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He watched her face, the lust in her eyes and the pink of her cheeks. “Faster,” she said through a whisper, and he matched the thrust of his hips with hers. The sounds of her pleasure heightened his pleasure and drove him faster.
“Talk to me, Lexie.”
“Can’t,” she said, then she called his name as the first pulse of her body drew tight around him. Her back arched and her orgasm squeezed him so tight he could hardly breathe. He pulled air into his lungs as an intense climax hit him and knocked every last bit of oxygen from his lungs. It started at his toes and worked through him. It lasted too long but not long enough, and when it was over, he felt like he’d been cross-checked and fallen to the ice on his knees, the wind knocked out of him and too weak to get up.
He swallowed hard and croaked next to her ear, “Are you okay?”
“No.”
Alarmed, he raised his head and looked into her face. “Did I hurt you?” Then he saw her satisfied smile and hung his head with relief.
“I don’t know that I’ll ever be the same,” she said. “That was amazing.”
His smile matched hers. He knew the feeling.
Chapter 14
•love stinks
“Did I thank you for Buddy?” Sean asked as he and Lexie entered his dark apartment. “I think he’s the best thing that’s ever happened to my mother. Even better than the time she was cured from double-certain death.”
Lexie chuckled and set her red handbag on the table next to the front door. “He gives her something to think about besides skin lesions and kidney failure.” They’d spent the evening playing darts at a local sports bar. He’d won, but barely. They were both so competitive that it was probably a good idea that they not play any game that contained sharp objects . . . it was too tempting.
Sean turned on the lights and helped her out of her red jacket. “My entire life, she hated dogs.”
“Well, she doesn’t hate Buddy, at least she didn’t when I talked to her yesterday.” She unwove her red scarf and followed him into the living room.
“You talked to my mother?” He tossed her jacket on the couch, then moved beside her to look out at the city lights and the Space Needle in the foreground. “The thought of you two colluding behind my back makes me nervous.”
She doubted anything made him nervous. Tonight they’d looked like a couple in love. The laughter and lingering touches on his big shoulder, and the warm palm in the middle of her back, weren’t real. “She called with a question about Buddy.” But they weren’t in love. At least not both of them.
“What’s wrong with the mutt?”
“She thinks he has gout.”
Sean looked at her across his shoulder and laughed. He wore jeans and a simple black T-shirt, and he turned heads with his dark hair and handsome face. She loved everything about him, but she might like his laughter the most. She didn’t hear it all that often, but it was big like him and filled with amusement and, when not directed at her, infectious.
“I made the mistake of telling her that he might be prone to arthritis as he gets older.”
“He’s only two weeks older than he was before!”
Thirteen days. He’d turned a week older on Valentine’s Day. Lexie only knew because Geraldine had called to ask if Buddy could eat chocolate. Sean had been on the road and hadn’t mentioned the one day every year set aside for lovers. She purposely hadn’t anticipated an acknowledgment from him, and at the end of the night when she’d heard nothing but a joke KO had told him, she texted him three simple words, “Happy Valentine’s Day.” He hadn’t responded and she’d felt foolish. “Look on the bright side. At least she doesn’t have gout.”
“She’s already had that.” He moved behind her and wrapped his arms around her just beneath her breasts. “I don’t think there’s an illness she hasn’t had.”
Lexie looked at his reflection in the window, his face just above her head as he stared out at the city. His warm arms made her heart go all squishy even as her spinning head reminded her that it wasn’t real. For the sake of her squishy heart and spinning head, she should grab her purse and run. “I used to be a hypochondriac.” She did neither. She loved him. It wasn’t the smartest thing she’d ever done, but it hadn’t happened on purpose. “I think I wanted attention—and Band-Aids. Band-Aids were big in my life. My first dog cured me, though. He gave me something to think about besides cuts and bruises.” And who knew what would happen in the future. He wasn’t going anywhere for three more weeks. A lot could happen. He could find her simply irresistible and fall in love with her, too.
“Oh, I don’t think anything can cure her for long. Although I think she’s just about run out of illnesses.”
She thought of Geraldine the first time she’d met her, all wrapped up in an eye-crossing afghan and skullcap. “When I was six, I thought I had Ebola.”
“What?” Through the glass his gaze met hers. “You’re kidding.”
“No.” She shook her head, and his chin brushed her scalp. “I didn’t know what it was, but on the news they talked about an outbreak in Kikwit. I thought they said Kennewick. My aunt Mae and I had visited her parents in Kennewick the week before, and I thought for sure I was a goner.” She thought about the night Geraldine had been liquored up and talked about Sean as a boy. “People think hypochondria is funny, but it’s not if you have to live with a hypochondriac.”
“Tell me about it.”
She waited for him to say more. When he didn’t she said, “I can only imagine how hard it might have been to be raised by Geraldine.”
