“Then don’t,” he said, but he yawned a moment later and shifted a little more comfortably.
She smiled. “Once you’re awake, you’re the get-up-and-go kind of guy, aren’t you?”
“Not so much that,” he said, “but waking up with a beautiful woman in my arms and not planning on staying in bed for the next hour or so isn’t the most pleasant feeling.”
It took her a moment to figure it out; then she shifted her hips, and, sure enough, there was a wonderfully long and hot ridge pressed against her pelvis. Her breath sucked back into her throat. She tilted her head and said, “Wow.”
He didn’t say anything, but the corner of his lips kicked up. “No, wow,” he said. “I need to tell him to go back to sleep.”
She snickered at that. “Does he follow orders?”
“No,” he said, “at least never when he’s supposed to.”
She smiled and gently shifted her hips, her pelvis stroking that ridge.
He shifted his hips back and said, “You’re playing with fire.”
“And it’s already so damn hot in here,” she said, pulling off the blankets so that the two of them were just lying here together. And then she realized that, somewhere along the line, he had stripped down to just his boxers. And she was wearing her camisole and shorty shorts, her preferred nighttime sleepwear. Meaning, very little material stood between the two of them. She gently stroked his cheek and said, “If we have an hour, I definitely have a better idea than getting up.”
He froze under her ministrations. His eyes opened, and the longing look in them had her heart racing.
She smiled and gently kissed him on the chin and whispered, “If you’re interested, that is.”
He nuzzled her nose with his and whispered, “Anybody would have seen how interested I was.”
“Well, I’m not the most observant,” she whispered. “And I’ve spent the last many years turning and deflecting male attention rather than encouraging it.”
“Your husband?”
She nodded and kissed his chin again. She cupped her hands to his cheeks and then stroked his ears, sliding her fingers through his curls. Then she trailed her fingertips to his shoulders and whispered, “I’ve been alone for a very long time.”
“Well, I’m not really a member of the lonely hearts club,” he said.
Her own lips kicked up. “Didn’t ask you to be, did I?” She brought her gaze to his as he studied her intently.
He reached up his thumb, gently stroking her bottom lip. “I don’t play around is what I mean,” he said. “I’m not a big fan of hopping into bed and out of bed and warming up another woman’s bed.”
“Good,” she said. “I figured you had more substance than that.”
“Well, let’s just say there are times when that’s very much wanted and welcomed, but it’s been a long time since I wanted a relationship where it wasn’t with the same woman for several nights in a row.”
She laughed. “Well, since my last serious relationship was with my husband, I’m all for a little bit more long-term.”
“The question is, how long-term?”
Her eyebrows rose as she realized there was an intentional meaning behind his questioning. “Well, I’m certainly open to seeing how far it goes,” she said, her breath heated and wispy as she tried to control her heart slamming against her chest. “I can’t really say that I have any experience in affairs, and I’m not sure I want to have that experience, but, if I found somebody who could possibly be interested in a long-term relationship …” She let her voice trail off.
“Yeah?” he asked, flipping her onto her back and stretching out over the top of her. He stared down at her. “So, something like a long-term relationship might be of interest, huh?”
She reached up and kissed him again. In a teasing voice, she said, “Well, I would be if I thought I knew anybody who might be interested in that with me.”
“Oh, I’m interested,” he said. “But I don’t really know what I’m doing for work.”
“Well, I don’t really know what I’m doing either,” she said. “We’re quite the pair.” She looped her arms over his neck, playing with the hair at the base of his neck. “But we could take this one day at a time and see where it goes.”
“One day?” he asked, licking her bottom lip. “How about one week, one month, one year, and maybe, if we’re lucky, a lifetime?”
“Oh, I can get behind that,” she whispered gently as he stroked her lips with his. “No doubt something is between us,” she said. “I just wasn’t sure if you were interested in going further.”
“And I figured that it was happening too fast, and you needed time to deal with everything going on around you before I approached it.”
“No,” she said. “Life is for living. And, if there’s one lesson I learned from my husband, it was to enjoy the good times because you can’t guarantee when bad times are coming.”
“But neither do we expect those times to come,” he said quietly.
She smiled and nodded. “Very true, so yet another reason for taking the moments when we can get them.” She cupped his cheek with both hands, tugging him ever so much lower and kissing him deeply, her tongue sliding inside to stroke and then play with his tongue.
When she went to withdraw, his head came down with hers, and his tongue drove deeper and deeper into her mouth as his hips mimicked the motion of her pelvis. She wrapped her long legs up and around his hips and ground upward. He pulled his head back, gasped, and whispered, “I’m not sure I can hold on too much longer.”
“Good,” she said. “Does it look like I’m asking you to extend this? I’d pick hard and fast any day.”
At that, he groaned and sat up. His boxers went flying, and so did her undies. Then he stopped, sitting up, his palm coming to rest over the strip of curly hair and whispered, “You’re so damn beautiful.”
“I don’t know about
