The Hot Mess and the Heartthrob(45)

I like that he asks. So often, people dance around it like we don’t want to talk about her disability. “Ear infections. So many ear infections. They eventually caused permanent damage. She was three when she got her first hearing aids. We don’t need the sign language, but we’ve all been learning anyway for cases like today—when her ears are lost.”

We push into the apartment, and I head straight to the girls’ room.

No hearing aids in the Thrusters coffee mug she keeps on her nightstand next to the bunk beds.

Which basically means they could be anywhere. “Dammit.”

I turn. Levi’s leaning in the doorway, warm blue eyes settling on mine, looking both completely out of place and completely at ease at the same time. He’s in jeans again—black today—and a loose Henley under that same trucker jacket, his five o’clock shadow thick, his hair freshly trimmed.

I wonder how often he has to fit in places where he doesn’t belong, or if he’s just gotten used to making himself belong everywhere.

Or possibly that’s a me problem—faking fitting in—and I’m projecting.

Either way, this wasn’t what I had planned for this morning.

Especially after everything he told me on the phone this morning.

The warmth in his eyes is melting into flat-out heat as his gaze drifts down my body. Hiding under a long skirt, a camisole, and a lightweight fall cardigan, I’m in my best bra and a pair of red cotton panties, which were the sexiest I could find buried in the back of my underwear drawer. A side trip to the lingerie store down the way was on my agenda for this afternoon.

I haven’t done anything special with my hair, which I used to keep cut within military regs since it’s easy to manage that way, but the past year or so, I’ve let it grow out, and now I basically wear it in a ponytail half the time.

Today it’s down.

My makeup is minimal—I didn’t have time to do much more. I look like a mom and a bookworm.

But he’s looking at me like I’m a sexy, desirable woman. One without stretch marks and boobs that laugh at the idea of ever being perky again. A woman who doesn’t come with a package that includes three kids with their own challenges and a bookstore that does a little better every single week, but still keeps me up at night for the same reason he mentioned early this morning—I don’t know when everything we’re doing here will quit working, and when I might have to start over from scratch.

He could have the world.

Yet he’s gazing at me like in this moment, I am his world.

I know this is temporary. I know it’s a short-term fling until one of us gets tired of the hassle, or until one of us finds someone better, but god, it’s so damn intoxicating and exhilarating to be wanted.

To be desired.

To be looked at like I’m something more than a frazzled mom.

“What am I looking for, and where do you want me to start?” he asks.

There’s no impatience. No let’s do this so we can bang in the timbre of his voice. It’s all how can I take care of you? What do you need? How do I fix this?

My ex would’ve been growling in frustration and yelling at me for this being my fault somehow.

Not Levi.

He doesn’t owe me anything. He doesn’t owe my kids anything.

But he’s here. Taking time out of his busy schedule.

Offering whatever I need.

My tongue doesn’t want to work. But my legs are fine, and they swiftly carry me the five steps it takes to reach him, to throw my arms around him, and to press my mouth to his.

I don’t know if I’m saying thank you or if I’m saying save me, but I know when his arms wrap around me and his lips part and his tongue touches mine, I’m not anyone’s mom anymore, and I’m not frumpy, and I’m not barely holding on to everything I have to manage.

I’m simply a woman.

Kissing a man.

My hands exploring the contours where his neck meets his shoulders, down his hard pecs, around his slender waist beneath his jacket.

Inhaling the spicy sweet scent of his soap that makes me think of Italy in the spring and feel young and carefree again.

Feeling the hard bulge growing against my belly.

I turn this man on.

He’s devouring my mouth like I’m his favorite dessert, his hands sliding to squeeze my ass, turning me against the wall in the hallway, his knee pressing between mine.

I want him naked.

I want him naked, in my bed, touching every inch of me while I lick every inch of him. I want to be wild and irresponsible and reckless. I want— I just want.

“God, you feel good,” he gasps against my lips.

I’m riding his hard thigh while he grips my skirt and pulls it up, rubbing my clit against him, getting wetter than I’ve been in years, waking nerve endings that I thought had died, or at least could only get excited by something powered by batteries, and it’s perfect and not enough and everything and a fairy tale all at the same time. “I don’t—usually—oh, god, do that again.”

The man has found my nipples.

He kisses me again, wet and hot, deep, while he thumbs my nipples through two layers of fabric and I ride his leg, heat coiling fast and hard in my core, everything building, sensations rocketing across my skin, making goosebumps erupt over every inch of my flesh, my nipples tightening, my breasts swelling while I grip Levi’s shirt and hit that peak moment when everything shatters inside me.