Nathan’s laptop resting on my thighs, I promptly panic. When I stare down, the screen stares up, like it’s planning on swallowing me and every creative skill I have. “How, um, descriptive should we get?” I stammer out. “Like, body parts, or—”
“Not descriptive,” Nathan replies decisively. Or desperately.
“Says the guy who labored on one whole page of setting description yesterday.”
I swear he nearly laughs. Instead, he sits up straighter. “Katrina,” he says with new formality. “You’re a bestselling author. I trust you to make this choice. I’ll follow your lead.”
I roll my eyes. Placing my fingers on the MacBook’s flat keys, I start to type. I lead us into Michael and Evelyn’s first embrace—writing faster and faster, not letting savage self-consciousness slow me down. I pretend I’m in a bedroom, that I’m writing this for someone else. Anyone else. I finish a passage and pause, certain my cheeks have gone fire-engine red, and we haven’t even made it to the bed yet.
Nathan reads over my shoulder. He inhales deeply, and I watch his discomfort war with whatever idea he’s having. Finally, he reaches over my hands to add more.
He lends new imagery and new passion, his words spilling onto the crisp white background. In a couple of sentences, he makes me feel Michael’s wonder at how much he could want this woman he spends every day with. How he could never have enough of her. While I read, Nathan finishes and leans away from the computer.
I crack my knuckles and start undressing Michael. We’re in a rhythm now, Nathan and me. I describe each place their skin touches, each searing kiss. The computer is hot in my lap. When I finish the paragraph, I slant the screen in Nathan’s direction.
He clears his throat. “I . . . have nothing to add to that,” he grinds out.
I keep going, fingers flying over the keys. I reach the point where Evelyn and Michael slip naked into the sheets. Then . . . I stop. Not even inspiration or every learned instinct I have can help me now. I can’t write this. Not with Nathan one foot away. “Can we please write this part separately?” I ask.
Nathan’s demeanor darkens. “And what? Trade pages?”
“Just for this one chapter,” I push.
“No.” His reply is immediate.
I knew it would be. I don’t even blame him. I can’t deny there’s an intimacy in trading chapters back and forth. Of course, it’s not like what we’re doing right now isn’t intimate. But writing pages and pages with a single reader in mind changes things. Whole chapters read like letters delivered directly to your door. When the content of those chapters is romantic . . . I’ve been there before, and I’m not ready to return. I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready.
“We can do this,” Nathan says. I glance over, surprised by how encouraging his voice has become. “We have to. Remember what we’d say on Only Once?”
I nod. “It’s the characters’ thoughts, their feelings. Not ours.” I repeat the familiar mantra, feeling like I’ve pulled the pin out of a grenade and am holding it tight. Charging on, I sketch out the love scene. I write Michael’s hand under the covers, running up the inside of Evelyn’s thigh. I write her move her leg unconsciously in response, her shuddering sigh when he touches her. “Do you like that?” I ask Nathan in a voice I don’t mean to come out low.
He puts his hand in his pocket. “Christ, Katrina.”
I realize how the question sounded. “I didn’t mean—”
“I know what you meant.”
Exasperated, he lifts the computer off my lap and onto his. He writes in the things only someone who’s had sex with a woman could, the desperate need Michael has for Evelyn, the way his eyes linger on her lips fluttering open, how he wishes he could feel the soft curves and tender points of her chest every second until forever.
Then he draws the details only Nathan Van Huysen could—the lyricism in their movements, the emotion beneath every brush of lips.
He hands the computer over, the hot metal shocking my thighs. I know what needs to come next. I layer in the same language used in Evelyn and Michael’s fights—the clenched fists, the pounding hearts, the furrowed brows—this time with pleasure instead of pain.
“Good,” Nathan murmurs. “Yeah.”
His words run indecipherable chills down my spine. I finish the scene, racing to the conclusion, where Michael and Evelyn seal the final moment with a kiss. The moment I hit the final period, Nathan stands up.