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So. He hadn’t left. Now I had to deal with him. Was that good, bad? Who knew.
At least it was interesting. It wasn’t sad and flat and stupid, like an empty room would have been. So I was going with… good. Very good.
Yes. I would dare to think that this was a promising development.
I put my nightgown back on and paced. Restless, nervous and excited. After a few minutes, the door opened and the light was still on, spilling out, blinding me. He sauntered out, magnificently naked. So freaking gorgeous, it was just too much for my poor, overloaded sensibilities. It shouldn’t be allowed.
“Could you turn that light off?” I asked him. “It makes my eyes hurt.”
He flicked it off obligingly. “But I want to see you. Can we turn on the bedside?—”
“No.”
“Okay,” he soothed. “Whatever you want. So, ah…” His voice petered out.
“So what?” I asked.
“I was just wondering if you’d like to get into that bed,” he said. “With me.”
“You want sex again? Already?”
He let out a short laugh. “Full disclosure? I want sex with you all the time. That’s just a given. But I was thinking right now I could just, ah. You know. Hold you.”
“Hold…” I stopped, speechless. “You want tocuddle?”
“Is that so outrageous?” he asked, defensive. “I’ll always be up for sex, believe me. Say the word, and I stand ready. But we don’t have to. We can just…”
“Cuddle,” I said again, still unbelieving.
“Yeah,” he said. “It would be nice.”
Nice.The word made me want to break out into hysterical laughter. Cuddling. Nice. Those words didn’t belong in the apocalyptic shitshow that was my current life.
“It’s okay, if you don’t want to,” he said carefully.
“It’s not that.” My voice came out shakier than I wanted it to. “I’m just wondering. Can you guarantee that whatever fiery pit opened up inside you last night won’t come back and slam me in mid-cuddle? Because that would really suck for me.”
He was silent for a long moment. “It comes when it comes,” he said cautiously.
“Ah. So I won’t ever know when you might morph into an instant asshole. At least you wouldn’t be able to throw me out of this room. You’d have to get up and leave yourself. Slightly less horrible, but still a thing to be avoided.”
“I can’t swear it won’t happen again,” he said, his voice low and careful. “But I’ll try not to push you away if it does. It’s just that, ah… it won’t be pretty. So just… you know. Be ready.”
I was taken aback at the stark vulnerability in his voice. It moved me. Then again, maybe I was just being managed. The guy had some very smooth moves.
“I’m not that pretty inside right now myself,” I told him. “You be ready, too.”
“You seem great to me,” he said. “So? May I get into your bed?”
I couldn’t keep back a bark of laughter. “Wow, Shane, you weren’t so delicate and polite about it when you were putting your dick into me.”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “If I did anything you didn’t like?—”
“Oh, no! No worries on that score,” I assured him. “If you did anything I didn’t like, you would by God hear about it. I’m not the type to suffer in silence, believe me.”
“I do,” he said. “Believe you, I mean.”
That bewildered me. “You do? About what? What are we talking about exactly?”
