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“So, Harper, when are you going to kiss me? I know you want to. Do I have to wait another few months or a year or two or a decade? What’s your timing on all this?” she asked him.
That threw him off base big time.
“Timing? I don’t usually think about timing when it comes to dating or… well, and especially about kissing women.” He followed it up with an uncomfortable nervous smile and a chuckle.
Truth was, he was embarrassed.
“Come on, Harper. You’re going to make me wait and wait and wait? You’ve already made me ask you. What more do you want?”
Harper didn’t dare to scan her body from her head to her toes like he wanted to, but he saw her wonderful physique, ample bosom, and awesome ass in his mind, in his dreams every night before he went to bed. He easily recalled every luscious curve and wiggle, even the parts that jiggled a little bit, which kind of gave him an extra thrill.
“Oh, I could think of a lot of things you could do for me. I have a great imagination,” he said and involuntarily blushed like a schoolgirl.
Goddammit.
“And here I thought you were a real man, Harper,” she quickly replied.
“Oh, I am.”
He stepped closer to her, put his hands under her chin, and lip-locked with her until he could feel her getting weak at the knees. She began to shake. He didn’t let her go yet and deepened his kiss, inserting his tongue and letting her know exactly how wonderful she tasted, letting the flow of his emotions wash into her so she could experience how much he needed her.
It was even more than that, though. She was a good person. She was a beautiful woman—full of prowess, strength, athleticism. She was kind and calm.
And she perfect for him. Someone capable of smoothing out all his rough edges—scars filled with loneliness and scenes of death and destruction.
They parted, and she brushed the hairs from her forehead, her eyelids fluttering. Her cheeks were bright red. “Wow!”
“Does that tell you I’m ready?”
She giggled and stared at her white clogs then met his gaze bravely. “I can see that you are. Now I have to ask myself if I am.”
When they’d started dating, she teased him, inviting him to kiss her, hold her hand, brush his fingers through her hair, and squeeze and massage her back and arms. However, he stayed away from her female parts out of respect for Lydia. He didn’t want to do what he’d done to so many women, even women who said they wanted it fast and hard. He was through doing that. He was forty years old, for chrissakes, and that’s not how a forty-year-old man was supposed to treat a lady. She was fifteen years his junior, unmarried, maybe not fully available, either. He hadn’t asked. He didn’t want to know. But he guessed she wasn’t the cheating kind so took it as a good sign that she’d wanted his first kiss and certainly hadn’t objected to any of the ones that followed.
That summer was magic as they frolicked, walked through the vineyards, went winetasting in Sonoma County, where both she and his father lived full-time. To Harper, it wasn’t yet home. Not yet.
They went to the ocean and watched the waves crash upon the shore, laughed at sea lions, and occasionally spotted whales pass by on their journeys. They pretended they were tourists and dallied through little towns of Healdsburg, Sonoma, Kenwood, and Geyserville, picking out their favorite spots, indulging in gourmet foods and cheeses, and doing all the things tourists spent thousands and thousands of dollars doing.
Except she stayed in her little apartment on the square in Healdsburg, and he went home to his own place. He played it respectful. He was hoping she would soon move for a change.
He didn’t have to wait long.
Within a month, she invited him to stay over one night, and it was just as he imagined. Her soft body and moans egged him on such that he felt like he was turning inside out with desire he could never fully satisfy. He could hardly wait to penetrate her, to fill her, to show her what it was like to be worshiped by a man.
He was fairly certain, by the way her large brown eyes widened with surprise as he loved her with everything he had, that she had never really experienced that before.
They made love several times that night, and as sunrise dawned through the tall wooden windows, softened by the white gauzy curtains that floated in the breeze, he was hooked. He was completely hooked and was not the same man in the morning that he had been last night.
Suddenly, he knew what it was like to be addicted to cocaine or some kind of substance, even alcohol. This was better than any of that. She was his elixir, the beginning of his life at forty years of age. He’d waited a long time to find someone like her, someone patient, someone who didn’t show him she needed him until he was deep inside her, rooting and kissing, biting her ear, as she squeezed his buttocks and arched to receive him as fully and deeply as she could.
That’s when he knew she was hooked as well.
As he neared Sonoma County, he thought about the first day he brought her to his little house. It was a choice piece of property in between Santa Rosa and Sonoma. Nestled in the hills, he had the option of going east into the Sonoma Square proper or west into downtown Santa Rosa and the Russian River and coast beyond. His property had a view of everything from Sebastopol North all the way to Cloverdale and beyond, up the hill and over the canyon. From the second story of his home, he could see the park in Bennett Valley and the hidden lake he liked to run and hike through when he was home.
His father now lived on the other side of the hill in the converted mental hospital turned into a Veterans dementia treatment facility, called Valley of the Moon Veterans Home.
The day he brought her to the house, he opened the door, let her inside first, then followed behind. When she entered, his whole life changed. The house took on a glow he’d never felt or seen before. She had transformed every living and nonliving thing around her just by being there—even the floors, the doors she opened. She stepped out onto the patio and looked at the flowers he had planted in wooden container boxes, along with his fresh vegetables and herbs. She let her fingers glide over the tops of the old-fashioned metal rocking chairs, viewing the meadow in front of her. She silently took in the scenery and inhaled then turned to give him a smile.
“It’s breathtaking, Harper. I’ve never been up in these hills before. You have a piece of paradise here.”
