God, again…
Quiet once more.
But this second quiet is different. Heavier. Her breath is slower against my mouth. I can taste blood where I bit my tongue and didn’t notice. The blankets are damp in places. My shoulder is going to be a problem tomorrow.
I don’t care.
None of it matters.
She curls into me.
I close my eyes and breathe in the scent of sex and musk and Tabitha. “You make me alive.”
We lie like that for a moment. Or an hour. I’m not sure.
A bird chirps outside.
Tabitha traces circles on my shoulder.
I don’t ask her to stay. I hate the honesty in me that knows she has to go.
“Shower?” I ask, just to say a word that isn’t a sentence.
“In a minute.” She nudges my jaw with her forehead. “Kiss me again first.”
So I do, slowly this time, because the animals have been satisfied and we can afford a little gentleness.
We pull ourselves up eventually. I press my mouth to a red mark on her collarbone and make a second one almost by accident. “Souvenir,” I say against her skin.
“Possessive,” she murmurs.
“Guilty,” I say.
“Shower?” I say again.
“Only if you join me.”
I kiss her lips. “I was hoping you’d say that.”
We walk to the master bedroom where I turn on the shower. Once it’s good and steamy, we get in, let the hot water pelt over our skin.
We don’t fuck again. Instead we wash each other and laugh when she gets soap in my eye. It feels like the kind of life you build, not the kind you steal on a late Sunday afternoon.
That thought hurts.
When we’re done, we dry each other off. Her blond hair hangs in damp waves around her gorgeous face, and I look at her.
Just look at her, memorizing every inch of her from her gorgeous amber eyes to the tips of her pretty little toes.
She leaves the bathroom, and once I’m done toweling my hair, I leave the bathroom and find her already dressed.
“Hey…” I say.
“I know. I have to go.”
I nod. “I know.”
I dress in a pair of lounging pants and an old Steel Vineyards T-shirt, and then I pick up her suitcase and carry it out.
