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“No one.”
“Not your friend from the alley?”
“Owen. No. He knew I didn't date. I let him assume I’d had occasional women in my life. It was easier.” He took a deep breath that swelled his chest. “You have all my secrets.”
“They're totally safe with me.” She lifted her head and kissed him, then broke away and turned on her side, tugging his hand so he’d roll with her.
He scooted up behind. Close enough she could feel his warmth, but not touching her. It might be nice to be held again while she fell asleep. “You can hold me.”
He arrived at her back with a bounce that shook the bed. His arm looping over her waist, his knees tucking up under hers. “Try and stop me.”
The first time she’d been in this bedroom she’d said something similar to him. She’d had no idea then she’d be here so willingly now.
He nuzzled the back of her neck. “Thank you.”
“You don’t need to thank me.” No way this encounter had been a duty.
“The hell I do,” he said gruffly, sleepily. His arm was heavy and his breathing had slowed.
“We’ll argue about it later.”
She smiled into the pillow when she realized the only reason she’d won that argument was that he was asleep.
ELEVEN
It was annoying to be awake; to be wide awake and to be in bed with Zarley, and for her to be sleeping still. It was going on midday, they’d had maybe four hours sleep, waking her would make him an inconsiderate bastard.
Holy fuck, he wanted to wake her. She was just there, on the next pillow and that pillow was butted up against his and he didn’t have to extend his arm full length and he could wrap it around her, or he could play with her hair, which had stuck to him in wet strands earlier and now was dry and soft, fanned out on the pillow.
But if he did that she might wake.
And if she woke, maybe she’d want to shower, dress and go home. And do all of that alone.
Damn, but she smelled good, enhancing his clean lemony linen with a different scent. Like that indescribable smell before it rained. He took a deep breath and held it in his lungs. Soap and sweat and them. She smelled of sex. Of what they’d done together. He wanted to snort her up, feel her up, kiss her, have her hands and her lips on him, have her cock-zapping sighs and little squeals breaking over him while he eased inside her slippery warmth again.
If he touched himself, he was in all kinds of trouble. It was difficult to keep his hands still. That taste test he’d gorged himself on, that was only enough to demonstrate what a starving man he’d been. How had he lived so long without knowing how to be with a woman? How had he pretended to know anything about anything without knowing how it felt to be inside that tight, wet channel, to have the livewire of a woman’s body in his arms?
He was worse than an alien. He was an imposter. And how the fuck had he managed to get this woman to do what she’d done, to let him . . . God, what he’d done.
He’d had a blackout once in college from drinking too much. A total blank space in his memory about where he’d been and how he’d gotten back to his dorm covered in leaves and twigs. He’d been drinking heavily, consistently, the last month to hangover nastiness, but not blackout stage. What he’d felt with Zarley was powerful and freaky like a blackout only it was white, an out of body brain flashing that reset his synapses and left him addicted to the concept of going there again and again.
Would she let him have her again? He lay there and willed her to wake so he could hear her voice made super husky from not enough sleep, look in her eyes and know whether this thing between them had run its course or only just begun.
If she glazed over and started rumbling in her bag for clothes, he wasn’t above begging. At sixteen, eighteen, twenty, that might’ve been endearing. He was five years older than Zarley and should know how to handle a woman in his bed, in his apartment, the next morning. He gingerly prodded the lump on the back of his head, he’d almost given himself a concussion when she put her lips around him in the shower and then inside her, he’d been so lost in the sensation he didn’t know if she’d come. Nothing about that was appealing.
All he knew was that spine-jarring brain flash was something he wanted again, harder, for longer, made more intense because he’d learned how to give her one too.
He scrubbed his face. He needed a razor and a toothbrush at least before he faced her. He needed not to have a stiffy you could swing from.
He couldn’t lie here any longer. He had to stop being pathetic and get up and do something about the state of himself while preparing to beg.
He ea
sed out of the bed, snagged sweats and a t-shirt, bypassed the en suite and headed to the main bathroom so he wouldn’t wake her. He showered, got himself together and went to the kitchen where he put the coffee pot on. Then he swigged from a carton of juice, hung off the refrigerator door and stared at the various containers Dev had left. There had to be something he could offer Zarley.
“Hi.”
He turned to find her on the other side of the counter. She had a silky black robe on. Not his. He should’ve thought to leave her a t-shirt or something. Isn’t that what women who slept over did, wore your stuff and looked outrageously cute in it?
