Hold Me Close(102)

She fought him, but not fiercely, then offered her mouth for a kiss. When he took it, Effie rolled, breaking his grasp, and ended up on top of him. She straddled his hips and put her hands flat on his chest. She bent to kiss him but kept her mouth just out of reach.

“I’ll give you something to eat,” Heath said.

“I didn’t say I wanted sausage on the pizza.”

He laughed and kissed her, rolling her gently off him so he could sit up and swing his legs over the edge of the bed. He looked at her over his shoulder. “You want pizza? For real? I’ll order it.”

“I do.” She put a hand on her belly and watched him find his phone in the pocket of his discarded pants pocket.

He’d called her beautiful, but to her eyes, he was so lovely it hurt her heart to watch him move. She knew every inch of that body and had never grown tired of it. She was never going to.

“Heath—”

But he was talking to someone on the other end, ordering a large pie with mushrooms and pepperoni, and whatever Effie had meant to say got lost. She went into the bathroom with a lift of her brow and a quirk of her finger to get him to join her, and grinning, he did. They splashed and teased, until Heath went to his knees in front of her to press his cheek to her slick, wet belly. There in the shower he put his mouth on her again, teasing and tempting, until Effie had to gasp out a plea for him to stop.

“I can’t,” she said. “I can’t again. Three is enough.”

That made him only all the more determined. Carefully, so she didn’t slip and fall, Heath pushed her against the tiled wall and held her there while he licked her with that same steady pace that never failed to get her off. She wasn’t going to manage, she couldn’t possibly...and then oh, yes. There it was. That moment when nothing would keep her from it. Effie slipped into pleasure shaking and crying out his name in soft, breathless gasps.


The sound of knocking at the hotel door got him to his feet. With a grin, Heath kissed her on the mouth and slipped out of the shower to wrap himself in a towel and pay for the pizza. By the time Effie came out of the bathroom, towel drying her hair but not bothering with anything else, he’d set up a small picnic at the desk in the corner.

“You want a soda? I can run down the hall.” He looked at her expectantly.

“Like that?” She pointed at the towel that was all he still wore. “Uh-huh. No, water’s fine.”

Heath shifted his hips from side to side. “You never know. I could end up on the evening news.”

“Been there, done that,” Effie said.

“And we didn’t even get a freaking T-shirt,” Heath replied.

They stared at each other, both smiling.

“I love you,” Effie said. “You are everything to me. I don’t want to be with anyone else, ever again. I want to be with you for the rest of my life.”

Heath took her hand and kissed it. Then her mouth. “It’s a deal.”

Nothing fell away all at once. Their world didn’t change. She didn’t even feel that different than she had in the moment before she said the words aloud. And all of that made sense, Effie thought as Heath kissed her and kissed her and kissed her again. Because the world hadn’t changed.

Only she had.