And One Last Thing... Part 14

I wound my ankles around his, tilting my hips up to his as an ever-tightening coil of pressure built inside of me.

"Don't stop," I whispered.

"Have to," he panted. "Fire."

"I'm on fire," I murmured dreamily.

"No, fire," he said, still thrusting, but now nodding toward the fireplace. While the haphazard manner in which Monroe had thrown my sweats.h.i.+rt was d.a.m.ned s.e.xy, it was also precariously close to the fireplace. My sleeve was burning, threatening to set the entire house up.

"Don't you stop!" I told him as my body thrummed.

Monroe tried to manage tamping out the flaming sleeve all the while moving over me. He could not do both.

"Just burn the thing!" I cried, tossing the hoodie into the fireplace as I fell over the edge into the dark spasms that shook my body. I screamed with each wave that ran through me, clutching at Monroe's shoulders. I fell back on the floor, my skin beading with sweat, as Monroe collapsed on top of me.

Even with the smell of burning sweats.h.i.+rt filling the room, I was floating, blissful. I had almost nodded off when Monroe rolled and pulled me onto his chest. "No sleep just yet."

I'd expected it to be awkward. I mean, once you demand that a man burn an article of clothing in a mid-o.r.g.a.s.mic frenzy, it's hard to go back to small talk. But later, when we were stretched out on Monroe's bed, chugging ice water like we'd just run a marathon, it was completely comfortable. I might as well have been fully clothed and watching a baseball game on the couch with him. Monroe propped my head onto his outstretched arm and blew a hard, pleased breath out as he smiled at the ceiling.

"If you don't show me those earlier, dirtier love scenes you wrote, I may weep openly. Obviously, you have some very interesting things going on in that head of yours."

"And the good news is that the bullet wound has only slightly affected your technique," I told him.

"Slightly?"

I shrugged. "It's nothing to be ashamed about."

"You want to see it, don't you?"

"No!" I cried before finally admitting, "Yes."

"It's okay, I don't mind," he said, looking smug as he rolled over onto his stomach. "It's not the first time this baby has bagged me a curious lady."

"Nice." I grunted, slapping his b.u.t.t.

"Hey! Easy! I'm a wounded man," he exclaimed.

"Oh, you were a wounded man," I said, sitting up so I could get a better look at him. I'd expected an actual bullet hole, but what I saw was a long straight-line scar across one b.u.t.tock. "Well, that's just sort of anticlimactic."

"I'm sorry to disappoint you," he said crossly.

I looked over his shoulder and saw the clock. It was almost 1:00 a.m. "Wow, it's late. I should get home."

Monroe's brows winged up to his hairline. "Really? You're not going to stay?"

Uh-oh. Had I broken some sort of friendly s.e.x etiquette rule? It didn't make any sense for me to stay. I didn't have a toothbrush or contact solution there. I had both at my own cabin which was less than a hundred yards away. Plus, it took me so long to get to sleep these days, I didn't want Monroe to feel obligated to stay awake to entertain me ... or realize what an insomniac mess I was.

"Is that okay?" I asked, wincing as I sat up. Athletic s.e.x made you sore in new places.

He shrugged as I slipped back into my jeans. Thanks to the regular running and the thousands of calories we'd burned over the last couple of hours, they were fitting easily again. "Sure, I - I just never had a woman just get up and leave before. I think I feel sort of cheap." He pulled the sheets up to his chest in a mock display of tearful vulnerability.

"Well, to make up for your emotional trauma, why don't you come over tomorrow and I'll make you waffles."

He gave me a suspicious look. "Wait, so I get to have s.e.x with a beautiful woman... and waffles... and I get to sleep on my side of the bed?"

I nodded.

"You may be my favorite person ever," he told me.

"I aim high."

"So you're really fine with this?"

"Why wouldn't I be?"

"Because most women would want to stay over. In fact, most women would be hurt that I hadn't already asked them to stay over."

I pulled my s.h.i.+rt over my head, leaned over the bed, and kissed him. "Look, I've gotten used to sleeping by myself, right in the middle of the mattress with all the pillows piled into a little nest around me You'd cramp my style."

Of course, it took me three or four hours to fall asleep that way. But he didn't need to know that.

"You," he said, kissing me and tugging me back into bed, "I really like you."

I grinned down at him, reluctantly pulling away as I slipped into my s.h.i.+rt. "You should."

20 * b.i.t.c.h-slapped by My Muse.

Color me crazy, but I think I might have stumbled into a mature s.e.xual relations.h.i.+p.

