Once in a Blue Moon Read Online Free PDF

than to hate Jeremiah. He wouldn’t have left them if he’d been in his right mind, she reasoned; he’d been in the grip of the disease himself. Even all these years later, she missed him still. She’d been so wrapped up in him, it was almost as if he’d been part of her—an arm or a leg that had been chopped off. Closing her eyes as the plane taxied down the runway, she allowed her mind to travel back once more to the night they’d met.
    “You take the bed, I’ll crash on the sofa,” he offered after they’d arrived at his place, adding with a sloe-eyed grin, “Wouldn’t want you thinking I had an ulterior motive for giving you a lift.”
    “Why would I think that?” she replied with mock innocence. He could have anyone he wanted without having to scheme, and she was no exception. The minute she’d laid eyes on him, with his eyes that glowed like a cat’s and body that made her want to jump his bones on the spot, she’d known she was in for a fun evening.
    What she hadn’t counted on was that it would be so much more.
    “My guess is you’ve had your share of guys hitting on you.” He looked at her, not like she was a piece of meat but admiring her as he might a beautiful piece of scenery.
    “You mean because I’m not afraid to bum rides from strange men?” she replied, shamelessly fishing.
    “You know perfectly well what I mean.” His grin widened, showing an adorably crooked eyetooth. His eyes, she noticed, were the exact color of the tiger’s-eye stone on the necklace she wore.
    “So you think I’m hot, do you?” she teased, sidling up to him.
    He laughed. “I’m not going to answer that on the grounds that it might incriminate me.”
    “Should I take that as a yes?”
    “Take it any way you like.” He played along, his eyes dancing. He still hadn’t laid a hand on her.
    “In that case, I have a suggestion—why don’t we share the bed? That way neither of us has to wake up tomorrow morning with a sore back.”
    “That’s assuming you plan on getting any sleep.” Jeremiah slid an arm around her waist, pulling her in close to nuzzle her neck as he lightly traced the outline of one breast with a loosely clenched fist. She felt a deep inner tug, like a guyline being cut, sending her spinning.
    Then he was kissing her, his lips soft against hers, his tongue gently probing. He held her head cupped in his hands, his fingers threaded through her hair, his thumbs pressed lightly into the tender flesh below her earlobes. As if laying claim to her somehow. Before she knew it, they were struggling out of their clothes, trying not to trip over themselves and each other as they paused, breathless, between kisses to quickly undo a button, wrestle down a zipper, release a hook. From the start she knew it was going to be different than with the men before him—too many to count, starting at the age of fourteen, when she’d been seduced by a twenty-year-old relative of her foster family at the time. This wasn’t just about satisfying an urge; it was way more intense. So intense it scared her. But it was a fun kind of scared, like riding the world’s steepest roller coaster.
    They never made it to the bedroom. They did it right there on the floor, on a ratty old carpet that might have been the softest down mattress for all she noticed. Not so much as if they were making love as inhaling each other. Her first high with Jeremiah, and not a joint or crack pipe in sight.
    She gave a bittersweet smile at the memory, bringing her gaze back to the photo in her hand: the child who’d been born out of that love. It had been taken shortly after Bella’s fifth birthday, one of those quickie studio portraits from Wal-Mart. She was posed against a backdrop of fall foliage, wearing the dress Kerrie Ann had bought for her first day of kindergarten, a yellow flowered one with a smocked front and puffy sleeves, and white patent-leather Mary Janes. Her curly dark hair was braided, little wisps standing out all