It had been pure torture not calling or texting her, but in some fucked-up way I thought I was doing her a favor. Yeah, right. Only a favor if I really did stay away from her. And I now knew that wasn’t gonna happen.
The pull was too strong. Had been from the first time I saw her in the pool with Andy.
She stretched on the bed and I held my breath. The movement—every move she made—held me in thrall.
I didn’t really understand it. I’ve been with good-looking girls before. Shit, they hung all over me in high school and at USC because of the football thing. Even now, when I was nothing but a fucking janitor with a six-year-old to take care of, I had no shortage of offers.
And crazy as it sounded, I didn’t want to be with anyone else now that Lily was giving me the time of day.
There was no reason for her to do so. As I told her that first night, there was no way in hell I was what she needed.
But she said she was willing to give it a try, Andy and my sucky work schedule and all, so I was going to give it my best shot. Something I wasn’t willing to do before—it hadn’t even crossed my mind.
And no more dick moves.
She stretched again, raising an arm above her head, but slept on. It looked like a swimming stroke, one that was as natural and graceful on her in bed as it was when she cut through the water. Her arm was toned, and still had remnants of a tan. It nestled into her white sheets surrounded by this blanket that reminded me of the ocean. In fact, the whole thing looked like a sexy-as-hell wave riding on the sea. Her ass was like a crest of a wave, white and stark against the rest of her tanned body. Which kind of looked like sand dunes rising out of the ocean if I squinted.
A thought—a vision—sprang to mind, and I looked around Lily’s desk for paper and something to write with. I grabbed a legal pad and pen and stared at Lily again for a few minutes, happy just to watch her.
Christ, when was the last time I’d felt this…yeah, okay, happy?
I blurred my vision a bit, wanting to capture the whole, which was impossible, because my eyes kept coming back to her face, nestled in the sheets. Her black hair covered most of it, and ran down her bare back, almost to her spectacular ass. In silhouette, it almost appeared like the black of night hovering over dunes, with the white of the sheets being waves that rose from the ocean and broke against the sand of her skin.
I drew the lines and angles. Not really sketching, I sucked at that, but capturing the places body and sand and sea met and collided. I had an idea for the steam room and I didn’t want to forget how Lily’s body rose out of the ocean of her blanket.
Not that I was likely to forget her body. Or this day. Being inside Lily, driving into her as her body opened up to me—craved me—was far and away the best sex I’d ever had. And I’d been with girls—women—with a lot more experience than Lily.
But that was what it boiled down to—it wasn’t just sex with Lily. I could get that anywhere. And it wouldn’t be nearly the hassle as finding time for Lily, and getting to her on the other side of town, and all those fucking feelings of inadequacy that I had when I was around her.
Lily was a hell of a lot more than just sex to me, and that had scared the shit out of me on Sunday.
It still did, to be truthful. But now? Now it was worth being scared shitless all the time. Time to man up and deal with these all-over-the-place feelings I’d had since I first saw how good she was with those little kids.
That night with Stick and Jane in the car, when Stick had given the definition of that stupid Bribury Basics name? I knew Lily was thinking she fit it to a tee. And maybe on the surface she did.
But there was more to Lily. She wasn’t a Basic, no matter how many North Face pullovers she had in her closet.
I saw it right away, that first day in the pool.
The thing was, I wasn’t so sure that she saw it.
“What are you doing?” she said, startling me from my notes/drawing. Her voice was drowsy and full of…seduction. Though I don’t think she was being all sexy-voiced on purpose. That’s just what an afternoon of spectacular banging did to her. I smiled at my own stupidity (thank God unspoken), and she smiled back at me.
Holy Christ, when she smiled at me, it was like all the bad shit that had happened lately just fell away.
“Just jotting down some notes for the steam room job,” I said, ripping the paper off the tablet, folding it, and putting it in the back pocket of my jeans.
For our second round, I’d lifted Lily from the floor and moved us both to the small bed, pushing the covers aside so I could see her gorgeous body against stark white sheets. I’d been hard again in an instant, but we’d taken our time, kissing and touching and feeling more than we had that frenzied first coupling.
Now I sat in just my jeans, and even though I’d come like a motherfucker two times in the last three hours, her smile made me hard again in an instant. I was mentally doing the math of how late I could be to pick up Andy and how quickly I could get inside her, when she asked, “How did you become a tile guy, anyway? Or is this your first time doing it?”
The memories of how I learned to tile quickly went from fond and sweet to painful, and my fledgling hard-on subsided.
“I’ve known how to do it since I was a kid. But this is the first time I’m doing it as a major project on my own.” I patted my back pocket, where I’d placed my squiggles of her body as inspiration. “That’s why I want to do an extra-good job. Hopefully it will lead to more tiling jobs around campus and less…towel boy.” I grinned at her, remembering her standing in nothing but a towel that first day in the locker room.
“You’re averygood towel boy,” she said with a bit of sass. I liked it when she pulled out the sass. She didn’t do it often, which made it all the more potent.
“Not that good. I didn’t get the one towel I wanted,” I reminded her.