I didn't feel weird around Monroe. I felt great. Energized, relaxed, confident. I even danced around the cabin in my underwear. And even better, Monroe did not seem weird. It felt perfectly fine to get up in the dark cabin, slip back into my clothes, give him a peck on the lips, and go home at the end of the night.

He usually found me sitting on my porch in the mornings, working on a ma.n.u.script I was thinking of calling Divided Property. We talked about what we were planning on writing that morning. And then he kissed me on the top of the head and told me to behave myself. I would say that was unfair, but my last writing project did end up being re-enacted on YouTube, so draw your own conclusions.

We were still friends. Friends with benefits. Yay.

I didn't need him. I didn't depend on him for money or social standing. I just liked having him around. Monroe didn't care who my daddy was, or who I was married to, or how I could help him. He just liked me and he really enjoyed having s.e.x with me, which considering how my last relations.h.i.+p went, was rea.s.suring.

And when we did have s.e.x... Wow. That's all I'm saying. No, that's not all I'm saying. When I was married, s.e.x was just something we did on Wednesdays and Sat.u.r.days. It wasn't something I looked forward to, and afterward I didn't feel much better. I finally understood that my s.e.x problems were not the result of me being frigid or inadequate or not knowing what the h.e.l.l I was doing. And maybe it wasn't even Mike's fault. I was going to go ahead and blame Mike anyway, but it was much more likely that the two of us were just s.e.xually incompatible. We didn't listen to each other. Neither of us knew what the other wanted. We were like two magnets with negative charges, whenever we tried to get together - well, the bottom line was repulsion.

Monroe didn't care whether I'd showered. He didn't care what time it was or whether he had something else he should be doing. He made me laugh before, during, and after. And it felt good. It made me feel good.

Nothing was expected. If we ate dinner together, great. If we didn't, okay. If we hung out together, but didn't have s.e.x, it wasn't the end of the world. There was no pouting, no hurt looks.

One afternoon I was curled up on the sofa, reading Drunk Tank Duets. It was the kind of bl.u.s.tery afternoon you wanted to wallow in, to drink hot cocoa and wear fuzzy socks and do nothing but nap. I'd turned off anything that would make noise because I wanted to hear the patter of the rain on the roof.

There was a knock on my screen door. Monroe was standing outside, rain dripping from his hair and a smile stretched across his face. The afternoons were his usual writing time, so it was strange to see him out this early.

"You okay?" I asked, opening the door for him. "You're going to freeze wandering around in the rain like that."

He dug his fingers into my hair and dragged me against his cool, wet mouth. He tasted clean and spicy.

I dropped the book as he hitched my legs up over his hips and carried me, albeit slowly, into my room. I pushed his sodden jacket back over his shoulders and dropped it to the floor. His s.h.i.+rt followed just before he dropped me on the bed with a playful little bounce. It was at that moment I realized I was wearing my pajama pants with the little candy corns on them. And I just didn't care.

I reached for his belt buckle, but he pushed me back on the bed and stretched over me, pressing me into the old mattress. "Slow down. We're not in a hurry. We have all day."

This was different. This was slow, no urgency, no rush. Just the slip of skin against skin. Fingers brus.h.i.+ng over my ankles. The curve of his smile against my belly as he peeled my s.h.i.+rt over my head. The good solid weight of him lying between my knees as he kissed my thighs and slipped on a condom.

I was warm and ready and when he was inside me, it felt so good I wanted to cry. He rolled over so that I straddled him, letting me ride him as my fingers intertwined with his. It was so odd to see this huge, "manly man" lying in the midst of my hot pink pillows. He released my hands to grip my hips and steady me.

I ground down, circling my hips in time with his thrusts. His breath quickened in his chest. He was close, holding on for me. He sat up, curving his hands up my waist and around my b.r.e.a.s.t.s. The clench of his teeth around my nipple sent me flying, a rainbow of colors exploding in my head as I quaked over him.

At the first shudder, he groaned into my mouth and toppled over the edge after me. I collapsed in a sweaty heap on his chest.

He cupped his hand around my jaw, pushed my hair out of my face, and kissed me. I rolled on my side, my arm slung over his chest. "So you will pretty much use any excuse not to work, huh?"

"Well, yes," he said, scooching down so we were eye-to-eye. "But that's not why I came over. I came over because when a guy has someone like you in his life and there's the opportunity to make love to her on a rainy afternoon, he should do it."

"If that's a line from one of your books, I will kick your a.s.s." I promised him, stretching along the length of his body.

