In the Light of the Moon, page 18
Was the overnight bag in my trunk too optimistic? Maybe, but it also represented the possibility that this night would go in the direction I hoped. To hear Josie say it, my spending the night with Orion was an inevitability. When I called her for input on what to wear, it was difficult to not immediately vomit all about the assertion Granna made about her abilities. And when I tried to focus the conversation on my anxieties about tonight, her predictions just made it worse.
“He’s already in love with you, Sylv. It’s almost painful how I can already see you living in a cozy wooden cabin with him and your two kids.”
“J-jesus, Josie, two kids? We only just had sex. I don’t think you have to worry about kids for a long while. If we even get to that point.”
I followed the curve of the road, coming around the bend toward a clearing up ahead, and replayed her words over and over. I’d never told Josie that Orion said he lived in a cabin. If her seeing, as Granna called it, had any merit, this date felt like a preordained step toward the future Josie saw for us. I made a mental note to ask Granna about the extent of seer abilities and to figure out a way to approach Josie about her powers that she may not even realize she had. And then ask her if she wanted to start a coven. Easy.
My brow wrinkled as I began to second-guess myself on that one, but the sight of… the most breathtaking home I’d ever seen quickly took up all my attention.
This is where he lives?
The narrow road led right to what was indeed a cabin, but instead of the logs I’d pictured, the facade was made of smooth wood painted a deep, almost black, green.
The porch lights were on, and as I pulled up beside the black car I recognized as his, I had to consciously force my mouth closed. It wasn’t a big house necessarily, but it was a lot larger than I thought it would be. A stone chimney stood on the left side of the house, and when I stepped out of my car I—is that a lake?
Petrified. The flutters in my stomach had turned to a gnawing sensation, though there really was no reason for me to be terrified. But… if this was where Orion lived, I couldn’t just ignore anymore the fact that he was just so well put together. For goddess’s sake, he was a fucking professor who lived in a paradise in the woods that he somehow built, and he wanted to date me? A two time college dropout that just quit working at a failing pizza place?
Just before my panicking made me do something stupid like cry or get in my car to turn around, the front door opened, releasing a wash of warm light. And stepping out of that light, in a simple gray shirt and dark jeans was Orion.
Though he didn’t smile much, I could see the flush bleeding into the tops of his white cheeks, and the panic left me like a gust of wind.
With his hands still stuffed in his pockets, Orion bounced down the wooden steps and headed toward me. As he drew nearer, I saw the light in his green eyes, the upward tilt of his lips, and all my energy released in a big, relieved grin.
He stopped advancing, face dropping to an expression that made my insecurities flare. His hands drew from his pockets, thumbs tapping on his fingers, and his stare was almost… reverent?
“Um, hi.” Hi? This was the same man that fucked me with abandon just one hallway down from a department event. Steeling my spine, I pushed forward, my chunky heels wobbling on the stones. My walking seemed to jerk Orion out of whatever trance he was in, because he lurched forward, catching my elbows to steady me.
“Sylvie,” Orion’s low, husky voice soothed the rest of the unease that had been creeping up, and it was as simple as breathing to let him pull me in. His solid arms twined around my back. My face smooshed into his shirt, his chest warming me immediately. This was perfect—he was perfect.
“I’m sorry I’m a little late,” my words were muffled against his body, but he didn’t seem to mind about either thing.
“I don’t care. You’re right on time,” Orion’s usual grumble was turning into a freaking lullaby, the reassurance smoothing over my anxiety and insecurities once again. It was something I felt self-conscious about—the frazzled-ness. But he never seemed to mind.
I took the opportunity to explore his torso a bit, tentatively running one hand up his side, the other up his spine. A low, contented noise vibrated my ears, and I fought back a giggle when I realized that he didn’t realize he was doing it. I put my fingernails into the movement, giving him light scratches that left trails of goosebumps in their wake. His thin shirt could’ve been painted on, and my mind warred not with my desire to rip it off of him but with what I wanted to do with him afterward.
His body was leanly muscled, his shoulders deliciously broad, and I was already aching with wanting him inside me again. But I also wanted more of this—curling up into him. Maybe with him holding me as we slept.
Judging by the hard press against my lower belly, his mind was going in those directions, too. Perhaps it was more of a plausibility than I’d thought.
With a clearing of his throat, Orion’s arms began to loosen around me, and I reluctantly leaned back to put space between us. When I looked up at him, I found his gaze soft, the green color calm like blades of grass in the rain.
“Would you like a tour? Of my home.” He said it in an adorably formal tone, brow furrowing like it was a very serious task.
I nodded and bobbed excitedly on my feet, “Yes, of course! It’s so beautiful—I want to see more.”
Pink flushed his cheeks and the tops of his ears, and when he turned toward the front door, grabbing my hand on the way, I noticed that his hair looked freshly cut. He’d never really let it grow out since we met, but after seeing him yesterday, I realized that he must’ve got it cut between now and then.
It could have just been his routine, but the thought of him getting it cut for this occasion made me start to blush while he led me toward the house.
Now that we were closer, and I didn’t have my panic flaring or his body pressed to mine, I registered the soulful crooning coming from inside.
