The First Taste(69)

“You loved every second of that,” he says.

“It wasn’t what I expected,” I admit.

“But it was good?” he asks.

I sense a hint of doubt in his voice. I want to reassure him with a look, but we’re in no position to see each other’s faces. “Incredible,” I say. It feels weird to be grateful to him, but I am. He doesn’t know, couldn’t know, how far I’ve come in the last two weeks thanks to him. I thought sex had to come with strings. The last few times I did it before Andrew, it was a weapon, not pleasure. “Thank you.”

“For what?” he asks. “I should be thanking you.”

“Thanks for, you know, being present. And conscious of what you were doing.” It hurts me to say. I never thought I’d be the kind of woman who allowed a man to break her, but I was on the verge of that a year ago. “Thank you for thinking of me first.”

“You’re always first,” he says as if it’s fact. “That’s how it should be when you let someone into your bed.”

I’m suddenly painfully aware that he’s about a thousand pounds of pure muscle on top of me—and that he’s still inside me. “We should clean up,” I say, shifting to get free, “and if you think about it, there’s really only one sensible way to do that.”

“You don’t mean . . .?”

“I think I have just enough Tahitian crème left to make it a good one.”

“Mmm,” he responds. “Well, if taking a bubble bath is the only sensible thing to do, then I guess it would be foolish not to.”





TWENTY


Andrew rests as I head into my bathroom, working the aches out my arms and legs. Once I’ve cleaned myself up and started the tub faucet, I catch a glimpse of my reflection. I’m red in the face, as if I’ve just done sprints, and my hair is tangled and damp around my neck. I look owned, as I wanted to be, and I know Andrew likes that, so I resist the urge to fix myself up.

I pass through the bedroom, where Andrew lies on the bed with his eyes shut, to the kitchen. I pour two drinks before dropping them off in the bathroom.

Andrew’s clearly passed out, but he knows the rule about sleepovers, so I don’t feel bad waking him. “Your bath is ready, sir.”

His answering sigh turns into a soft laugh, but his eyes remain shut. “I wasn’t sleeping.”

“Sure you weren’t.” I smile, return to the bathroom, and shut off the faucet.

“Or maybe I was,” he says as he comes in, scratching his hair, mussing it in every direction. “Was it a dream?” he asks. “Or was it really that f*cking good?”

Something about seeing all of him in the dim lighting, his tall, broad-shouldered frame and colorful torso, makes me warm and fuzzy inside. I put my arms around his middle. “The second one.”

He takes a second to hug me back, an almost imperceptible hesitation. “I hoped I’d end up here tonight,” he says, rubbing my back. “I’m glad I did.”

I smile up at him. “So am I.”

He isn’t smiling. “How glad?”

I loosen my arms enough to pull back. It’s likely my sudden affection has caught him off guard. Me too, a little. It’s hard not to feel closer to him after what we just did—and after spending an evening with his family. That doesn’t have to mean more than it does. It isn’t an invitation to stay the night or anything. I drop my eyes to his chest. “I’m not sure.”

“Amelia.” He waits until I look up again. “It’s okay. I want you to be honest.”

Honesty. It’s what we do. It’s the main reason we’ve made it this far. “Tonight was different,” I admit. “We might’ve broken through a few walls without meaning to.”

He nods. “I think so.”

“It’ll make things harder when we part,” I continue. “Maybe I’m okay with that, though.”

He raises both eyebrows. “You are?”

The alternative is that tonight didn’t happen, and I wouldn’t take it back, so the only option is to be okay with it. “Yes. I mean, it wouldn’t be a good idea to keep going down this path, but—”

“Why not?”

I tilt my head at him. “Because I won’t always be okay with it the next day. We’re already having a nice time tonight, so we might as well just . . . keep doing that. We can’t really go backward, can we?”

He studies me, expressionless. I have no idea if I’ve completely scared him off or if he understands what I’m saying.

I keep talking. “We’ve crossed into different territory. Anything after this would be a conscious choice. I mean there’s family to think about, and work . . .” I’m drowning, and he’s not making any move to join me overboard. With a sigh, I say, “I’ll understand if you want to leave now.”

To his credit, he doesn’t look longingly at the bathtub. I know how badly he wants to get in. Enough to get him to stay? “Do you want me to?” he asks. “Leave?”

I run the back of my hand over my hairline. Our intense sex plus the steam from the bath is making me a bit too warm. “No. Not yet.”

The lines between his eyebrows ease as he nods. “Good. I’m not ready to go. You look hot.”