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But this hadn’t worn off. The moment that I had seen him again, I had wanted him, just as strongly as before. And the sex hadn’t been disappointing, not once. Now, though, there was something more to it. Something that had been building every time we joined together, until it spilled over, undeniable.
I turned my head to face Cal, curling into him. His arms came around me automatically, as if he had been waiting with bated breath for me to turn to him. Maybe he had been. I wasn’t sure if I would ever get over how ready and willing Cal was to jump into this with both feet. I’d worried that it was just his guilt, making up for what he’d done, but the look of happiness on his face when we spent time together, and when he was with Fern, told me otherwise. He was doing this because he genuinely wanted to. Not out of any sense of obligation, but from joy and the desire to.
Cal’s arms secured themselves around me and I felt safe and cared for. This was what I had always imagined for myself as a teenager, but I had never, I think, truly believed that it would happen. How many people got to say that? How many people got to say that their teenage crush and all the daydreams that had gone with it came true?
“I’m sorry about what happened,” I told him. “I wanted us to focus on getting together and all of that.”
“It’s not your fault, babe, you don’t need to apologize.” Cal kissed my forehead. “This was all one person’s doing and he’s gone now. You’re going to sue him into the next decade.” He tightened his grip on me. “I’m sorry you had to go through that. I hate the idea that you were threatened or scared, even for a moment.”
“But you protected me, you took care of me.”
“Of course I did. I always will.” Cal brought a hand up to gently card his fingers through my hair. “I suppose there was a silver lining to it. You ended up here.”
“You’re incorrigible,” I told him, laughing slightly. “Patience is a virtue, you know.”
“I won’t give up until I get my family under my roof,” Cal replied, teasing me. His fingertips trailed down my body, tickling me, and I squirmed, laughing. Cal grinned at me in delight, looking boyish in the moonlight spilling through the window with his eyes crinkled up at the corners, his smile deep and wide. I smacked his hands away, grinning right back at him.
“Behave.”
“You seem to like it when I misbehave, though… which is it?” Cal put on an exaggeratedly thoughtful face.
I smacked him lightly on the arm. “You’re the worst.” Then I sobered up. “But, seriously, Cal. Are you sure about this? That this is what you want? Having a wife and a daughter might make the whole… carefree artist life a little less possible.”
Cal was shaking his head before I had even finished speaking. “I did all of that. I had my time. You two are the best things to ever happen to me and I wouldn’t trade you two for anything. I like having people to care for. And who’s to say that I have to compromise? I want to travel the world again, but with you two—I want to show you all the places that I went to before. I want to take you to gallery openings. Fern’s already inspiring new artwork in me. I’m not yearning to give into wanderlust and jaunt off somewhere. My home and my life are with you.”
My heart felt like it was overflowing with the things he was saying. I pulled him to me and we kissed again, slow and deep. Every brush of his lips against mine seemed to make me feel even more alive.
“Besides…” Cal said around another kiss, tugging playfully at my bottom lip, “I have an idea for a whole new series of nudes. Can you guess who inspired that?”
I laughed, pulling back as Cal began to slowly peel the sheets off me, revealing my body to his hungry gaze. “You’d think you’d be able to paint me from memory by now,” I told him.
“I probably could,” Cal quipped in reply. “But I enjoy looking at you far too much to deprive myself.”
He finished drawing the sheets off of me and I shivered as his gaze trailed along my body. His fingers followed, and I could feel myself starting to get wet again, teased by his feather-light touch. “Look your fill, then,” I told him, my voice coming out breathier, more seductive, than I had intended.
“Now that, my love,” Cal said, looking up to lock his eyes with mine, “is impossible.”
I felt overjoyed and turned on and like I might cry, all at once, as Cal surged forward and kissed me. I impatiently pulled him into me, drew him up and into me, gasping as he slid inside of me once again.
