I could feel her smile. And then she nodded, “Yeah. Whenever I needed to get my stuff together, and clear my head, or else prepare for difficult cases, I escaped to a cottage in Joshua Tree. It’s nice and peaceful out there. Far removed from everything.”

She raised her head and stared into my eyes. She regarded me with a curious mix of tenderness and intensity, and, I allowed myself to imagine, love.

“It’s a place that I’d always thought of as an escape … but I’d love to take you there, anyway. It would feel different with you, I’m sure,” she said softly. “Everything’s different now … with you.”

I craned my neck towards her, and gave her a kiss. Unlike the other kisses tonight, this one wasn’t mean to seduce or tease, or to uncork a bottled-up desire. I gave her my heart in that kiss. My love. My hopes, and dreams.

She kissed me back with tenderness. And heat. She slipped her hand under my neck to help support it. Her kiss was different also, just like mine. She wasn’t moving her lips seductively like earlier kisses. No tongue, no gentle suction. Just warmth.

“I feel it,” she whispered as she drew her head back.

“Eternity?” I was almost afraid to ask.

A slow smile spread across her face. “Love’s eternity. You, with me, together in it.”
xxxxxx

Harley

I watched the steady rise and fall of her chest. Her luxuriant hair had fanned out over the pillow, but a few stray strands had wandered to her neck, and they tickled my nose whenever I raised my head to kiss her in the neck.

Her arm was still embracing me lightly, and we’d fallen asleep with my head pillowed in the nook formed by her shoulder and neck. I don’t know how long I watched her thusly; but her breathing remained soft and steady all throughout, the only sound I could hear in the silence of this special night. I closed my eyes, wanting to fall into a deep sleep like she’d done. I wanted to dream, peaceful ones, this time, of her, and me, together somewhere.

I smiled. Actually, maybe I’d fallen asleep ahead of her earlier, during one of the comfortable silences we’d shared as we looked up at the night sky together. A night sky I’d never be able to look up at again without thinking of her.