June’s hand was splayed across my body, and she felt the hard-on that was forming again. She angled her head and looked at it.
“That’s the benefit of men my age,” I mumbled against her skin.
I meant it as a joke, an echo of our conversation the first night I’d slept here. But I must have miscalculated because what she hadn’t done before, she did now—she pushed herself off me and sat up.
I sent a hand to caress her bare back, trailing my fingers up along her spine until they threaded in her hair.
She pivoted her torso to look at me. “This was a one-off,” she announced, waving a hand between us to spell out that by “this,” she meant her and me.
Over my dead body.
“Okay.” I crossed my arms under my head and looked at her, hoping she could read the real answer in my eyes.
She probably could because she then added, “I mean it.” As if to further prove it, she reached over, grabbed a T-shirt from under the blanket, and put it on.
“I know.” I believed her. I believed she meant it, but not that this was what she truly wanted. I knew she wouldn’t give up on her rules and regulations just like that, and I probably went against all of those. She wasn’t some twenty-something; she was a forty-year-old woman. And that maturity of hers alone could make me hard again.
“Good.” She had to have the last word.
I had to fight the urge to smile. She was too cute. June Raine, the pain in the ass, was cute.
She got up and went toward the bathroom, bare-assed. I loved that she at least felt comfortable enough with me to walk naked.
Yes, I was definitely not done with her. Not tonight and not in general. The gash her declaration caused in my heart said as much.
I was determined to tear down the literal and metaphorical walls she kept between us until she’d let me not just inside her body, but inside her heart, too. Because she was already inside mine.
When she got back two minutes later, she was wearing panties. I was still splayed naked across her bed. I saw her gaze taking me in from head to toe.
She settled on her knees next to me, her feet tucked under her, and pulled a throw blanket that covered me up to my midsection. At least she didn’t kick me out of her bed.
Yet.
“So, we’ll just say we did it to learn more about each other?” I played the part of conceding to her “one-off” declaration. There was no point in arguing with June. Putting the facts out to her was the best way. That was what I had done from the moment I’d moved in here.
“They don’t ask about that in interviews. They ask what’s your side of the bed, or who wakes up first, or about tattoos, but not outright sex.” Even covered in each other’s fluids, she could be matter-of-fact June. I wanted to hug her and shake her at the same time.
I noticed her eyes roaming my body and lingering on the sentence inked on my abdomen.
“Favorite guitarist.” I pointed at it. “What’s yours?”
“I don’t have a favorite guitarist.” She brought her eyes to me. She might have tried to make a point, but all I could see were two oceans.
“What if they ask about favorite colors?” I asked.
“Dark blue for you; sage green for me.”
“Dark blue like …?” I prompted.
“Your guitar, your car.”
“Your eyes, June.”
She swallowed and looked away.
“What’s your favorite memory and what’s your worst?” I asked after a beat passed.
She brought her gaze back to me. “I didn’t see that on the list.” We had received a list, more like eight pages of possible questions that we might get asked. Between the preparations for the previous interview and living together, we had already covered all of them, including level of income, daily habits, where we kept the towels, who paid the bills, and more.
