“Yes, but it’s so far away.” She loved being mashed together with him, limbs entangled, sweat drying on their bodies. The house was pitch dark now, apart from various little electronic eyes shining at them from the dark: the microwave clock. The burglar alarm.
He chuckled groggily. “More room for shenanigans on the bed. A blank canvas just waiting for us. Plus, I’m told my sheets are 1200 thread count. I wouldn’t want that job in the sheet factory. Counting all those threads.”
She laughed. “More threads is better. You don’t want sheets that can exfoliate you.”
He sighed happily. And then, pulling another ninja move, he rolled off the couch into a crouch, draped her over his shoulder and stood and hauled her off, like a fireman rescuing her from a burning building.
“Show off,” she gasped. She hadn’t even had time to give a little shriek.
“All that practice carrying sacks of flour. I’ve got something to show you in there.”
“Does it involve your handcuffs? I brought them back with me. They’re in my purse.”
“Nope. But hold that thought.”
He laid her down gently on the side of the bed with the un-dented pillow, and she burrowed in as if it were home.
And suddenly he couldn’t breathe for how right all of this felt.
As if the jigsaw puzzle of his life had been missing just that moment, a sore place that air blew through, and here it was finally. Her head on that pillow.
“Here.”
The “throw” his sister had sent him last Christmas, as though she thought he spent his evenings curled up with a cozy English mystery set in the Cotswolds and a cup of chamomile tea and a faux fur draped over his knees. He kept it folded at the foot of his bed, and he tossed it to Glory. She seized it with a happy exclamation and pulled it up over her, all but purring over its softness.
She looked like a czarina.
He went still. Held in thrall.
You’re beautiful, he almost said.I love you, he almost said.
She read the first in his face. She smiled back at him, receiving the tribute like a czarina.
And his next words were tantamount to the second.
“Look over there in the corner, Glory. By the window.”
She sat up, letting the fur fall indolently down to expose one pale shoulder and a breast, and his head went light.
Just looking at her body was a little like having a hand permanently on his cock. The nipped-in waist and that swelling curve of her ass, and those heavenly, full, uptilted breasts were as erotic as it got.
She peered where he was pointing.
He was going to savor the expression on her face forever.
“Eli... is that... is that myguitar?”
He took it out of the case and brought it over to her. She reached up for it as if she were Moses reaching up for the commandments.
She held it in her arms.
She was suspiciously quiet.
She didn’t look up, either.
“Are you going to cry again?” he teased softly. “You aresucha girl.”
She laughed. And sniffed.