Tonya ran the tip of her tongue around his ear. “When I decide to seduce you, you’ll know that you’ve been seduced.”
“I can’t wait.”
“Be careful what you ask for, darling.”
“I’ll want more, more and more until I’m gorged.” He inhaled an audible breath. “I don’t believe I’ll ever tire of you.”
“Not even when I’m old and wrinkled and unable to open my legs for you.”
“I’ll be old, wrinkled, and unable to get it up, right along with you. Even now I’m grayer than you are.”
“Your gray hair makes you even more attractive,” she countered.
Gage sensed the change in her mood when she grew tense. It was funny how he was able to gauge her moods now that they were intimate. “What’s wrong?”
“What makes you think something’s wrong?”
“You’re tense, Tonya.”
“I was trying to imagine what people will say when they find out we’re living together.”
An angry frown marred Gage’s handsome features. “Whatever they say will not change how I feel about you. I’m too old, had to put up with too much shit to concern myself with what people say about me.”
“What about your mother, Gage?”
“What about her?”
“Do you think if I ever meet her she will welcome me with open arms once she discovers I moved in with her son after knowing him exactly one month?”
“That’s where you’re wrong. I met you for the first time right after St. John and Hannah’s wedding. And that makes four months instead of one. My mother stopped meddling in my life a long time ago. The only thing she asks is if I’ve found someone to make me happy.”
“What did you tell her?”
“I told her I’d met someone who makes me very, very happy.”
Gage wasn’t certain what he expected Tonya to say, but it wasn’t the silence that followed his pronouncement that she made him happy. Happy and fulfilled.
“Please let me get up, Gage.”
“Why?”
“I need to take a shower.” Leaning over, Tonya reached for Gage’s t-shirt at the foot of the bed and slipped it over her head. She smiled at him over her shoulder. “I’m going to my bedroom. I’ll be down as soon as I’m washed and dressed.”
Sitting up and resting his back against a mound of pillows, Gage stared at the door through which Tonya had disappeared. He knew she was concerned about how quickly their relationship had progressed, and he had shocked himself when in a moment of madness he had asked her to live with him. And what surprised him more than his own impulsiveness was her acceptance.
Gage had to acknowledge at forty-six and fifty, respectively, he and Tonya did not have to answer to anyone for their actions or lifestyle, yet she had voiced her concern about how their friends and acquaintances would think of them living together. Hannah, St. John, and now Eustace knew she was living under his roof, and he knew it was only a matter of time before those in New Orleans also became aware of their living arrangements.
Gage swung his legs over the side of the bed and made his way to the en suite bath. Gage discarded the condom, turned on the water in the shower, and stepped under the lukewarm spray, loathing having to wash away the scent of Tonya’s perfume. He showered and dressed in record time, and when he reentered the kitchen he found Tonya making the vinaigrette.
He rested his hand at the small of her back as she whisked balsamic vinegar and olive oil in a small bowl. Dipping his head, he pressed a kiss to her bare shoulder. “Love you.”
Tonya nodded. “Thank you.”
Gage’s heart felt like a rock in his chest. He’d just admitted to Tonya that he loved her, and she thanked him as if he had just handed her a cup of coffee and the morning paper.Act in haste and repent in leisure.His mother’s prophetic warning nagged at him. It was what she had said to him when he told her he had to marry because he had gotten a woman pregnant.
Marriage and living together were life-changing events, and he wondered if perhaps he was doomed to be unlucky in love. His volatile relationship with his ex-wife had been one-sided; he had done all of the compromising while she refused to accept the consequences for her actions.
Gage felt in his heart of hearts that Tonya was the woman he wanted in his life, but he had to make certain to allow her to make her own decisions, or what they would have was a rerun of her marriage.
“I mentioned before I’m not working this weekend. Let me know what you’d like to do or see, and we can plan it together.”
She flashed her dimpled smile. “I’ll try and come up with something we both like.”
“That sounds good.”
