And when their breathing had settled they still didn’t speak.
She opened her eyes. The afternoon light had gone amber, and the refinished floors were glowing serenely golden under it.
“So... are you going to give another little speech about how you shouldn’t do this?” He said this wryly, though. And still a little breathlessly.
“Nope.” She’d fully realized the futility of this.
And so they sat in silent contemplation. Perhaps awe.
This.Thiswas sex. The frantic surge of lust, the sweat and roaring breath, the grappling, the apparently infinite variety of ways her nerve endings could be strummed to produce umpteen degrees of pleasure. Nothing else in her life to date compared. Certainly not her polite and pleasant couplings with Corbin. All orgasms were good, of course. But... it was the difference between that long, flat, torturously dull drive on I-5 from San Francisco and then—ta da! You were in beautiful Hellcat Canyon, and taking the windy, spectacular scenic coastal road to Big Sur, a road that offered something new and splendid around every turn.
“You know... this doesn’t need to be a big... thing.”
He made it sound like an idle remark, but she was pretty sure it was studied. A foray. A man perhaps carefully negotiating for more hot sex in the future. Perhaps creating a safe space for her to agree to something she clearly wanted but thought she shouldn’t.
“It can be just a thing we do, like trimming the blinds or rewiring the light in the upstairs bathroom? When the mood takes us?” she mused.
“Yeah. Like a morale-boosting team-building exercise. Like... trust falls. Only a lot better.”
She gave a short laugh. And then sighed and folded her head onto her arms and propped them on her knees. The peace of the moment was replaced with a tension. Between the idea of more of what had just happened, which made her even now feel weak with anticipation, and the fear that there was no way she wouldn’t emerge from this freshly scathed in some horrible new way.
Even if Mac could partake in the whole thing the way he would a good meal or, say, volleyball.
Even if it was bound to end.
She ran through a swift bullet-point list of reasons why this was madness in her head: They didn’t want the same things, unless you counted this house. Corbin remained quite the loose end. Her life was still in San Francisco, as was her company.
She kind of had a sense that Mac’s breath was held.
“Wearereally good at it,” she allowed. Cautiously.
“Yeah. I liked the way we kept affirming each other. ‘Yes, oh yes!’” he mimicked.
She gave a quick shout of laughter.
Her heartbeat was ratcheting up again when she looked at him.
She wasn’t a masochist. She might be a little impulsive, but the object had never been to court pain.
But maybe this was part of their battle, too: this was something she needed to prove to herself and to him. That her heart was a little more muscular now, thanks to the workout she’d put it through over the years. That she was strong enough to take what she wanted without giving up anything critical.
“Nothing much has changed about what I said before...”
He turned to her. Clearly aware that her sentence had ended with an ellipsis, not a full stop.
“Let’s say... we won’t exactly add it to the schedule. But it’s not off the table.”
He studied her a moment. Then the corner of his mouth tipped ever so slightly. “Understood. Wanna shake on it?”
She hesitated, then gave her hand to him with a bit of an ironic flourish.
He took it.
But once he had it, it was almost as though he’d forgotten why she’d given it to him. He held it a moment; his face clouded slightly. He almost whimsically laced his fingers through hers, and he looked down at where their fingers joined and dragged his thumb lightly over the back of her hand, frowning faintly.
And then he dropped her hand abruptly and pushed himself to his feet.
“Guess I should go get started on the blinds, eh?” He headed for the doorway.
He turned around and walked backward a few feet and added, wickedly, “And go hydrate.”
She stared after him. Then back at her hand.
She curled her fingers closed.
Troubled and elated.
Because she could have sworn his expression, that fleeting glimpse of his eyes before he stood, was an awful lot like the one she’d seen when she’d opened her eyes, flat on her back, that day in Whiskey Creek.
