Page 66 of Seduction Under the Southern Stars

We stare at each other for a second before she returns her gaze to the road with a laugh.

“Holy fuck,” I say.

“Yeah, holy fuck.”

“I’m going to see my father. My real father.”

“Will you change your name? You could, you know! Linc Mansfield. Has a nice ring to it.”

I blink, my head spinning. “I don’t know. Wow, it’s weird. I can’t think straight.”

“It’s the shock. You need some brandy, stat!”

I look out of the window, not really seeing the shops and houses of Wellington as we enter the city. Don Green isn’t and never was my father. I have no connection with him at all. He’s just some guy Nancy married. He’s dead and gone, out of my life physically and emotionally, and I never have to see him or think of him again.

“I hope you didn’t mind me mentioning Greenfield,” she says. “I didn’t think that maybe you’d rather he didn’t know all about that.”

“I don’t mind. I’m not embarrassed about it. Going there, meeting you… and the others, was the best thing that could have happened to me at the time.”

She sends me a shy smile.

We don’t speak for a while. Elora navigates the busy streets, eventually parking in a car park near the Botanic Gardens. She turns off the engine, and I finally return to Earth and look across at her.

“I’m so pleased for you I could burst,” she says. Her eyes are sparkling, full of joy for me. “I hope you have a wonderful time down there.”

Without thinking too hard about it, I lift a hand and cup her cheek. “I’d like to kiss you again,” I say. “Tell me to stop now if you’d rather I didn’t.”

Her eyes widen, and she blinks a few times, but she doesn’t say anything.

I shift in my seat toward her a little. She turns to face me, color touching her cheeks. Her lips, free of lipstick now, are a pale pink and look incredibly soft. They part as she sees me looking at them, and she moistens them with the tip of her tongue.

Outside, it’s busy with people, the still-bright sunshine beaming down. The Lady Norwood Rose Garden is behind us, and beyond that the observatory and the Space Place Planetarium. The air smells sweet, of flowers and mown grass, and the intoxicating scent of Elora’s perfume.

I lean forward and press my lips to hers.

We kiss slowly. It feels as if the kiss is a metaphor for how I’m feeling right now, full of bright summer joy. My heart rate increases, blood rushes around my body, and the hairs all over my body stand on end as she rests her hand on my chest, then slides it around my body, pulling me toward her.

Lowering my arm around her shoulders, I tilt my head to change the angle of the kiss, and she opens her mouth so I can slide my tongue inside and let it dance with hers.

I don’t think she’s kissed anyone before, not like this. It fills me with happiness that I can be the first to introduce her to the beauty of making out, and I know the memory of this moment will always be with me.

Shakespeare said, Thy eternal summer shall not fade, and only now do I realize what he meant.

Chapter Fourteen

Elora

We have a cup of coffee and another panini in the café, then take a stroll around the botanic gardens while we wait for our planetarium show.

Linc doesn’t mention kissing me, so I don’t either. We’re so good at communicating in every other way, but with this, I feel tongue-tied, and I don’t know how to broach the subject. What would I ask? Why are you kissing me? I can imagine his answer: because I want to. I don’t think he’s thought any further than that. He’s not wondering where it’s going to lead or how it’s going to make me feel; he just felt like kissing me, so he did.

Men!

Halfway around the gardens, his phone rings, and he answers it and starts chatting to the other person, who I soon realize is Joel.

While he talks, I sulk a little. Not because he kissed me. But because I want more, and I don’t want to ask for it, because I know he’s going to turn me down, and I can’t bear the thought of that rejection. He won’t sleep with me because he’s leaving soon, and I’m sure he thinks it would be cruel to go that final step and then walk away.

And I’m not even sure I want him like that.

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