More Than Words(42)

40



That night, Nina had wanted to sleep in her old bedroom, so they made up her double bed and climbed into it, under the white eyelet canopy. Nina took the ring off and put it next to her on the bedside table. She often slept in jewelry, but that ring took up a solid third of her finger. It seemed too big to sleep in, like she could hurt herself with it.

“Everything’s going to be better from here,” Tim said.

They’d decided to keep their engagement secret for a while, even from his parents. It didn’t seem like the right time to announce something joyful, so close to her dad’s death.

Nina answered Tim with a kiss. Then they snuggled and cuddled, running their fingers up and down each other’s bodies, along the curves of their torsos. In other relationships Nina had been in, physical attraction had been one of the main drivers of the relationship. She’d dated Alex the summer she lived in D.C. after finishing her MBA. They would spend whole weekends without putting on clothes. They couldn’t keep their hands off each other. In photos he would smile serenely while secretly sliding his hand along her backside or, if they were sitting at a table, between her legs. The last night, before she headed back to New York, they’d gone to the Lincoln Memorial at two A.M. and had sex in the shadows of the monument, her sitting on his lap, a long skirt keeping them shielded from any passersby.

They’d both gone into that relationship knowing it would be a summer fling. He was joining the State Department, heading to Moscow in September. And she was fine with that. Sometimes the intensity of their attraction scared her. She found herself doing things she knew she shouldn’t—calling in sick to work so she could spend the day with him, blowing off plans with college friends because all of a sudden his night was free. Alex never asked, never pressured her; she wanted to do these things to be with him, and that was what she found frightening. Tim never made her feel that way. He made her feel safe. In control.

Nina ran her fingers up his chest, under his T-shirt, through the tangle of hair there, feeling the smoothness of the skin around his nipples.

Tim followed suit, running his hand across the bare skin of her stomach, trailing his fingers under her silk cami, across her breasts.

This felt right. It felt like what was supposed to happen, how she was supposed to spend her life.

Then the pressure of his hand disappeared, and it was on the hem of her shirt, a question.

Nina answered by raising her arms so he could slide it over her head. After Tim took off her shirt, he removed his own, and she could feel the heat radiating from his body.

His hand played along the waistband of her lace underwear, dipping to touch the warm skin beneath it.

She reached for him under the covers, freeing him from the confines of his cotton boxers and then stroking her fingers along the length of him.

“Oh, Nina,” he breathed, then slid his underwear down.

She did the same to hers.

And then he was inside her, moving slowly, purposefully. She joined in the rhythm of his rocking, and it felt like a slow dance, the two of them moving in time with each other to the music playing just for them.

Nina felt a pressure swelling inside her. “Right there,” she whispered.

She was close, so close.

But then Tim’s body stiffened, his mouth forming a perfect O as he groaned, and whatever was about to crest inside her faded away, receded like waves on the beach.

“Did you . . . ?” he asked.

She’d been getting there. Almost. Not quite.

She shook her head. “But it’s okay,” she said, relaxing against the pillow. “It still felt good. I don’t always.”

“I know,” he said, reaching under the covers to find his underwear and slip it back on. “But I like it better when you do.”

She laughed. “Me too,” she said, patting the blanket in search of her own underwear, then thinking better of it. “I don’t see any tissues in here. I’m going to go to the bathroom to clean up.”

“Okay,” Tim answered, laying his head down. “In case I’m asleep by the time you get back, I’ll say I love you now. And sweet dreams.”

“You, too,” Nina said, and she kissed the tip of his nose before she got out of the bed.

After the insanity and sadness of the past weeks, there was something so nice about being here with Tim, as if crossing the city limits made the rest of the world disappear. But she knew eventually they’d have to go home, and she’d have to run the Gregory Corporation. Eventually the rest of her life would start. And maybe, once it did, she’d figure out how to tell Tim she wanted to orgasm, too. Every time.





41



It was 3:22 A.M. and Nina was still awake. Tim’s arm was wrapped around her as if she were his security blanket. She knew she needed sleep, but her mind was awhirl. She stared at the lace canopy on the bed, trying to find shapes in the fabric the way she and her mother used to do with clouds on a summer day. When she closed her eyes, her thoughts kept spiraling through her mother’s death and her father’s death and marrying Tim, and not being able to tell her father, and all the new memories she’d unearthed by coming to this house. Memories she wasn’t sure if she could trust but wanted to just the same.

Nina pulled her phone into bed with her and went to her photos to look at one of her father. He had been gone barely a week, and she was already afraid she’d forget what he looked like, the exact shape of his eyebrows, the depth of the widow’s peak in his hairline. She brought him up on her screen, and immediately her eyes began to fill.