“And what really matters to you?” she mumbled.
“This. Touching you.”
She smiled and kept her eyes closed while he explored until a quiet orgasm purred through her languidly willing body.
Liam kissed her shoulder and slipped from the bed again. He shuffled through a drawer, pulled on a pair of sweatpants and a long-sleeved T-shirt, and picked up his sketchbook and a pen. Under Anna’s lazy, satiated gaze, he positioned himself at the foot of the bed and started to sketch.
“What’re you doing?” she asked.
“Drawing you,” he answered, his gaze darting between the open book in his lap and the bed. “You okay with that?”
“Mm-hmm.” She rolled the rest of her to face him and reached for the half-filled glass. Her teeth needed brushing and a trip to the bathroom was in order, but another layer of connection was happening between the two of them and she didn’t want to break the spell.
At one point, Liam stepped away from the bed and carried over a chair, sitting and observing her from another angle. It wasn’t difficult to tell what part of her body he was drawing. His hand would swoop over the page, mimicking the shapes of her exposed shoulder, or her neck, or all the rest of the curves defined by the bedding tucked around her body.
Two sketches later, he dropped the book on the floor and pushed the chair away from the bed. “Want some coffee?”
“Love some.” Anna found the flannel shirt he’d worn the night before and pulled it on before heading to the bathroom. When she stepped out, he was pouring boiling water over the grounds, monitoring the brew as it dripped into the glass carafe resting over a low flame on the stove.
“Do you take milk or sugar?” he asked.
“Black. With a little sugar.”
He handed her a mug, poured milk into his, and ducked his head to exchange a coffee-flavored kiss. Anna pressed the lone pillow against the wall and settled into bed, her breasts swaying under his shirt.
“I feel like we should talk.” She cradled the mug against her chest.
Liam repositioned the chair at the end of the bed and sat.
“A lot has happened this week,” she said. “A lot I wasn’t expecting or even wishfully thinking about. You took me by surprise, Liam.”
“That doesn’t sound like a complaint.” He brought one leg at a time to rest on the bed, crossed his ankles, and smiled over the rim of his mug.
“Oh, I’m not complaining,” she reassured him, blowing on the coffee and taking a sip. “Not at all. But I’m wondering if this is a distraction for you, for what you came here to do.” She took another nervous sip, her eyes simultaneously pleading and flirtatious. “I’ve been out of the dating game for so long I’m not sure what the rules are anymore. So, please, educate me. What are we doing?”
“Well, for one thing, we might be working together. Clients of mine on the east coast have asked me to start gutting a sailboat they bought that’s moored somewhere north of here. I’ve never retrofitted a sailboat, and I was thinking I’d like your input on the project.”
“Working together. I like that idea.” Working together would create a bridge to the future, maybe a time beyond his current sabbatical. Her breath caught a little. She squeezed her mug to steady her nerves.
“But I don’t think that’s what you were asking,” he continued, a slight smirk flitting across his face. “I didn’t come to this island looking for a relationship, but it’s funny, the woman who handled renting this house made it very clear she was available. And because of that, I did have to ask myself what I wanted around companionship or even having a lover.”
More new territory. Having the relationship talk with a man whose fingers had been inside her, arousing her, less than an hour before. Breathing lessons saved her again. She inhaled through her nose, slow and steady, and kept her gaze on Liam and the way his long fingers caressed the outside of his coffee mug as he spoke. And the way his thigh muscles tensed and relaxed every time he shifted his body on the small chair.
“But as I told you,” he continued, his gaze on the hand smoothing the fabric of his sweatpants, “certain body parts haven’t worked very well. I went to the breathing workshop as an experiment, to see if I could open myself up to other ways of being sexual. Or sensual. And because of that, I met you.” He looked up briefly, setting off a pinging action in Anna’s heart. “Although, I suppose we would have met anyways, seeing as we’re neighbors, but who’s to say we’d be here, having coffee after having spent the night together, if we hadn’t met at the workshop.”
Anna nodded and confessed, “I’d probably still be wearing my cloak of invisibility.”
“Is that what you call the bathrobe you were wearing?”
She laughed. “No, that was my grandfather’s, but now that you mention it, yes, it’s big enough to hide in.”
“Do you know what you want, Anna?”
She looked beyond him to the fog gathering in the trees and along the coastline. “I like how you make me feel. I’d like more of that.” She gestured to the sketchbook and pen on the floor next to him. “Shouldn’t you be writing this down?”
“I will when your list of desires gets to more than six or seven.”
“Do you think it’s possible to be friends and to be…intimate?” Her question was directed as much to herself as to the man lounging in front of her.
“Yes,” he nodded, “it is, at least I hope it is.