Orion walked us slowly, which I was thankful for as I stepped carefully on the gravel and up the short stack of wooden stairs. There was no furniture on the front porch, but I noticed a ceramic ashtray on the railing that was empty. Was it new or freshly dumped out?
That question was quickly wiped from my brain, though, as we stepped into the foyer of Orion’s cabin.
I saw from the outside that it was all one level, and the small entrance area held an artisan-looking rug in a deep red color with an angular, geometric pattern. Orion closed the door behind us, and I tried to keep my eyes from bugging out and looking over every inch that I could see. I quickly slipped out of my shoes, and once he’d removed his boots, he set them both under a wooden bench.
Orion’s home was warm. Cozy. The walls and floor were both made of the same wood, and the ceilings were higher than I expected. He started us to the left, where the foyer gave way to a large, open living room. The leather sectional sofa sat before a large fireplace that was set in the same stone as the outside. Two armchairs in a dark green fabric were positioned perpendicular to the sofa, and I could just see him curled up there, reading before the fire.
He didn’t speak as we padded further into the room, and I recognized the Bill Withers song that played softly from the impressive looking record player and speakers set within a sprawling shelving unit that must’ve held… hundreds of records.
I glanced around, trying to find a television, but stopped when my eyes landed on the fireplace’s mantle. A large, abstract painting stood behind a row of photographs with mismatched frames.
My body acted almost on its own accord when I zeroed in on the little boy in one of the photos. I wanted to pick up the small frame for a closer look, but I suppressed the urge by grabbing onto the wooden shelf to lean in as closely as I could.
The little boy was obviously Orion, his pale skin and green eyes round and sweet-looking. His short curls were a bright white, not the pale, cream color that they were now. And his sweatshirt and jeans looked like an adorable version of what he still elected to wear most days.
Orion’s lips were pulled back in a wide smile that didn’t meet his eyes, almost as if he didn’t understand the expression but tried to mimic whoever was behind the camera when they commanded, ‘Say cheese!’
“Who’s that?” I asked and pointed to the man standing next to him. His brown hand was on Orion’s shoulder, and his smile lit up his entire face. They both stood before metal siding that looked like the facade of a shed or trailer.
“My father,” Orion said, and my brow lowered in more confusion. When I inspected the man’s face more closely, okay, yes, I did see that he and Orion had the same nose. They had the slight tilting of their eyes in common as well. But the man’s tighter curls were a dark brown, and there was the obvious difference in his skin tone.
I turned to my… boyfriend? The man I was dating? And looked at him more closely. We usually had a sixth sense about this sort of thing, so how did I not know that Orion wasn’t white? Well, in race, not necessarily color of his skin.
“You never told me that you were…” My voice trailed off when I caught the little wrinkle between Orion’s eyebrows and the flaring of his nose. Had he told me?
“That I was what?”
My eyelids fluttered for a moment, trying to find words that wouldn’t come off accusatory or offensive. I’d heard that biracial children often felt alienated from both sides of their heritage, so I certainly didn’t want to add to that. “Ah… that your dad wasn’t white?” But then I cringed at the awkward way I’d phrased it.
Orion’s brow crinkled more, but I saw his shoulders relax, “Oh,” he muttered with an inflection like he was relieved by what I said. He looked back at the photo, “No, he wasn’t. My mother is.”
I nodded, but then, of course, I blurted another question without thinking, “But your last name?”
This time, Orion let out a raspy snort, “My grandfather was white, Irish. Da always complained about being a black man with a last name like Gealach.” He gestured his hand in a lazy wave at himself, “My mother has albinism, and Da must’ve carried the gene, so that’s why I look like this.”
He said the words in that matter-of-fact way of his, but it made me feel bad that I’d brought it up all the same. I placed my palm on his chest and felt the calm beat of his heart. “I love the way you look. I hope my questions didn’t offend you.”
When I chanced a glance to his face, Orion looked anything but. He reached up to hold my hand on his chest, almost covering it completely. The contrast on the skin of his tattooed arm looked even sharper in the mellow light of his home. He spoke softly, eyes hidden beneath lowered lashes, “They didn’t. I hadn’t mentioned this before.” He peeled my hand off of his chest but kept it clasped within his grip. “Shall I show you the rest of the house? Or are you getting hungry?”
My excitement bubbled up again, “Tour, please.”
Orion pointed out the rest of the photos quickly, and all of them featured him and his father. Down the line, both grew older until the last one showed a softly smiling Orion in black cap and gown, and his father, with salt-and-pepper hair this time, looking as proud as could be.
We made our way out of the living room to a hallway at the back of the house that held two spare bedrooms. With each, he pushed the doors open and gestured quickly to the interiors that held neatly made beds and cozily mismatched furniture. I wondered how often he had guests or if the rooms had just been his father’s idea.
At the end of the hall, he pushed open the last door to reveal a sight that had my jaw hitting the floor.
This bedroom was certainly his. Not only by the fact that it smelled most like him and his cologne.
The room was made almost entirely of windows. Wooden beams separated the panes of glass that extended all the way to the vaulted ceiling, and my hand slipped from his as I advanced forward.
