Hold Me Close(49)

“So clean,” Effie murmured and looked over her shoulder at him as she went to the bed to sit on the edge.

Mitchell looked at her. “Umm...yeah, well... So, maybe we should... Do you want to pull the blankets back?”

“Oh. Yes. Of course.” She stood to allow him to take off the pillows and watched him pile them neatly on the bench at the foot of the bed, where clearly they were meant to be piled instead of tossed haphazardly on the floor.

“Would you like to shower or anything?”

Shit. Was he being polite or was he asking her to shower first because he expected her to? Effie glanced toward the bathroom, uncertain. This wasn’t going the way she’d imagined, but to be honest she hadn’t spent a lot of time fantasizing about f*cking Mitchell. At this point, it was beginning to seem as if one thing had led to another, going faster than it should have.

“I could...or...are you going to?” Effie asked.

“I could if you want to, or...”

She laughed, not because any of this was funny, but because none of it was. Mitchell joined her after a second. He shook his head and stripped back the covers and stepped back from the bed.

“I’ll turn out the lights,” he said.

She was glad for the darkness. It made it easier for her to strip out of her clothes, folding them neatly and putting them on the chair because she felt too self-conscious to do anything else. It made it easier, too, to slip into the clean sheets smelling faintly of lavender. She heard the click of Mitchell putting his glasses on the nightstand. She waited for him to touch her.

She waited.

The first touch came, finally, on her hip. His hand moved to her belly. He rolled to face her and kissed her mouth; there was a tangle of arms and legs and the brush of his cock, thank God it was still hard, against her side, and she reached to touch him, but he twitched when she did, so she let her hand rest on his leg instead.

She waited for him to kiss her.

He did, at last, and it was better than it had been on the couch. He touched her, his hands finally roaming. Exploring. Mitchell’s touch was not tentative, but still softer than she liked or needed. When she moved beneath him, he went slower, not harder. Not faster.

She had told him to go slow, after all. Concentrating, Effie willed her body to respond. She wasn’t used to passivity during sex and yet found herself unable to do much more than allow Mitchell to make all the moves.

He was patient, she gave him that. And had stamina. Inside her, appropriately sheathed, of course, he moved in a steady rhythm and stayed with it, until yes, yes, yes...

“There,” she said. “Oh. Fuck. Yes, right...there...”

Orgasm. Small but genuine. He followed her into it with a low grunt and some faster pacing, some harder f*cking, and that would’ve sent her over the edge again if he’d kept it up, but it lasted only a few seconds more before he shuddered and buried his face against her neck. Moments after that he withdrew before he was even soft. He took care of the condom in silence and slid back beneath the covers next to her.

“That was...unexpected,” Mitchell said after some more silence had passed.

Effie had been dozing, but now her eyes opened wide. She rolled to face him, a hand beneath her cheek on the pillow. She thought about snuggling close to him, but she didn’t.

“Was it?”

He turned his head. In the dim glow from the night-light in the bathroom, she could still see the gleam of his eyes and teeth when he smiled. “It was great. I mean it was just a surprise.”

She was afraid to ask why, not sure if he meant that he hadn’t expected them to do it at all, or that he’d thought it would be better than it had been. Or that it had been better than he’d imagined. It was not the worst sex Effie had ever had, by far, but it was far, far from the best. She wasn’t going to share that opinion, though.

“Surprises can be good,” she said instead. “Can’t they?”

“Yes. Absolutely.”

They both slept after that, but Effie woke with a start and a gasp that fortunately didn’t wake Mitchell. She crept from the bed and used his bathroom. She was gathering her clothes when his voice curled toward her out of the dark.

“You don’t have to go.”

“I...should get home. My kid...” She didn’t have to pick Polly up from her mom’s until the afternoon, but Mitchell didn’t need to know.

“Right. Of course.” He sat, a lumpy shadow among all the others. “Let me walk you to the door—”

“No,” she said quickly. “It’s fine. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

Mitchell made a soft noise. “I know you didn’t.”

She wasn’t sure what to say to that. So she simply put her clothes on, feeling him watching her even though she knew he could make out only the shape of her and no details. She went to the side of the bed to kiss him before she left. She did that much, at least.


“I’ll call you,” Mitchell said.

She let another kiss drift along his mouth. “Okay.”

Then she let herself out.





chapter twenty-two

Naveen’s gallery wasn’t the biggest around, but he did have two locations, one in New York City and one in Philadelphia, which was as far as Effie ever wanted to travel. He was also fair with his commission, and he put her work in front of the bigger buyers, at least when she had something they’d like. When the phone rang in her pocket with his distinctive ringtone, Effie pulled it out even though it was almost her turn at the cashier and she hated it when people took calls in the grocery store line and held everyone else up.