Releasing my hip, he gently, slowly tugged my dress back down my legs.“I have a tattoo.”
“Yeah?”
“You can see it on the next date.”His smile made me want to lunge up, grab him by the back of the neck, and devour his mouth.“Incentive.”
“Is that your way of securing that second date?Because the dinner and company already locked that in for you.”
Twisting our fingers back together, he nodded.“Just trying to make it impossible for you to say no.”
“It’s already impossible,” I breathed.
“Bella?”
“Si?”I asked, playfully.
“Can I hold you?”The sincerity in his eyes was almost too much.The first date of my life, and it was with the most genuine, passionate, patient man in the entire world.How was that possible?How did men like him still exist?I wasn’t sure they did in America, which was why we had to import them from the Old World.
My head bobbed, even though I wasn’t sure what “hold you” meant.
He helped me sit up, then gently, as if cradling a newborn foal and not a woman in her thirties with damp panties, he maneuvered us so we were spooning on his couch with him behind me.
“We are in no rush for things,” he said, his wine-scented breath against my neck as we settled in.“What do they call this in books?”
“Torture?”I asked, loving the way his thumb had found my hipbone over my dress and drew erotic little circles around it.
Huffing a laugh, he kissed my shoulder.“No.A slow fire?”
“Oh.”I chuckled.“A slow burn.Yeah, this is a slow burn all right.”
“You are okay with that?”
Was I?
While I was nervous as hell to take things to the bedroom, considering I hadn’t had sex with a man since Sam was conceived, every cell in my body screamed with the urgency to be beneath Tom.To feel his skin against mine, his weight on me.I knew he’d be gentle.That he wouldn’t hurt me, and would undoubtedly bring me pleasure—for the first time ever during sex.Even if I didn’t orgasm, it would be better than every single time Rufus climbed his bloated, old, zombie corpse on top of me, pumped twice, grunted, then rolled over and went to sleep.
“You have not answered,bella.Are you okay with the slow burn of us?”
“I am,” I finally said.“We’re getting to know each other.”
He kissed my shoulder again.“We are.And I really like what I am learning.”
“Me too.”
Lulled by the fire, the warmth of the strong man behind me, and those hypnotic circles on my hip, I closed my eyes and melted deeper into his buttery-soft,veganleather couch—something he had told me earlier that night—and closed my eyes.
When I opened them again, my body was an inferno, and a steel pipe prodded my back.
Where was I?
I had to blink a few times to realize I wasn’t at home, and a pig snorted and snuffled in her sleep in a bed in front of me with a dead fireplace behind her.
Fingers clasped mine, and as I studied the hand attached to them, with the light dusting of hair, the prominent veins and the scars on the knuckles, every moment of last night’s perfection came crashing back down on me.
Even though I was hot, I smiled and snuggled deeper into his arms.
“Buongiorno, bella,” he said, his voice deep and gritty behind me before he kissed my shoulder.“You slept happily?”
Smiling, I spun around in his loosened grasp and faced him.“I did.You?”
