Just as she had on the day that they’d met at the hospital after the baby’s birth, she looked like she put some effort into her appearance. He liked that, but she didn’t need to. The way she’d looked when they’d met at the hospital during the birth had actually appealed to him more. Earthy, no makeup, no pretense, just very, very real. That didn’t mean he didn’t appreciate what she wore right now: a soft, heathered lilac v-neck top, coupled with some nicely tailored pants. He noticed she was barefoot, with a little toe ring wrapped around her second toe, a tiny opal set in silver. He couldn’t remember a tattoo from that brief interlude down by the river the other day. Tonight, he hoped, he’d be able to explore every inch of her body and find out what sort of imprints were on it.
She set the bottle of wine down on the counter and turned to him, reaching her arms up for his neck. The embrace was a bit awkward as she planted a kiss on his cheek. He was surprised that she’d made the first step, and he stumbled, then reached around her, hands flat against her back, and pressed against her. From the way her muscles melted, he could tell that she was letting herself sink away from the anxiety and the nervousness. She inhaled deeply against his neck, and he wondered if she liked the cologne he’d chosen, a scent he’d worn since high school, something spicy and citrusy that he didn’t think twice about putting on, on days he didn’t work.
Her kitchen was tiny, but so was everyone else’s in Cambridge. She didn’t seem to cook much, he thought randomly; his mind was trying to catalog the room. He shut it off and turned on the animal inside, instead. He wanted to sink with her into a different state of being, letting his desire run untamed now as he pulled her back and settled in for a kiss.
The walk over here had been filled with questions about what exactly was going on between them. But as he bent down to take her mouth fully, and her fingers played with the curly edges of his hair as she slid against him, her body submitting to his, letting him use his lips and tongue and hands to re-introduce himself, what was between them most urgently was his rock-hard—
“Hi!” she gasped, coming up for air, touching foreheads. Grinning, her lips stretched in a feline smile, the kind a woman gives you right after a toe-curling session in bed.
Not before.
The night just got way more interesting. His hands held her h*ps against his thighs, and he assumed she could feel him, he wanted her to feel him, bending his knees enough to lean down and go for more of that luscious mouth. Maybe an appetizer in bed before dinner. And then dinner in bed. Then bed after dinner.
With a nightcap of sex on the baseball field across the street.
Shivers ran through her body as he held her, as if she could read his mind.
And then she did.
Pulling him by the hand to the kitchen counter, she offered him the bottle of wine to hold, then reached into a drawer for a bottle opener.
“Dinner doesn’t have to be ready for a while. Let’s enjoy a glass or three of wine.” The sly smile tickled her lips and he found himself falling into her eyes, his body harder and needier than he’d been for any woman before. A light jazz sound tinkled through the air, his ears following the sound down the hallway. Her bedroom? What color was her bedspread? Her pillow? Her vibrator?
She had to have one. No one this sensual, this experimental, wouldn’t.
Hell, she probably had devices he’d never heard of.
And then he realized she was eyeing him warily. Too much silence, he suspected. Time to pay attention to the actual woman in front of him and stop ruminating on her battery-operated bedfellows.
“A glass of wine would be lovely,” he said, taking the corkscrew from her. The sentence a bit too formal, too cultured. He sounded like his grandfather.
“You live alone?” he asked, impressed. He knew what he paid in rent at his apartment, a two-bedroom he split with a roommate who was currently on the first week of six out of town on a fellowship. The solitude was refreshing. If she could afford to shoulder this place on her own, she was either an extreme introvert—which didn’t make sense, given her personality—or she was doing well financially.
He suspected neither was quite right, though. Josie was complex. Complicated. Layered. Whatever her answer, he knew it wouldn’t reveal all. He’d have to keep asking.
That was fine.
He would make the time.
“Yes,” she said. “This is only a one-bedroom with a little den, and the owner lives on the third floor. He says he likes having a nurse as a tenant, and I’ve been here for years.” He opened the wine, the pressure of the bottle against his crotch a bit unsettling as he used brute force to uncork it, narrowly missing a horrific groin splash.
Josie pulled two long-stemmed wine glasses from a noticeably minimalist cupboard. Two wine glasses. Two mugs. Two of everything but plates and bowls, and if his eyes cataloged it correctly, there were four each of those, all matching, all neatly stacked.
“I can’t imagine living alone. I’ve been doing the roommate thing for so long,” he ventured. Through new eyes he surveyed the kitchen. Nothing spare in there. She lived a sparse though comfortable life, the incongruity quite charming. Unlike his own rumpled, slightly disheveled place, where no one really paid attention to anything but eating, sleeping, and showering, she seemed to have put a lot of thought into her environment.
And, especially, into what she didn’t put in it.
“I love it,” she answered, shrugging. In unison, they both took sips of the wine. Spending more than his usual $3 for wine at Trader Joe’s, Alex had asked the clerk to surprise him. The surprise was that the wine was delicious, thank goodness.
“Mmmm,” she said through a sip. “Good wine.”
“Good company,” he answered, offering his glass for a toast. Something snapped inside, a sense of longing and crushing desire that made him want her even more. He wanted to spend days in her bed, ordering takeout Thai and answering the door in a towel, moving the coffeemaker to her bedside table so they could be sustained by caffeine and spicy peanut sauce. Licked off her navel.
Ahh.
No. No, Alex. No! He couldn’t keep doing this—it really wasn’t just about sex, even if the hollow in her throat as she lifted the glass to take a big swig made him nearly groan with the need to savor it with his tongue.
Hold back, buddy. You’ll scare her off if you make it all about sex.
Their eyes locked and he saw something in her, a deeper calm that helped to ground him. For a woman who was so focused on movement and wit, she was remarkably subdued in her own home, casual and centered.