CHAPTER 17
Mara
The sunrise through the curtains warmed my skin, waking me. With a sleepy moan, Nate held me tighter. The full bed was a narrow fit for the two of us, but I was grateful for the excuse to be in his arms. His embrace—the hard, muscular arms, wrapped around me, protecting me—made me feel content. Safe. For once, I was with someone who didn’t dismiss me like everyone else did. Someone who wanted to know me. Someone who saw me.
Positioned with my ass in his crotch, I wiggled, pretending to stretch, and his cock twitched against me. A warm surge pulsed through me, and I saw the ties from last night on the floor. Ties he had used on me. Holding me in place. As if I was worth the fight. But with everyone waking soon, it wasn’t time for that. If anything, we needed to be more careful. I sat up and brushed my fingers on his forehead.
“Don’t tell me it’s morning,” he said in a groggy voice.
“You should go back to your room,” I said.
His eyelids flicked open. “Are you kicking me out of my own room?”
I playfully shoved his arm. “You know why.”
He stood, stretching his arms high over his head, his body tensing, almost as if teasing me on purpose. When he saw that I was staring at his perfect ass, he smiled.
“I can’t deny when I see something I like,” I said. He laughed.
“Once this weekend is over, we should get together again,” he said. My heart swooned. He wanted to get together again. He was volunteering for it. Initiating a date. A date, that was it, right?
“For more tied up sex in bed?” I asked. Not that I was complaining.
“More of everything.”
There was that surge of warmth again. I held a pillow in my lap, watching as he dressed in his boxer briefs and pajama pants, looking like a god in human’s clothes. He pulled my hands until I was standing too. He admired my body with a greedy gaze, then he kissed my lips.
“Back to Dr. Evans,” he said.
Right. There was that. “Not Nate, butDr.Evans.” I did a mocking voice over the title, and he chuckled.
“Soon, you’ll beDr.Slate.”
Once he left, I dressed and pulled the Florence Berkley diary from my shoulder bag. I tiptoed downstairs and started a pot of coffee, the bubbling noises from the machine the only audible sound in the entire lakehouse. Once it was finished, I poured myself a mug and escaped to the empty patio. The sun was still rising, fingers of light spreading across the lake. The water shimmered, blue and deep. A bird chirped, but I couldn’t spot it in the trees. Steam rose from the mug in my hands, and I smiled to myself. It wasn’t a bad way to start a morning: waking up with a dreamy older man naked in my bed, a fresh cup of coffee, an original diary from my favorite theorist, with a view of nature sent from another world.
My phone buzzed. I scolded myself for automatically stowing it in my pocket when I should have left it in the bedroom so that it wouldn’t interrupt this beautiful morning. But when I sawMomflashing on the screen, my attitude changed. I never turned down phone calls from my mom. She was all I had left.
“I almost thought you wouldn’t pick up,” she said.
“I always answer,” I said, pretending to be offended.
She chuckled. “Aren’t you supposed to be getting drunk on the weekends now? Too hungover to answer an early morning phone call from your mother? From the sound of it, you’ve been up for hours.”
I shrugged, even though she couldn’t see me. How could I stay asleep at a time like this? “Enough time to make coffee.” I took a sip. It was early to be calling, even for her. “What’s up?”
“Dinner,” she said. “It’s been ages. I missed one weekend for a school dance, and you’ve left me hanging now for how long?”
It’s not that I had been actively avoiding dinners, but after Fremont Street, there had been going to the Afterglow multiple times with Nate, and too many other things, making it easy to push our dinner dates aside. But there was a simple way to make it right. “Tonight?” I asked. “Tomorrow night?”
“Let’s do tomorrow,” she said. “You don’t have any evening classes?”
Evening classes weren’t the issue. Staying late on campus for the chance to run into Natewasthe problem. “Not really.”
A bird loudly squawked, as if with the intention to wake everyone within distance. Then it soared across the lake, dipped down into the water, then flew back to the bank. “Where are you, anyway?” Mom asked. “That bird is loud.”
“I’m…” Did I say I was at my professor’s house for an academic retreat? It was the truth, and it would explain why I was happily awake. Or did I tell my mom therealtruth, that I would be here even if it weren’t for the academic retreat, that all I needed was an invitation from Nate, and I would gladly stay here with him, tied up in his bed? What was Nate to me, anyway? Partner, though technically correct, had never felt right.
“I’m at a…” I paused, looking around as if I could find the answer. “I’m at a boyfriend’s house?”
