She didn’t know how long it took before they stopped kissing, but her hair was beginning to dry on top. Wes smoothed it back, then kissed her forehead. They took a minute to catch their breath.
“This is not smart,” she whispered.
“Not smart at all.” His kiss ghosted along her throat. “I want this. I want you. It’s up to you what happens next.”
She knew he would stop in an instant if she said the word, almost as certainly as he must know she couldn’t bring herself to do it.
“What if we regret it?” she asked. Her fingers were back on that tattoo. She loved it.
Wes’s mouth moved up to her ear, and he held her tight enough that her toes lifted off the grotto floor. “I regret lots of things, but I regret the things I didn’t do the most. Don’t you?”
“Yes.” She could barely get the word out.
“We don’t want to add to the list, do we?”
“That’s not the most persuasive argument.”
“How about this?” His hands moved around the small of her back and down as he bent his mouth to her shoulder. Her head fell backward, and her body melted into his.
“That is a more compelling case,” she managed to say.
“Thank you.” His voice shivered against her skin, and she made the choice. Leave the rest for tomorrow Nadine to worry about.
“Ready to take this on land?” she asked.
Wes lifted his head, closed his eyes as if in prayer, then opened them. “Yes,” he said fervently. “Yes.”
So they did.
Twenty-eight
Wes lay in bed with his arms folded behind his head, Erma purring on his chest, and thought so hard his brain started to disintegrate.
He had slept with Nadine. Or Nadine slept with him. Either way, people had been mutually slept with.
How could he be simultaneously filled with so much regret and lack of regret? Wes lifted his head to stare at the bedroom door, wishing for X-ray vision that could pierce walls so he could see what she was thinking. The thing was, he knew about Nadine’s views on everything from the polarization of the political landscape (bad) to the Oxford comma (good), but he didn’t know how she felt about casual sex.
Or him.
At the moment, both of those were more important than her thoughts on the need for better media literacy training in schools (vital), because Wes had never been fond of casual sex. He liked to get to know someone before seeing them naked, and he loved the intimacy of the next morning, when sex was more of a confirmation of where the relationship could go rather than a beginning and an end all wrapped up. Sex without those things could be good—often great—inthe moment but left him hollow after.
He groaned and Erma leapt off him with an offended trill, digging her claws into his chest to emphasize her disapproval.
Realistically, there was only one adult way to handle this. He texted Caleb the situation and his brilliant solution.
The reply came almost instantly.You can’t seriously think leaving the country is a good idea.
The city then, Wes wrote back.
People do this all the time. Chill.
Easy enough for Caleb to say. Until he’d met his now-fiancée, Caleb was the master of the one-night stand. He hadn’t seen it as a big deal and chose partners with the same attitude. A bit of fun and no hard feelings.
Unless you like her, came Caleb’s next message.Then you got to talk.
How do I know?Wes texted back.
You know when you know.With that useless advice, Caleb was gone, leaving Wes to his own thoughts. “You know when you know.” What the hell did that mean? He stared at a bubble in the green glass of a bottle that looked as if it might have come from theQueen Anne’s Revenge. What did he know?
