Rooted (Pagano Family #3)(29)

She shut the thought down immediately. No use going there. She’d learned a long time ago that there was no way to win the ‘what if’ game.

Instead, she turned to her side and studied the man sleeping next to her. Here was where her path had led her, so far.

Theo lay on his back, his left arm thrown over his head, his right hand resting low on his belly. She’d made her own marks, she saw—there were scratches over his shoulders and bite marks on his chest. Seeing them brought the memory of making them, and Carmen smiled.

He really was gorgeous. She’d thought his looks had been Californian, but now she saw them as a different kind of western, like a matinee idol cowboy—square jaw, cleft chin, the kind of crinkly wrinkles around his eyes that came from squinting into the sun—or from smiling. And damn, those dimples. They were so deep and so often present in his smiling face that they’d left impressions that even rest could not smooth away.

He was broad-shouldered and muscular, but lean. Even in repose, the muscles over his belly and sides retained their definition. This was an active man. All they’d done together so far had been to eat and drink—and, now, f*ck—but clearly he got out and moved his body. She liked that. She’d been active and outdoorsy her whole life, and she’d chosen a career that kept her moving, too. She couldn’t tolerate indolence.

And what did it matter what she could or could not tolerate? She needed to be careful not to think of him in ways that extended beyond the moment they were in. She’d meant to stay away, and she should have. But she hadn’t, and here they were. Perhaps she should slink out of the bed right now, dress, and make her way back to the flat on Rue de la Lavande, but she knew she would not.

He’d coaxed her into staying last night because he hadn’t wanted to be done yet. Well, now she didn’t want to be done, either. She’d worry about the consequences later. For now, for once in her life, she wanted simply to do the thing that felt good and not worry about whether it was right.

Reaching over, she picked up the pendants lying just below his throat, the hair on his chest lightly tickling her fingertips. She liked the hair, too, light but evenly distributed over his chest and down the center of his belly, the same golden tone as the hair on his head, with a few grey curls scattered in. Pure sex, pure man.

She focused on the pendants, tributes to Maggie, his dead wife. She was glad he wore them. They did not make her feel threatened. Instead, they would ground her, keep her safe, allow her the room to do the thing that felt good. They would remind her, especially when she and Theo were naked, intimate, bared to each other—as they dangled from his neck while he was inside her, they would remind her that he had already given his once-in-a-lifetime feelings to someone else.

And that would keep her own, unused feelings safely tucked away.

Theo took a deep breath, and his hand came up and encompassed hers on his chest. Warm and strong. “Do those bother you?” His naturally deep voice rumbled with the gruffness of sleep, and he asked the question without yet opening his eyes. Carmen wondered how long he’d been awake.

“No. I told you—I like them. They’re poignant.”

Then he opened his eyes, and blue sky stared right at her. “How old are you, beautiful girl?”

Carmen was coming to like those two silly words. They really were silly, like something crooned by Maurice Chevalier in a Leslie Caron movie, but they were growing on her nonetheless. His question surprised her, though, coming out of the blue like that. “Thirty-seven.”

He nodded, looking relieved, and Carmen wondered how old he’d thought she was. “And you?”

“Fifty in August.”

Older than she’d thought, but not surprisingly so.

When she said nothing, he asked, “Is that a problem for you?”

“No. I’m not surprised. You have two grown sons. I did the math.” She scooted closer and leaned over him, grinning. “You’re pretty spry for an old codger.”

He cocked an eyebrow at her and brought his hand down to smack her ass gently. “Careful, kiddo.” Then his eyes trailed over her face to her throat, and his other hand came up and grazed the tender right side. “Wow. I’m sorry. Does that hurt?”

She put her hand over his. “Not too much. It’s bad, huh?”

“It’s…yeah. It’s noticeable, put it that way. The bathroom’s over there if you want to see.”

With a shrug, she said, “I’m in no rush.” She really wasn’t. His cock was hard and pressing firmly into the thigh she’d thrown over him. She reached down and took hold of it. Damn, what a beautiful thing it was. She’d known it wasn’t small—she’d felt it through his clothes enough before last night to have an idea that it was more than adequate—but having an idea was different from experiencing the real thing. It was long—but better yet, it was thick, really thick, and oh God, the stretch it made in her was sublime. As she ran her hand over it now and watched his eyes flutter closed on his groan, she leaned down and kissed his lips lightly. “I’m really in no rush.”

He grabbed her and rolled over, pinning her beneath him. “Good. Neither am I.” She looked into his blue eyes and saw things there that made her heart quiver at pace with the rest of her thrumming body.

So she cast her eyes downward and focused on the pendants dangling between her and his heart.