Right now I do myself a favor and lift it up over my headand lock myself inside with his chest hair. He’s laughing and holding me tight.
“I love…” he starts, and I still so I don’t miss a word. “I love…” He clears his throat. “I love how when you get horny, you just do whatever the hell you want.”
I resurface with an outraged laugh. “Me? Come on. You’re the one whoinventedT-shirts. I mean, Jesus. What am I supposed to do with all this?” I’m feeling up his shoulders, grinding on his blue jeans. There is so much Vin and I’m going to need an IV before the night is over, I can feel it.
His response to all this? He falls backwards on the bed and kicks his hips up into me. Punishment and reward for being such an incorrigible flirt. Next he plants his pointer finger underneath my chin and draws me toward him with nothing but the power of his green eyes, which telegraph his very inappropriate catalog of thoughts about me. He’s going in for a landing, our lips are centimeters apart, and then, at the last second, he turns my head and sucks on the pulse point under my jaw.
The sound I make is obscene. It earns me another kick of his hips and two firm hands on my ass, grinding me down on him.
Well. Two married people get all horned up in a bed. I bet you can guess what happens next.
Wrong!
What happens next is my traitorous phone ringing loudly from the kitchen. “Forget it, fuck it, I don’t care.” I’m gasping and rolling my neck to the other side, dying for him to kiss me more, everywhere.
But then it starts ringing again.
“Raff?” Vin asks, lifting his head.
“Not his ringtone and don’t say your brother’s name when you’re making out with my neck.”
And then it rings again. “Lemme just check,” he says.
I grab him with every bit of my strength and try to hold him in place, but he dumps me to the side, stands up, and walks away as if he didn’t even notice. I should probably hit the gym every once in a blue moon.
“It’s Esther!” he calls from the kitchen. “I’m gonna answer it.”
“Esther!” I sit up all at once and find the digital clock on the nightstand. “Oh, shit!”
“She wants to know where the hell you are. You’re late for the potluck.”
“I’m late for the potluck!” I appear in the doorway so tousled and off-kilter that Vin laughs. All he did was kiss my neck but I must look like he crawled underneath my petticoats and shredded my pantaloons with his incisors.
My first instinct is to drop my panties and crawl back in bed with Vin. “Tell her I’m not going.”
“She’ll call you back,” he says into the phone, and puts it on the counter. And then he’s got his arms around me, one hand on the back of my neck, tilting my head up to the sky. “You should go.”
“I’m not going,” I say mulishly. “You love me again. I’m staying right here where I can squeeze you.” And I do just that.
I’ve got my ear to his chest so I can hear the stuttered inhale. My head rises and falls like it’s riding on a wave. When I look up, his eyes are red and slitted again. “Go to the potluck. It’s temporary. But this—” He taps his breastbone where my ear was just resting. “Is not. It’ll be here when you get home.”
“Now I’m definitely not going.”
He’s frustrated and so pleased. “Roz!”
“Come with me, then.”
“Wait. Yes. Really?”
“Really. Come on. I want to show you off to all my new friends. Shan is going to shit a brick when she sees what a hunk you are.”
“Jesus.” He’s standing behind me, untuggable, with one hand over his eyes. At first I think it’s because I’ve embarrassed him by calling him a hunk, but when he lowers his hand there’s a glowing emotion there, like nighttime sunshine, the kind that bounces off the moon from the other side of the world. “If…if six months ago…or two months ago…or two days ago…you’d told me that you’d be running out that door to go meet with new friends…and that you’d…you’d want me there with you…there’s nothing I wouldn’t have…” He steps up to me and cups my face in two gentle hands. “I could have endured anything, baby, if I knew it was going to get me here.”
Eighteen
Vin must havegotten the hint when Esther handed him a mesh bag filled with footballs and Frisbees, et cetera, because he’s been playing with Fabi and Liam and Sari (Daniel’s eight-year-old twins) for the last hour.
He stops by every so often for some bites of the hamburger and corn and watermelon and casserole that I piled onto a plate for him when we got here. As soon as Shan cuts that pie, I plan to snag Vin a slice.
