He works his thumbs into the tight muscles of my shoulders, and I close my eyes, lean into it. Groan.
“Mmm-hmm.”
“I can’t tell if you’re answering me or just enjoying the massage.”
His voice is deep, resonant. A little cowboy-like, I guess, but more justhim.
“Mmm. Can’t it be both?”
He chuckles, now. It’s honey-warm and sunshine and just a little bit dirty, all at the same time.
His breath ghosts the shell of my ear again as he leans back in close.
“Can you take a break? Or are you too wrapped up in it?”
“I can stop any time I want,” I tease. I turn my head, my lips brushing across his as I do. But he doesn’t take my mouth, doesn’t really kiss me. Not yet. He likes to make me wait.
“Prove it,” he breathes. So I do.
I stand, turn fully toward him, and he presses me against the edge of the kitchen table, sweeping his tongue into my mouth.
I half climb, he half lifts me onto the table. He smells like pine and some kind of heady cologne. My laptop clatters off the edge. I think it might have landed on a chair. It’s probably okay. I don’t care either way.
“George,” he moans against my neck as he steps in between my knees.
He leans in, and I lean in, and everything is hard and hot and friction and?—
I wake up.
I am not perched on the kitchen table being debauched by a carpenter/lumberjack.
I am sitting, alone, on the sunporch, laptop open to the last scene I was working on—Steele, not Sir Henry’s stables—and so turned on, I can’t see straight.
I can’t help it. I undo my buckle and zipper and shimmy my way out of my pants just enough that I can take hold and bring myself to a fast, messy orgasm right there in front of the full-length windows and whatever wildlife happens to be passing by.
When it’s over, I sit there panting, still only halfway awake, as reality seeps in, followed closely on its heels by utter and total shame.
What. The ever-loving hell. Was that?
Okay, I know what that was. That was a sex dream. About Owen.
Topped off by an appalling lack of self-control.
I groan and drop my head into my hands, at which point I can’t help but notice that I am just still hanging out there,alfresco. I quickly put myself back together, note with embarrassment that my button-down now needs to be laundered, and strip down to my t-shirt.
Okay, okay. Maybe it doesn’t mean anything. Maybe it’s about the book. Yes! Yes, actually, that makes perfect sense. In the dream, I was working on the romance book, and Owen is reading the romance book, so of course I got them all mixed up together.
Although that doesn’t entirely explain why I just came harder than I have in years at the mere thought of him.
Or how vividly intimate the dream felt. Because if I’m honest, it wasn’t just the physical. His voice, his touch—it felt as if we were deeply, personally, irrevocably connected.
Jesus Christ, I cannot have a thing for Owen.
Goddamn it, I know better than this. I do. I know better than to wish for things I cannot have. And I know that I cannot have some magical romance novel relationship. Hell, if history proves one thing, it’s that I can’t even have a regular relationship. I will always find a way to screw it up.
And I sure as fuck know better than to drag someone like Owen into my mess.
Kind, generous, genuine Owen. Owen, who, as Allie said, has been through enough. Owen, who, against all odds, has become a real friend.
