At Last (The Idle Point, Maine Stories) - By Barbara Bretton Page 0,35

beautiful," she said. "I wish I knew how to make you happy. I don't—"

He stopped her with a kiss. His mouth was hot and sweet and she wanted to drink him in like champagne. She'd never had champagne but she knew it couldn't compare to Noah's kisses.

#

Gracie was so fragile in his arms, so delicately made that Noah was afraid he'd hurt her. His hands felt big and awkward as he slid her denim skirt up over her hips then removed her panties. She looked so beautiful, so incredibly vulnerable and trusting, as she lay there in the moonlight that tears sprang to his eyes and he buried his face in her thick brown hair and struggled to regain control.

It wasn't like he'd never been with a girl before. He hadn't been kicked out of St. Luke's for being a choirboy. There were lots of girls in Portsmouth looking to have a good time with no strings attached, and his weekends were a blur of keg parties and one-night stands. He was smart enough to always use a rubber but beyond that he didn't much give a damn about anything but beer and good times.

Nothing had prepared him for Gracie and the way she made him feel.

He felt clumsy around her, like one of those guys who try so hard to impress but keep stumbling over their own feet. She'd breached all of his defenses before he had even realized what was happening. She'd awakened dreams in him that he'd almost forgotten.

He had wanted to be a journalist once a long time ago, a foreign correspondent who moved from city to city, calling every place and no place home. He told her about Paris and how one day he would live there and write the way Hemingway did in The Moveable Feast. They would know him at the café and his table would always be waiting, the one out there on the sidewalk where he could watch the parade. He would eat garlicky oysters and wash them down with crisp white wine and the words he wrote would be clear and true. Gracie believed in him and in his dreams, the same way he believed in hers. She didn't know that without her by his side, Paris would be just another city.

He'd never met anyone like her, anyone he'd wanted more to impress or understood less about how to do it. His parents loved him for the simple fact of his existence. They loved him because they had created him. Gracie loved him for who he was. Nobody had ever done that before. He had been loved for the way he looked, the family he came from, the money he had in his trust fund. Gracie loved him for his dreams. There was no cruelty in Gracie, no cunning. She asked for nothing from anyone but herself. When he saw how hard she worked toward her goals, he felt ashamed to have done so little with all that he had been given.

She ran her hands down his spine, her touch tentative at first, then more assured. He sucked in a deep breath and tried to think of anything but the sweet smell of her body beneath his. Her fingertips traced the swell of his shoulders, tiptoed down his spine then quickly moved back up to his shoulders as if she'd sensed he was close to losing it.

The ocean roared inside his head. His muscles tensed as if he were readying himself for battle. His senses took over, burning away words, burning away everything but the need to be inside her body, to feel her holding him tightly within her. He couldn't have stopped now if he wanted to.

He was hard as rock, harder than he'd ever been before, and she gasped as he began to move against her, a gentle thrusting motion that came close to bringing him to climax. Knowing that he was the first, the only guy, to be with her this way made him feel he must have done something pretty great in another life in order to be so lucky. No matter what else happened in their lives, no matter where they ended up, he would always be there in a corner of her memory.

A part of her heart would belong to him forever.

#

Gracie cried afterward. Noah had warned her that it would hurt for a moment and he'd been right but that wasn't the reason for her tears. She was so filled with emotion, so