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“Incredible,” he finished for me.
“Yeah,” I agreed, tightening the arm I had around his chest and brushing my fingers over his collar bone. He shivered, just as he did every time I touched him there. Such an unusual erogenous zone, but one I couldn’t seem to resist.
Clark caught my wandering fingers, but he didn’t scold me for the tease. Instead, he raised my hand and kissed each fingertip.
This weekend had been like nothing I could have predicted. When I’d made plans to spend time with Clark, my head had been fully in the gutter. I’d wanted to have sex with him, and the fact it would be new and different hadn’t deterred me once I’d made up my mind I wanted to be with him. If anything, it had made it more exciting. But what I hadn’t anticipated was the intimacy that had come with it.
Clark and I had some great sex, no lie. But we’d also cuddled, talked about our past relationships, our hopes, our plans for the future. He told me, briefly, about his last real boyfriend in college, and I’d shared a little more about Holly and why our marriage had ended. And instead of ripping my scab open as I’d feared, I’d only felt the faint throb of remembered grief.
How could I continue to regret my divorce when it had brought me this moment with this man?
“One more shower?” Clark asked.
“Sure.” I pushed myself up from the couch, groaning like an old man. When Clark looked at me with a playful smile, I pointed a finger at him. “Don’t you dare say it.”
He laughed and turned, his pert ass on display as he walked away from me. “I didn’t say anything.”
“You didn’t have to,” I grumbled.
His body, a good decade younger than mine, said it all.
As I gathered up my clothes, my phone buzzed with an email.
I winced when I realized I’d missed a request for feedback on the presentation Tucker had been putting together for a meeting tomorrow morning. He’d most likely want to wrap it up before he went to trivia for the night. I wouldn’t be there because as much as I’d enjoy more time with Clark, I wanted to spend some time with Toby after being gone all weekend.
“Damn.” I glanced in the direction Clark had disappeared.
He peeked back around the corner. “Are you coming?”
I looked from him to my phone and back. Filled with trepidation, I replied, “It’s work. I missed the email earlier, and I really have to respond. It might take a few minutes. I’m sorry. I know the weekend is almost up and you deserve all my attention.”
Clark returned to me, still entirely naked, Mookie watching from the next room as if afraid he might be treated to another spontaneous sex show. I wish we could fall into another round of sex, but my body was tapped out from the most lively weekend I’d had in a long damn time.
Sharing sex, meals, and laughter had relaxed me like nothing else, but now I tensed up, braced for Clark’s disappointment.
Until he smiled.
Like a bright midday sun, Clark’s expression chased away the clouds and warmed me through. “Hey, it’s okay. I can shower alone.” He pressed a kiss to my shoulder. “You can’t control when you have to work. I am the king of grading and planning for classes at home, so I can’t really throw stones.”
“Except this weekend was supposed to be special.” I frowned. “And you didn’t work.”
“This weekendhasbeen special,” he said, holding my gaze. “It’s been amazing, Hunter, and the fact you need to deal with a work issue does not take that away, okay?”
I nodded, relieved. “Okay.”
He kissed me briefly, then headed for the next room. As he left, I turned my gaze back to the email, attempting to rein in my thoughts and focus on work. But Clark had thrown me for a loop. Not that he was wrong. The more I thought about what he said, the more I realized that my reaction was the strange one.
I’d been so sure he’d be disappointed. That he’d feel neglected or like I didn’t consider him a priority.
But he didn’t.
Because he’s not Holly.
Of course, I’d known all along that Holly and Clark had little in common. Where Clark was calm and collected, Holly worried and stressed easily. But I hadn’t realized, when it came to the small moments—the need to change plans; the need to focus on work instead of her; even the way we went about our home chores—just how imbalanced my relationship with her had been,
All weekend long, Clark and I had been on the same page. We’d spent a lot of time in bed, yes, but when it came time to make meals, we worked comfortably side by side to build sandwiches or chop veggies for a salad. We took turns cleaning up dishes, washing Clark’s sheets—because let’s face it; we dirtied themfast—and taking Mookie outside to play when he got antsy.
In just two days, Clark and I had fallen into an easy routine that felt like a partnership, a give and take, that I honestly couldn’t say Holly and I had ever had, even in the earliest days of our marriage.
