Page 63 of Just Say Christmas
When she started to make some noise, he smiled. And when she was making more, he slowed down.
He didn’t talk, but there was so much intensity in the face in the window. And her own face—it was twisted. Too open, and too exposed, and he was watching. She wanted to close her eyes, but she had to watch, to see her thighs tightening, her hand gripping the nape of his neck more tightly.
“You need to . . . be inside me,” she said. She could feel it in his body, and she could see it in his face.
“Not yet,” he said. “Watch this. You need to see. This is who you are. This is what I see.” He was breathing hard too, holding himself still, his muscles taut.
She couldn’t watch, not anymore. Her head was flung back against his shoulder, her hand holding on for dear life, and he was pushing her higher. Slowly, but so urgently.
It came on her slowly, like a tremor in the distance, an earthquake deep below the surface. Gathering strength, then, coiling around her body, squeezing her tighter.
She couldn’t stand it. She was quiet in bed, but she couldn’t be quiet now. She was calling out, and Kane was increasing the tempo. The earthquake was on her, beginning to shake her loose, and then it was here.
“Watch,” he said. “Watch.” She forced her eyes open and did it. She saw a woman being pushed to the limit, shaking hard there, and finally going over it. And a man who wanted her there.
Now, she finished playing the piece, listened to the notes dying away, and felt them in her body too. It had taken her six minutes to play it, and Kane had watched her all the way through it. She could feel his hands on her now, and how he had lifted her and carried her, boneless and trembling, to the wall. How he’d turned her so she was facing him, then pushed her back against the wall, his hands cradling her hips and her legs around his waist, and shoved inside. Hard and hot, and this time, she’d wrapped both hands in his hair, felt the size of him inside her, around her, let his teeth close on her neck, and called out helplessly with every thrust.
By the time she was carrying her cello to Casey’s room, she was ready to do it all over again.
* * *
HAYDEN
That piece was ballet music of some kind, wasn’t it? Familiar, anyway. Victoria hadn’t played it one bit like ballet, though. Hayden eyed her thoughtfully, and then looked at Kane. Intensity ran in the family, it seemed. Focus. Determination. All the good things. The gooseflesh had risen on his arms as Victoria played, and it wasn’t just the music. It was Luke’s gray eyes on him from halfway across the room.
“Ceiling’s brilliant, mate,” he told Isaiah. “First class, don’t you think, Mum?”
“Yes,” his mother said. “Very nice, Isaiah.” Sounding a little stiff, still, but then, their parents were still a little uncomfortable around Rhys and Zora. With theideaof Rhys and Zora, as if Zora’s unhappiness with Dylan had mattered less than having to explain the complication of Rhys.
There was a murmur of agreement, though, and Nyree giving credit to Kane, then Jenna asking Nyree about the technique she’d used, which meant the ice was broken. Being the social lubricant—that was Hayden’s happy place. It could make family life a bit exhausting, but it had always been his job.
“Now, though,” he said to Isaiah, “the question is—astronaut or marine biologist? I always thought it would be the marine mammals. Choosing a career could be the hard part.”
He sounded nauseatingly peppy and cheerful even to himself. What was he meant to do here? More than this, apparently.
“Yes,” Isaiah said. “There are heaps of interesting things that a person can work at. I don’t have to choose now, though. I can just learn about everything. You can’t decide if you don’t know all the possibilities.”
“Could even decide to be a doctor,” Hayden’s dad told his grandson.
“No, thanks,” Isaiah said. “I don’t think I like people enough.” Which made Hayden laugh out loud, and Rhys smile.
“You only have to decide when you’re in University, anyway,” Finn’s son Harry said.
“I don’t think you can be an astronaut in New Zealand,” Casey said. “New Zealand doesn’t have any rockets. That’s the bad part about it. It also doesn’t have mammals, except for mammals from other places. I thought everyplace had mammals.”
“Antarctica doesn’t,” Harry said. “Not land mammals. They both have marine mammals, though, and other things special that you can study, like geology. You could also go to other countries and study things there, if you had a specialty. You could go to the UK, for example. I think you might even be able to be an astronaut from New Zealand, in the future. Astronauts can be scientists, or maybe it’s that scientists can be astronauts. If there were an international space mission, for example.”
“Right,” Hayden said. “Scientistandastronaut. Good plan.” He still sounded too peppy. Was there a place between “social lubricant” and “honest truth-teller?” If so, he hadn’t found it yet.
Nyree said, “So. Want to head out of reality and into the magical world? Kane helped with Isaiah’s ceiling, buteverybodyhelped with Casey’s room. Let’s go see it.”
More crowding into the passage, like a tour group visiting a stately home. Casey was bouncing again, Zora looked like she was being determinedly happy—Hayden had seen that look before—Isaiah looked like he had his ceiling and was fully satisfied with it, or possibly with the idea of being an astronaut/scientist, Hayden’s mum had her hand on Casey’s shoulder as she cut the yellow tape, and Nyree was saying, her hand pressed against the door, her entire self vibrating, “I changed my mind about music, Vic. I can’t do music.I’mtoo excited to wait for music.”
“Oh, good,” Victoria said. “I want to see too.”
“So, Casey,” Nyree said, “we’ll count down from ten, and you can open the door. Ten,” she began, and everyone joined in, their voices getting louder as they counted down the numbers, until the passage was ringing with it. “. . . Three, two, one . . . and . . .open.”
Casey flung the door open on the word and tumbled inside, and the group followed her. Nineteen people in one little girl’s bedroom, like a University house party. Shuffling and jockeying, putting the kids in front so they could see.