"No, but I really should write that down," he said, looking on my nightstand for a pen and paper.

I slapped lazily at him as I wrapped my arm around his waist. Every muscle in my body was relaxed and well used. My head felt so heavy against his shoulder. I yawned and closed my eyes. And I don't remember anything much after that.

When I woke, it was still raining, The quilt was draped across the small of my back as Monroe absently rubbed his hand along my spine. He was reading over my ma.n.u.script and making notes in the margins.

"I'm sorry," I mumbled, still so heavy with sleep that all I wanted to do was close my eyes again. "How long have I been out?"

"A couple of hours. Go back to sleep," he whispered, kissing my temple.

I laid my head back on the pillow and pa.s.sed out again. When I came to, Monroe was sleeping beside me, his chin bucked over my shoulder, his hand flexed over my hip. It was very strange, sleeping with another man after so many years, to have some other person's body sprawled next to mine. For one thing, Monroe snored, a light, buzzing rattle out of his throat that reminded me of a hibernating bear. And I couldn't remember the last time I'd been touched in my sleep, held as if Monroe was afraid I would slip away while he dreamed.

I chuckled, rolling over to face him. I stroked a hand over his whiskers and he leaned into it, his eyes fluttering open. He grinned and kissed me.

"Hey."

He pressed a hand to the base of my spine, pulling me close to him. "h.e.l.lo there."

"Sorry I fell asleep."

He shrugged, tucking my face into his neck. "You haven't slept a whole night since you got here. I figure you're due."

"So I wasn't able to cover up that insomnia nearly as well as I'd hoped, huh?"

He rubbed his palms along my jaw, running his thumbs along my cheeks. "I used to see in your window sometimes, when I looked up from my computer screen. You'd be all curled up on the couch, trying so hard to sleep. You were brave and strong and ... really, really p.i.s.sed off. Which I like in a gal. You'd pace and you'd prowl until you'd pa.s.s out. And for a moment your face would be still and you looked happy. I lived for that. Even when I wanted you to disappear and leave me in peace, I lived for watching you finally find the quiet."

"How closely were you watching me?"

"Pretty closely," he admitted. "Well, you're not hard to look at. Some perverse part of me wondered when you were going to break. But you never did. I think that's when I realized, 'That's a person I want to get to know better."

"You have strange standards for friends.h.i.+p," I told him, rolling onto his chest. I sat up; the sheets fell away and puddled around my waist. When he reached up to curl the ends of my hair around his fingers, I smiled down at him.

"Oh, no." He groaned.

"What?"

"That's the look of a woman who just realized I am completely in her power," he said.

"Really?" I arched my eyebrow in a sinister manner.

"Oh, don't act like you don't know you're a temptress," he said, rolling me onto my back and wrapping my legs around his waist. "Just look at you with your candy-corn pajama pants. You're irresistible and you know it."

"Yes, novelty pajamas are a key part of my reclaiming my feminine power agenda."

"I knew it," He groaned in false agony as he kissed me and began that long, slow slide back into loving me again. "I'm toast."

"Can I ask you something?"

He kissed the back of my neck, stroking his hand up my thigh. "Yes to outfits. No to third parties."

I snickered, but didn't respond to the imagery that conjured. "Do you think this would ever work in the real world? This thing with us? Is this the kind of friends.h.i.+p that could only thrive in isolation? No one to turn to but each other?"

"I think you should turn off that gigantic, somewhat frightening brain of yours, stop a.n.a.lyzing, and enjoy it," he said, tapping me gently on the forehead. "I am."

"So just don't think about the fact that I've been happy for an extended period of time? Just enjoy myself?"

He nodded.

"This is not a concept I'm familiar with," I confessed.

"Well, become familiar with it," he told me, rolling me onto his chest. "Now, let's talk about these outfits."

21 * Tree-house Ladders.

It came to my attention that Monroe and I rarely spent time over at my place unless we were having s.e.x. Because Monroe pointed it out.

It was late one Thursday afternoon. Mr. Borchard had just packed up his tools for the day, leaving my half-finished replacement dock covered with, a tarp by the sh.o.r.eline. He'd had a brainstorm about using some of the wood salvaged from the old dock to build a couple of benches for the yard, and had spent nearly an hour discussing their construction with Monroe. When he finally left, we collapsed into my hammock, exhausted by a retiree with the energy of a kindergartner on Red Bull.

"So why don't we hang out here tonight? You know, with our clothes on," he suggested.

I frowned at him. "That's sort of random."