His large bed was pushed up to the left wall, as neatly made as the others, and his nightstand held a neat stack of books beneath the lamp that was emitting dim, yellow light. To the right was another lamp, this one standing on the floor, right beside a leather recliner. And beside that was a long, low bookshelf that took up the rest of the wall. Though absolutely stuffed with books, it was organized neatly, and, I guessed, arranged with some system that only made sense to him.
I kept walking until I was almost pressed against the glass of the far wall. There was a lake back there. No more than two hundred feet from where I stood, was a sizable lake bordered by the forest I’d driven through on the way here.
And this was the view Orion saw as he was falling asleep and waking every day. What he looked upon when he read in that chair, which I assumed he did often.
After a long, long time, I turned around to see him watching me warily and mussing the curls at the back of his head.
I opened my mouth to speak, but he beat me to it, “You look beautiful. I should have—” he shook his head “—I should have said that when you first got here. I was just… nervous.”
My lips tilted downward, and I immediately made my way back toward where he was standing near the door. “Thank you, baby,” I chuckled, “and I was nervous, too.”
Orion looked truly confused, now. His eyes searched this space that I imagined was where he felt most at home. If I lived here, this would certainly be my favorite room. “Why would you be nervous? Do you,” he took a bracing breath, face hardening as if steeling himself for criticism, “do you not like it?”
My head jerked back on that one, and I blamed my desire to make him laugh on what I said next. “Oh goddess, Orion, I love it. It’s the most beautiful house I’ve ever seen! And I was nervous because I’d been worrying about being too presumptuous when I packed an overnight bag in my car and then started to think you are so completely out of my league.”
There was a long stretch of silence where Orion met my gaze for the first time since his greeting me outside. But before I could start fidgeting and try to retract my embarrassing honesty, he held my face and brought his nose to mine. He brushed it against mine in that way I’d instantly loved the first time he’d done it, and his breath tasted like coffee and cigarettes in the best way. “If anyone is out of the other’s league, it’s you, Sylvie.” He kissed me for the first time tonight, soft and deep, and I nearly whimpered in protest when he pulled back to speak over my lips. “And, if you’ll allow it, I was hoping you’d spend the night.”
I couldn’t hold back my grin, “You were?”
It only climbed higher when the timbre of his voice went even lower, “Yes. I’ve been wanting you in my home, sleeping in my bed, for a long while now.”
My breathing picked up. “Oh?”
And then he almost made my knees buckle when he took the flesh of my bottom lip between his teeth, all uncertainty leaving him as he turned into what I thought of as Sexy Orion. Where it felt like he was able to tune out all insecurity in the name of revealing his true desires. He released my lip, now swollen and throbbing in time to that between my legs and pressed a chaste kiss to my cheek before leaning into my ear. “That and taking my time with you. Savoring you like I should have the first time.”
“Shit.” My brain must have short-circuited because that was supposed to stay an inside-thought.
His thumbs caressed my face in gentle passes, “Mm. But first, I’ll finish making dinner. Are you ready to eat?”
I had been spending way too much time with Josie, because my first thought was an immediate yes, followed by what I was eager to taste that was not food. That, luckily, stayed in my mind while I nodded.
Orion gave me another kiss on my cheek before leading us back out toward the rest of the house, “Then I’ll cook for you, my little witch.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Orion
Sylvie sat on one of the barstools and watched me cook. It was an activity I discovered that I quite enjoyed in the years before graduate school. Da was a terrible cook, and the chefs at my mother’s and Sean’s home took care of all of our meals when I stayed there. Boarding and undergraduate school held dining halls, so it wasn’t until I had my first apartment that I discovered the satisfaction that came from turning ingredients into something totally different and delicious.
I supposed in that way, it was similar to carpentry, which I was already familiar with. After a two-year-long fixation with learning to cook Italian cuisine, my fingers were quick and comfortable as I flattened the pasta dough and set the bolognese sauce on the stove. As soon as Sylvie texted her agreement to come over the next day, I’d set out to the store to purchase and begin prepping everything. The sauce was best when it was given the chance to cook low and slow, and even better when the flavors had been mellowing overnight.
She sipped from her glass, bopping her head along to the music coming from the record player that I kept on more often than not. “Is the wine okay?” I remembered that she liked pinot noir from the night she first kissed me, but I’d had to take a guess on which one when she couldn’t tell me a specific brand she enjoyed.
“Mhm,” she smiled over the counter at me, “this is all so wonderful, Orion. Thank you.” Though her skin was that beautiful, warm brown, I could still see the flush that was blooming on her cheeks. I surreptitiously took a drawing inhale, happy to find that her scent read as pleasant, content.
“Of course. I’m happy you’re here. I don’t ever get to cook for anyone besides myself. I hope you like it.”
“I’m sure it’ll be delicious based on how it smells! And you know that I’m not picky. You could’ve put a frozen pizza in the oven, and I would’ve been happy.”
My lips turned down, “I wouldn’t ever subject you to that, Sylvie. And I want to take care of you.” Though I’d loved my time with my father, the cardboard taste of frozen pizzas was one I wanted to erase from my memory forever.
