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“Cade, people cope differently. Survival mechanisms kick in and things don’t run so smoothly. Sometimes we close up and our bodies don’t do what we’d like them to. I saw you there every day. Every day.” She lifted her head and held his gaze in the mirror, which had risen up in search of hers. “Everybody talked about how … sweet you were. How devoted. I wished if I ever had a husband, I would have one like you.”
His face twisted. “I couldn’t even make love to my own wife, Ivy.”
She melted for him, stroking her hands soothingly up his taut, muscled back. “But she knew you loved her, Cade. She had to have known that.” She slid a hand upward and turned his head sideways until he looked at her. “And I know from experience that you do make love.”
He turned away, his gaze downcast. “I fuck, Ivy. We—just—fuck.”
Her heart stuttered for a tiny second, but she wouldn’t let it hurt. She wouldn’t.
This was exactly what she’d signed up for. The only thing she’d allow herself to get.
“If you’re trying to hurt me, it won’t work, Cade. I happen to like the way you fuck me very much. We’re just playing with each other, right?”
He groaned as he whipped around and snatched her against him, cupping the back of her head and pressing her jaw to his chest. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“
No! You’re too grumpy with my friends.”
“I’ll behave.”
She laughed. “Cade, I’ll be back to say good-bye before I leave Monday. She lives near my apartment, so I’ll pack my bags and leave straight from here early Monday morning.”
“No, damn it, I’ll go with you. I can see some of my friends when you see yours, and I can sleep at your place.”
The excitement she felt was so powerful, alarm bells began clinging all around her. “Cade. You know, we’ve been together too many days and I don’t want to get attached to you.”
He slicked his hair back and covered the scruff of his beard with shaving cream. “I’m not attached to you. I’m playing with you, remember?”
The act of watching him shave felt so intimate, so erotic, she stood there for a second, watching him. It took her a moment to realize it was her turn to answer. “I’m playing with you, too.”
He smiled as he splashed water onto his face.
And yeah, that smile was still a great look on him.
* * *
Cade was on his laptop that evening, answering a thousand e-mails that had popped up from his office. He’d never taken a vacation, never even taken a day off since Laura had died. So he sure as hell wasn’t sorry he was taking one now.
Wiping his tired eyes with the heels of his palms, he glanced around the eclectic décor of Ivy’s cozy little one-bedroom place, finding it so unique and colorful. So like Ivy.
She still had the Christmas thing going on. Bits from Halloween splattered here and there. All this in the middle of July. He’d asked why, and she’d said she didn’t have good storage, and she didn’t want that to keep her from celebrating. He’d never heard of anyone doing this, but it was damned cute.
She was a little box of surprises, Ivy.
Passionate, but shy. Courageous and stubborn, but also somehow frightened. What frightened her? When she slept, she went into this tight little ball against Cade’s chest, like she wanted to make herself very small next to him.
It made his chest hurt, when she did that, even though he always found himself drawing her up even tighter to him. The way she needed him in the middle of the night, when she woke up sweating and touched him like she wanted to make sure he wasn’t a dream, called to every protective, primal instinct inside him. Instincts he hadn’t even known he possessed.
He’d wake up to find her softly kissing him, delineating his muscles like she wanted them memorized in her head, and he’d realize he was already hard from her attentions. He fucked her unfailingly in the middle of the night, sometimes several times, and he took care of her in the morning, too.
The reminders stirred his blood, for he hadn’t had her all day, and his balls had started to ache a while ago when he kept remembering the way she’d looked in that little blue dress before she left to see her friend.
He heard the door click shut and he closed his laptop, his heart kicking into gear.
