughing. While Andrew is kissing her and explaining that she hasn’t officially gotten her present yet—she needs to read the tag dangling from one of the bear’s coat buttons.

The
first
part
of
the
information
on
the
tag
is
the
preprinted
message
that
comes
with
all
Paddingtons, “Please look after this bear.” But handwritten below that message, in Andrew’s flowing script, is a note that says, “And kindly check his pockets for Birthday Valuables.”