Everything in Between (22 page)

“You don’t have a thing to apologize for.” She chuckled lightly. She whistled under her breath. “I’m the one who should apologize. You touch me, and I just blow.”

“That sounds pretty good. You might have to show me that sometime.”

Resting her forearm on his chest, she propped her chin on her hand to meet his gaze. “It would be my pleasure.”

“Mine, too.” He grinned.

“So what are we waiting for?” Zae crawled between his legs. She gave him a gentle, cursory wipe with the bed sheet, then took him in one hand.

“Sweetie, it’s too soon.” He smiled. “I’m not as young as I used to be.”

“Neither am I.” Holding his gaze, she circled the plump, dark pink knob atop the slumping staff in her hands. “Don’t underestimate the elderly. We know things the young’uns don’t.”

Chip winced. She was being gentle, but he was still sensitive from their previous interlude.

Zae eased the discomfort by wrapping her lips around him. With little more coaxing than a few tricks of her tongue and cheeks, Zae jumped Chip’s engine. Like a good Marine, his shaft snapped to attention, awaiting further duty. “Experience over age, soldier,” Zae teased. “Never forget it.”

“Yes, sir…” Chip gasped, his last coherent thought before Zae took him to an endless universe of spine-bending pleasure.

The muted light of the brass lamp on Zae’s night table bathed Chip’s body as he lay on his stomach in her bed. His head pillowed on his arms, he smiled when Zae lowered the bed sheet past his buttocks.

“See anything interesting?” he asked.

“Yes.” Zae reached for her glasses on the nightstand. She slipped them on and peered at his back. “You’ve got a funny spot. I noticed it in the shower. I thought it was dirt or something at first, but it doesn’t come off.” She picked at it with her fingernail, even though she hadn’t been able to scrub it off in the shower.

“It’s just a mole,” he mumbled into the pillow. “I’ve got another one on my inner thigh. Want to check that one out, too?”

“I already did. And it’s just a mole.” She rolled him onto his back.

He grinned at the sight of her. With her bed-tousled hair and nerd glasses, she was an amazing vision of geek sexiness.

She took his right hand and examined the nail bed of his thumb. “You have a dark spot here. It could be a sign of anemia.”

“I was working on a house last week,” he said. “I banged my thumb. It’s just a blood bruise. It’ll go away.”

“When was your last physical?”

“I don’t know.” He closed his fingers around her hand. “A couple of years ago. Why the concern?”

“How old is your father?”

“Who?”

“Your dad,” she snapped impatiently. “How old is he?”

“Seventy, next year. His father is ninety-four. They still go fishing together practically every weekend in spring.”

Zae kneeled over beside his supine figure, her fingers lightly moving over his skin. She pinched his skin to bring to better relief a tiny, strawberry bump. “What’s—”

“Birthmark.” He took her hand and folded it into his. “I’ve kept myself alive for almost thirty-six years. I think I can manage a while longer. The proper incentive would definitely help.”

Zae switched tacks, her scrutiny and touch becoming less clinical and more artistic. “Your skin is nice and man soft,” she sighed.

“What’s ‘man soft?’ ” Chip asked, rolling onto his back. “I don’t know if I like the sound of that.”

“My skin is soft one kind of way,” Zae started. She dragged her fingertips along her forearm. Chip added his fingertips to hers, starting a trail of pleasant goose bumps on her skin. “And yours is soft in a manly way. It’s like velour.”

“Thanks.” Chip laughed. “I’ve got the skin of an old lady’s track suit.”

Zae ran her knee along his hip. She cupped the slack length of flesh between his legs. It instantly responded, fast overfilling her grip. “This is really beautiful. It’s stately and neat.” With her thumb, she traced the thick cabled vein lining the underside of his shaft.

“You seem the connoisseur,” Chip remarked.

“Not really.” Zae snickered. “I don’t have much basis for comparison. I’ve only been with two other men in my life. Colin was the first man I ever loved and the only man I ever made love to, until…”

“Dr. Dudley.” Chip smothered a laugh in his forearm.

“Yes,” Zae snapped saucily.

“I still can’t see him with you.”

“He’s not with me. He never was. He was someone who satisfied an occasional need.”

“He was your booty call.”

“I think he’d like being called that.”

Zae caressed his upper right thigh, her hand gravitating to the long scar running from his hip to the middle of his calf. Time and expert surgery had softened the scar’s appearance, but the pale, thick lines still looked like railroad tracks. Zae considered scars to be badges of courage and strength. Chip’s was a symbol of his resilience. “Gian said you were one of the best rats in the field, with your big ol’ self.”

“Yeah, most of the other fellas were skinny little things. I’ve got good flexibility and reflexes because of my martial arts background, and I’m strong, so I could do things the little’uns couldn’t.”

