He was an architect working for a multinational firm, but eager to strike out on his own. He had his own ideas, a desire to blend old and new, to create both beauty and utility and to design buildings that made people more alive, that spoke to their hearts and souls. His eyes had lit up when he’d talked about his goals, and she had shared his enthusiasm.
He had shared hers about her own professional hopes and dreams. She was working for Finn MacCauley, one of the preeminent fashion and lifestyle photographers in the country. It was almost like an apprenticeship, she’d told him. She was learning so much from Finn, but was looking forward, like Alex was, to finding her own niche.
“People definitely,” she’d told him. “Families, kids, people at work and play. I’d like to shoot you,” she’d told him. She wanted to capture the moment, the man.
And Alex had simply said, “Whenever you want.”
When they got to the city, she had left the car in the parking garage by Heather’s Upper East Side apartment, then she’d taken Alex downtown on the subway to the Soho flat she was subleasing from a dental student on a semester’s internship abroad.
On the subway, Alex had caught her hand in his, rubbing his thumb over her fingers, then dipping his head to touch his lips to hers. It was a light touch, the merest promise, but it set her blood on fire. And when he pulled back, she caught her breath because, looking into his eyes, she had seen a hunger there that was as deep and intense as her own.
It had never happened before. A desire so powerful, so intense just grabbed her—and it wouldn’t let go. Daisy wasn’t used to this sort of intensity. She didn’t fall into bed at the drop of a hat, had only once before fallen into bed with a man at all. It had been fevered groping on his part and discomfort on hers.
With Alex, she’d tried telling herself, it would be more of the same.
But it wasn’t.
His kisses were nothing like any she’d tasted before. They were heady, electric, bone-melting. They’d stood on the sidewalk nearly devouring each other. Not something Daisy had ever done!
She couldn’t get him back to her apartment fast enough.
Once there, though, she’d felt suddenly awkward, almost shy. “Let me take your picture,” she’d said.
And Alex had given her a lazy teasing smile and said, “If that’s what you want.”
Of course it wasn’t what she wanted—or not entirely what she wanted. And it wasn’t what he wanted, either. It was fore-play. Serious and smiling, goofing around, letting her direct him this way and that, all the way watching her—burning her up!—from beneath hooded lids.
He wanted her. He didn’t have to say it. They circled each other, moved in, moved away. The temperature in the room rose. The temperature in Daisy’s blood was close to boiling.
Then Alex had reached out and took the camera from her. He aimed, shot, posed her, caught the ferocity of her desire, as well. He stripped off his jacket, she unbuttoned his shirt. He skimmed down the zip of her dress. But before he could peel it off, she had taken the camera back, set the timer and wrapped her arms around him.
The photo of the two of them together, caught up in each other, had haunted her for years.
But at the time she hadn’t been thinking about anything but the moment—the man. Within moments the camera was forgotten and in seconds more the rest of their clothing was gone.
And then there was nothing between them at all.
Alex bore her back onto her bed, settled beside her and bent his dark head, nuzzling her breasts, tasting, teasing, suckling, making her gasp and squirm.
And Daisy, shyness long gone, had been desperate to learn every inch of him. She’d prowled and played, made him suck in his breath and say raggedly, “You’re killing me!”
But when she’d pulled back he’d drawn her close again. “Don’t stop,” he’d said.
They hadn’t stopped—neither one of them. They’d driven each other to the height of ecstasy. And it wasn’t at all like that other time.
With Alex there was no discomfort, there was no second-guessing, no wondering if she was doing the right thing. It had been lovemaking at its most pure and elemental, and so perfect she could have cried.
After, lying wrapped in his arms, knowing the rightness of it, she had believed completely in her mother’s assertion that there was a “right man”—and about knowing instinctively when you met him.
She’d met Alex and—just like her parents, just like her sister and Brent—she had fallen in love.
They’d talked into the wee hours of the morning, sharing stories of their childhood, of their memories, of the best and worst things that had ever happened to them.
She told him about the first camera she’d ever had—that her grandfather had given her when she was seven. He told her about the first time he’d climbed a mountain and thought he could do anything. She told him about her beloved father who had died earlier that winter and about the loss she felt. He understood. He told her about losing his only brother to leukemia when he was ten and his brother thirteen. They had talked and they had touched. They had stroked and smiled and kissed.
And they had made love again. And again.
It was always going to be like that, Daisy vowed. She had met the man of her dreams, the one who understood her down to the ground, the man she would love and marry and have children with and grow old with—
—until she’d said so.
She remembered that Sunday morning as if it had been yesterday.
They’d finally fallen asleep in each other’s arms at dawn. When Daisy had awakened again it was nearly ten. Alex was still asleep, sprawled on his back in her bed, bare-chested, the duvet covering him below the waist. He was so beautiful. She could have just sat there and stared at him forever, tracing the strong lines of his features, the hollows made by his collarbone, the curve of muscle in his arms, the long, tapered fingers that had made her quiver with their touch. She remembered how he’d looked, naked and primal, rising above her when they’d made love.
She would have liked to do it again. She had wanted to slide back beneath the duvet and snuggle up against him, to rub the sole of her foot up and down his calf, then let her fingers walk up and down his thigh, and press kisses to the line of dark hair that bisected his abdomen.
But as much as she wanted to do that, she also wanted to feed him before he had to catch his plane. She knew he had an early evening flight to Paris where he would be spending the next month at the main office of the firm he worked for. She’d hated the thought of him leaving, but she consoled herself by hoping that when he started his own company he would bring it stateside. Or maybe she would follow him to Paris.
Daisy had tried to imagine what living in Paris—living in Paris with Alex—would be like while she made them eggs and bacon and toast for breakfast. The thoughts made her smile. They made her toes curl.
She’d been standing at the stove, toes curling as she turned the bacon when hard muscled arms had come around her and warm breath had touched her ear.
“Morning,”
