I look at the strand of pink hair dangling from his fingers.
I look at Lucky.
I look at the duvet cover.
“I may have snuck into your bed when you left,” I admit. “It was scary with the wind, and I was worried about you, and the house felt very big and very empty and I just…” I pick at a loose thread on the duvet. “I’m sorry. I should have asked.”
He’s quiet for a moment.
I risk a glance at him.
Slade doesn’t look annoyed. He doesn’t look amused either. He just looks at me with that deep, tender gaze on my face.
“Come here,” he says.
He moves over. Lucky protests with a groan but shuffles sideways. Slade lifts the duvet.
I hesitate for exactly one second, and then I climb in.
He pulls me in against his chest, his arm coming around me, and I feel him exhale slowly as I settle against him.
His chest is at my back, with him broad and solid and warm around me. His arm slings across my waist, work jacket pushed up. I trace my fingertips along the veins running along his forearm, the scarred knuckles of the hand resting against my stomach. These hands that hold reins and hockey sticks and carry injured dogs. That have been so careful with me from the beginning. I turn my palm up and lace my fingers through his.
He’s so much bigger than me that I’m essentially enclosed by him, his body curving around mine, his legs behind mine, his chin over my hair.
“You don’t gotta hide it,” he says softly, lips brushing my ear. “You’re welcome in my bed. Anytime.”
My whole body goes warm. Then my mind reaches for thedirtiest possible implication in that invitation and the warmth intensifies a thousandfold.
The last time we were in this position, it was on our honeymoon. His hard cock pressing against my ass, hand cupping my breast. That low, rough “baby” murmured in my ear as he rolled his hips against me.
“Who were you thinking about?” I blurt.
“Hmm?”
“On our honeymoon. When we woke up like this… that is, whenIwoke up and you were still pretty much asleep.”
He’s gone very still behind me. “What was the question?”
“You called me baby,” I say, since apparently I’m committed to this now. “Which you’d never done before. And you said you weren’t thinking about me. So who were you thinking about?”
Silence.
I stare at the window and wait and feel his chest rise and fall against my back and wish I could take it back. The afternoon light moves slowly across the floor. Lucky snores between the gentle rise and fall of Slade’s chest against my back. Outside the windows the meadow grass is still and gold and everything is very quiet.
I curse myself for ruining a really nice moment with my stupid, desperate question.
At last Slade says, “I never said I wasn’t thinking about you.”
I frown. “You did. You said ‘I wasn’t thinking about’ and then you trailed off.”
A warm exhale against my hair. “I wasn’t thinking about what I was doing, is what I was going to say. I thought I was dreaming. But that seemed like a bullshit excuse for waking up groping you. Good lord. Coulda fucking kicked myself.”
“You were mortified,” I smile.
“Still am,” he grumbles.
Running my thumb over the smooth platinum of his wedding ring, I say, “It’s really not a big deal. Some might even say waking up to being dry humped by your husband is a honeymoon rite of passage.”
