Always Next Summer Page 2
“Are you okay?” I asked as our car swung gently a hundred feet up in the air. We were out in the country, and beyond the lights of the fair itself, there was only darkness. The night was clear, the moon almost full, and the sky an eerie silver nearly as bright as day. My stomach tightened when I saw the tears on her cheeks. “Maggie? What’s wrong?”
“Just a little cold,” she murmured, leaning toward me.
Carefully, I put my arm around her shoulders and drew her against my side. With my free hand, I brushed the tears from her cheeks. “What is it?”
“I was remembering the last time I was here.”
She wrapped her arm around my waist and settled her head on my shoulder, as if she had done it a thousand times before. “I was with Jack but I didn’t really want to be. I didn’t know why it didn’t feel right, but it didn’t. There were a lot of things about my life I didn’t feel right about for a long time. It makes me sad now to think about all the years I lost trying to be someone else.”
I kissed her forehead. “I was here that night. I wanted to be up here with you. I wanted it so much I was sick inside.” I laughed softly. “There’s nothing quite like first love.”
Maggie gasped. “You felt that way about me? Back then?”
Our car gave a shudder, and I knew we’d be going down soon. There was so much I wanted to say and I knew there would never be time. So I took a chance, because second chances are a rare thing and I had already waited so long. I cupped my fingers beneath her chin and tilted her face to the stars. I covered her mouth with mine and kissed her with all the trepidation and wonder that I had stored in my heart all these years for only her. I kissed her gently at first and let her feel in the heat of my flesh and the tender stroke of my tongue the dreams I had dreamt of her night after night. When her arms tightened around me and her fist clenched my shirt, I slid inside her mouth with the barely bridled need of a thirst that had gone unquenched despite all the other kisses I had ever known. Her lips bruised over mine, answering my hunger with her own. Her body vibrated in my arms, her passion matching mine. She was everything and more than I had imagined, and I opened my eyes, certain that I would awaken as I had so often with the elusive sadness of a dream escaped.
Her eyes were open, intent on mine. She raised her hand to my face and stroked my cheek, touching the corners of our joined mouths as if to assure herself that we were both real. She drew away enough to whisper against my lips.
“If this is going to end when we reach the bottom, I’m not getting off.”
“It doesn’t have to end,” I murmured as our car slid to a stop. “It’s not true what they say, you know. You can go home again, and this time, I’m not leaving.”
Maggie kissed me again before easing from my embrace. She smiled, and this time there was only hope in her eyes. “I’d forgotten how much I loved this fair. We’ll have to come again.”
I nodded. “There’s always next summer.”
“Yes,” she said, taking my hand. “There is.”
About the Author
Radclyffe has written over fifty romance and romantic intrigue novels, dozens of short stories, and, writing as L.L. Raand, has authored a paranormal romance series, The Midnight Hunters.
She is an eight-time Lambda Literary Award finalist in romance, mystery, and erotica—winning in both romance (Distant Shores, Silent Thunder) and erotica (Erotic Interludes 2: Stolen Moments edited with Stacia Seaman and In Deep Waters 2: Cruising the Strip written with Karin Kallmaker). A member of the Saints and Sinners Literary Hall of Fame, she is also an RWA/FF&P Prism Award winner for Secrets in the Stone, an RWA FTHRW Lories and RWA HODRW winner for Firestorm, an RWA Bean Pot winner for Crossroads, an RWA Laurel Wreath winner for Blood Hunt, and the 2016 Book Buyers Best award winner for Price of Honor. In 2014 she was awarded the Dr. James Duggins Outstanding Mid-Career Novelist Award by the Lambda Literary Foundation. She is a featured author in the 2015 documentary film Love Between the Covers, from Blueberry Hill Productions.
She is also the president of Bold Strokes Books, one of the world’s largest independent LGBTQ publishing companies.
Find her at facebook.com/Radclyffe.BSB, follow her on Twitter @RadclyffeBSB, and visit her website at Radfic.com.
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Radclyffe, Always Next Summer
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