Paradise Valley (Virgin River #7)(27)

“Certainly not,” she whispered, her eyes closed, her body straining toward his. “I’d like to talk.” She sighed deeply. “After.”

He laughed at her again. “If I’d said that to you, you would have been highly insulted. But a man is almost never offended to learn he’s needed for sex.”

“Oh, good,” she said, smiling. “You don’t mind, then.”

“Mind? I’m flattered.” He positioned himself over her. “I hope you’re not in a big hurry. I’m planning to take my sweet old time.”

“Jesus,” she whispered. “Thank you, Jesus.”

“Muriel,” he laughed. “Thank me.”

“Let’s see what you’ve got first. Then we’ll see if thanks are in order.”

He didn’t laugh, though he thought she was funny. Instead, he worked her body. He stroked her, kissed her, licked her, entered her and rode her, remembering those wonderful sounds she made when she was getting close. When she came apart on him, boiling over in a fantastic cl**ax, he gave her a moment to thoroughly enjoy herself, and when she was no longer preoccupied with her own pleasure, he took his. He wanted her to feel it deep inside her. And she moaned deliciously, holding on to him, kissing and sucking his shoulder.

With his hands on her soft bottom, her lips on his neck and shoulder, he struggled to catch his breath. She probably wouldn’t understand how much he had needed a connection like this with her. He’d been lonely in general, but specifically for Muriel, the woman he’d begun to think of as his other half. Talking to her, touching her, got him past the edge of despair, but it was like this, deep inside her, loving her man to woman, that fed the part of him that was so hungry.

“Thank you, Walt,” she whispered. And he laughed.

“I think I can squeak in a couple more of those before the landing gear goes up on that Lear.”

“Oh, my heavens….”

He rolled onto his side and took her with him, holding her against his body. “Is this normal?” he asked her. “Are we supposed to be having wild, insanely satisfying sex at our age?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Someone should have told me,” he said. “I’d have taken better care of myself.”

“You’re very well cared for. I have no brain left. You drove it out of me. I can just see the tabloid headlines. The famous Muriel St. Claire found with her brains screwed out in her old farmhouse. Only one suspect comes to mind….”

“I thought people, especially men, petered out as they got older….”

“Didn’t you have regular checkups in the army? Didn’t your doctor ever ask you how things were working?”

“Yeah,” he said. “My heart, my ears, my eyes—”

“What about that god-awful prostate exam I’ve heard tales about?” she asked.

“Yup. That was part of the drill. No pun intended. But the closest he ever got to my sex life was asking me if I could still pee over a jeep.” He heard her giggle. He ran his hand along the hair at her temple, brushing it back. “I needed to be with you like this, Muriel. For a while after you left I was afraid I’d imagined the whole thing—our relationship. Thank you for coming back to me. I was starved for your body, your laugh.”

She locked her fingers together behind his neck. “I know,” she said. “I wanted to be there for you. But I have to be honest, darling. I needed you. Just as damn much.”

“What’s it like? What you’re doing now?”

“The movie?”

“The movie.”

“It’s barely begun. We haven’t started filming, but for me it’s well under way. It’s like giving birth—it’s a creation for me. I become another woman. I feel her, channel her, give her the space to grow. And when we’re finished and if the editing is good, I’ll see something I made as surely as if I gave it life. She won’t be me, though the character is about as close to my own as I could get. She’ll be a completely new being that I shaped. It does something for me that’s really close to my heart. My soul. To you it will be just a seven-dollar ticket and two hours of your life you’ll never get back, but to me it’s conception, gestation and delivery.”

He was quiet for a moment. “Then you can’t ever stop doing it,” he said.

“I don’t know about that. I was a full-time actress for forty years and I worked whenever I could get work, which, fortunately for me, was very often. Now if I work, it will be for something I consider very important, very much worth my personal investment. I put a lot of myself into these roles, it’s not just showing up on the set. I’m lucky—I like this life I have here and I no longer have to work full-time to make ends meet. For someone in my business, it’s a huge luxury.”

“I hope the way I say this doesn’t come out wrong,” Walt said. “I hope you have lots of chances to do something that fills you up like that. And I hope you don’t.”

She smiled. “We’re going to work this out, Walt. There are lots of options for us. You can always travel, too. Come to me.”

He stiffened in shock. “Muriel, can you honestly see me on a movie set? With two dogs following me and a pitchfork in my hand?”