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Lori grinned. “Right again. You are a genius at inserting yourself, Quinn Jennings.”
“Ha!” He closed his eyes and let his head sink into the pillow. “I think I’ll put that on my business cards. Along with ‘big’ and ‘good’ and ‘gorgeous.’”
“Hey, what’s with the photographic memory?” He could hear the blush in her words.
“Wouldn’t that be audio-graphic?”
“Whatever it is, you usually remember very little of any conversation, as far as I can tell. Kind of inconvenient that you remember what I say in the throes of passion.”
Chuckling, Quinn patted blindly around until he found her hand, then curled his fingers into hers. “I remember everything when I’m concentrating. A lecture on Syrian arches, a discussion about architectural ostentation in the sixteenth-century, or…” He rubbed his thumb over her knuckles. “Sex with you. All very worthy of intense concentration.”
“Wow. Me and sixteenth-century architectural ostentation? I’m kind of flattered.” The word broke on a yawn.
“Go to sleep,” Quinn whispered, turning toward her to kiss her hair. She smelled sleepy, warmth spiced with sex. He didn’t bother moving away. Breathing her in made him feel he was exposed to some sort of drugged smoke. Opium maybe.
Still, he wasn’t tired. He normally didn’t go to bed until one. But he was as relaxed as a man who’d just had the best sex of his life, so he didn’t bother getting up to find his clothes. Hell, he didn’t have the least urge to leave.
Sex with Lori had been unbelievably erotic. A strange combination of feeling free to do exactly what he wanted and knowing he was engaged in seriously dirty behavior with a nice girl he’d known all his life. The knowledge that in the thousands of times he’d said hi or passed her in a hall or waved from his car…that whole time she’d had small nipples blushing pale pink. And tight dark curls that hid her wet and eager pussy. He hadn’t known that she would clench her fingers each and every time he brushed her clit, or that she’d mewl like a kitten when she got close to her peak.
And he definitely hadn’t known that ordering her to her knees would cause power to explode through his body, as if someone had just shocked his muscles with pure electricity.
Wow.
Her hand squeezed his. “Don’t forget your phone,” she mumbled.
“What?” Crap, was she asking him to leave? He didn’t want to leave.
“Your phone. It rang.”
“When?” Glancing over to her face, he found she’d opened one eye.
“It rang while we were having sex. You really didn’t notice? I thought you were kidding.”
“I was concentrating, remember?” Now that she mentioned it, he could hear the occasional beep of the message reminder. “You know I can’t hear anything when I’m working.”
“Working?” she sputtered.
Quinn frowned. “You know what I mean.”
When she laughed, his body registered warm pleasure. The husky sound swept over him and the bed shook just a little, physically pulling him into her amusement. His heart responded by beating louder. Not that his pulse sped up, it just grew more…forceful. Odd.
Quinn puzzled over that for a few minutes before he realized Lori was asleep. She made an occasional soft huffing sound that wasn’t a snore, but he’d characterize it as snoring later just to goad her. Later, like when they went on another date before he brought her home to—
A loud growl from his stomach distracted him from further planning, so he slipped from her bed and pulled on his boxers to head for the kitchen. Surely Lori Love kept bologna around. Or peanut butter.
The phone beeped again, so he grabbed it on the way out and glanced down. His dad’s name was on the caller ID, which meant his mother had called. His dad never talked on the phone. Ever. The man considered emergency calls to be the only acceptably masculine use of a home phone. Sighing, Quinn called up the message and leaned against the kitchen island.
“Quinn, it’s your mother. I hope everything’s good. We haven’t heard from you in weeks, and it’s awfully lonely out here lately. Your father and I wish you’d think about coming to visit over Labor Day, but I know you’ve been busy with your work, and we’re so proud of you. Call us!”
A perfectly benign, loving message by anyone’s standards. And yet it raised Quinn’s hackles. She wouldn’t be so damn lonely if she weren’t still ignoring Molly. Ever since they’d found out about Molly’s career, his mother had been playing the wounded party, put upon by the stigma of an immoral daughter, and further put upon by Quinn’s defense of his sister.
He deleted the message and stared at the phone. Yes, his parents were proud of him. They’d always been proud. Unfortunately their approval was like a pie: the more pieces they gave to Quinn, the fewer they had left for Molly. And they had always—always—been spectacularly generous with Quinn.
His habit of getting lost in work had started way back in elementary school, when report cards meant it was time for their dad to say something cruelly dismissive about Molly.Better be glad you’re a girl, Molly, or you’d have to worry about filling some pretty big shoes. Or Look, Molly managed to get a check plus in art!
God, he’d hated that. As a child, his parents had managed to turn their approval into something he wanted to retreat from, and so he had. He’d read and studied and spent days in his room, building models and projects. He’d learned to tune out and lose himself in work.
Maybe he should call his mom back to thank her for that. After all, if he were less involved with work and more involved in a successful relationship, he’d never have been able to help Lori with her sex adventure. This short-term relationship seemed poised to make up for all the long-term ones he’d missed out on.
