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Those small pieces of business done, Levi crawled back into the bed. He opened his arms, and she tucked herself against him.
Then he waited for the chatter, but all he heard was silence.
“I expected you to be a woman who talks after sex.”
Only when he heard the soft puffs of her breath did he realize that Mina was asleep. As he kissed the top of her head, delight filled the empty spaces within him.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
MINA WAS STILL sleeping when Levi woke up the next morning. She must have been incredibly tired because he’d tried to wake her up a little later in the night to see if she wanted something to eat, and she’d only snorted and rolled over. Even now, all she said when he placed a hand on her shoulder was a mumbled “I’ll be up soon,” before rooting her head deeper into her pillow.
He shrugged and climbed out of bed. He had gotten up to eat something later in the night, so he put on the briefs and shorts that he’d left on the floor and headed down to his kitchen to make coffee. While the coffee brewed, he slipped on the ancient pair of boots he kept by the door and went outside for the paper.
To his surprise, Mina was up and bleary-eyed in the kitchen when he came back in. She had on a pair of wide-legged sweatpants and a T-shirt with the neck cut out, hanging so that it revealed the smattering of dark freckles that dotted her shoulder. No bra, and the points of her nipples against the cotton made him want to turn her back around for another go.
But he’d been raised to offer guests something other than nonstop sex, so all he said after kissing her head was “Coffee’s almost ready. Sleep well?”
“I wondered how loquacious you would be in the morning,” she said with a smile.
“Yeah? And did I live up to expectations?” He hoped so, though he wasn’t sure if that meant he should be talking more or less. It wasn’t a measure he’d ever expected anyone to take of him. Especially not using the word loquacious.
“Of course you did. And you do.”
An odd swell of pleasure rose in his chest, even though he still wasn’t certain what he was being complimented on. Or if it was a compliment. “You weren’t as much of a post-sex talker as I had expected.”
“Disappointed?” Both her eyebrows were raised up to her hair, which was still sexily mussed from sleep.
“By you? Never.”
A pleased sound, close to a snort but far more ladylike, came from her nose. “Good. In the future you won’t be able to shut me up after sex. But I was really tired last night, for some reason.”
“Commentary on how well I did?”
“God, maybe.” She looked embarrassed by the thought. “I’ll try not to comment on the sex while we’re still in bed. All those advice columns say that’s a bad idea, but once I get started talking, sometimes I can’t stop. But I’ll probably just tell you about my day. In more detail than you’d ever hoped to hear.”
“Something to look forward to, then,” he said, meaning every word.
She yawned and shook her head. “Maybe I’ll take a nap today.”
The coffeepot beeped. “Stay awake long enough for me to make you breakfast.”
“I can do that. So long as you get me that cup of coffee.”
“I can do that,” he echoed, and she giggled.
Mina sat at the kitchen table and flipped idly through the newspaper while he got out the ingredients for a basic bacon and eggs breakfast. “This is the second breakfast that you’ve made me. I can get used to this.”
“I used to make Kimmie breakfast every weekend.” Even when she wasn’t feeling up to eating.
“Oh? You don’t talk much about your wife. Or your marriage. Did you fix her dinner, too? What was she like?”
Usually when people asked that question, they knew about Kimmie’s suicide and wanted to know how bad was it? For those people, he only ever said that he didn’t like to talk about her, and their eyes would soften, and they would nod and tell him, “Of course,” like being married to someone depressed enough to commit suicide had to have been a burden. Those people were voyeurs, and he didn’t want their voice anywhere near his memories of Kimmie.