She lay over his hip, her head toward his feet, his scar under her fingers. “It must have been terrifying. I’m terrified now, just thinking about you disarming booby traps and crawling into blown up buildings to defuse bombs.”

“I was never scared until after I got shot.” He kissed her buttock. “Gian was the best leader you could ask for, in good times and bad. I don’t think too many other commanders would have carried me two miles through enemy territory, bleeding like a stuck pig.”

“Gian said you were as close to death as any corpse he’d ever seen.”

“Fooled him, didn’t I?”

Zae took him in an awkward hug. “Would you have stayed in the military? If your leg hadn’t been injured so badly?”

“I never had to think about that. It’s a miracle I even walked again.”

“Would you have gone back?”

The merry light in Chip’s eyes dimmed along with his smile. His features seemed to age instantly in contemplation of the end of his military career. Zae cupped his face and pressed her forehead to his temple.

“I don’t think I could have. That last mission took too much from us. We lost four men in the explosion I’d gone in to prevent. When that building collapsed around me, I thought I was a goner. But Gian was on the other end of my radio and he talked me out of that building. It was like playing Blind Man’s Bluff, only I had Gian’s voice on a radio guiding me through the wreckage. No sooner than I was clear of the building, we took fire.”

He winced, a slight shudder moving through his body with the memory. He embraced Zae, dragging her to his chest, instinct telling him there was no safer place on earth than in her arms.

“My leg exploded under me,” he went on. “I didn’t feel it, at first. I looked down and saw my flesh hanging from the torn shreds of my pants. I went down, right there in the open. But Gian came and got me. He didn’t hesitate, not for a second. He dragged me over his shoulder, ran me to cover, and gave me a quick field dressing. I don’t remember much after that.”

“You were probably in shock from pain and blood loss.” Zae stroked his scar.

“I can’t feel that. Nerve damage.”

Her caress strayed higher, to the base of his abdomen and the crinkly golden hair there. He stirred, rising to meet her hand. “You can feel that.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Steering him with his rigid length, she guided him over her. He settled atop her, tenderly kissing her jaw and chin. Their bodies communicating effortlessly, they joined once again, tears spilling from Zae in their breathy exertions.

“I can’t imagine not having you in my life,” she whispered so softly, he almost didn’t hear her.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“Famous last words…”

“I don’t think God brought me through all He did just to run me over with a truck while I’m crossing the street.” He smiled. A droplet of sweat fell from his brow to trickle along her collarbone. “Especially not after making me the happiest man in the world.”

“Don’t give Him any ideas!” Zae choked on a sob. “He can’t resist a challenge.”

Chip used his thumbs to wipe away her tears. “God saved me for a reason. I think this is it, right here. I’ve never felt more right about anything as I do about loving you. He works in mysterious ways, but I promise you this: He won’t take me from you.”

His certainty pleased her, and she so wanted to believe him. “Colin’s death was the flood?”

He smiled, his eyes again bright with his love for her. “Now that would make me your rainbow, wouldn’t it?”

* * *

“Mom, are we going to breakfast?”

Zae heard CJ’s voice, and her body wanted to respond, but exhaustion dulled her reflexes. CJ had already turned and left the room before Zae could yank the bedclothes over Chip’s head.

“I need to talk to him,” Zae said, throwing off the covers. “He’s probably in shock right now, catching his mother in bed with you.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure about that,” Chip spoke into his pillow. “He knows a lot more than you give him credit for.”

“This is an entirely new situation for him,” Zae insisted. “He was barely three years old when his father died, he’s never seen me with another man, never mind seen me in bed with a man.”

“He told me that he likes to give backrubs to the girls at school.”

“So? He’s a nice kid.”

“He says he does it so he can tell who’s wearing a bra and who isn’t.” Chip chuckled. “The kid’s got skills I still don’t have.”

Zae paused, her legs hanging over the edge of the high bed. “I guess he’s growing up a little faster than I thought he was. I still need to talk to him, though. I don’t want him to feel that I’m hiding you from him.”

“Mind if I wait here?”

She kissed his shoulder. “You’d better.”

Leaving Chip buried under her comforter, Zae scurried out of bed. She pulled on her red chenille robe and shoved her feet into fluffy black slippers. Her heartbeat tapping out her anxiousness, she went down to the basement, CJ’s likeliest location.

“Didn’t you barge into my room just now, asking about going to breakfast?” Zae nodded toward a stainless steel mixing bowl full of Frosted Flakes and milk nestled in the center of her son’s crossed legs.

CJ, his thumbs constantly working his video game controller, never looked away from the wide-screen television. “I thought you were asleep, so I made my own.”

Zae sat on the arm of the long, deep leather sofa. CJ would be thirteen in a few short months, yet he still favored footie pajamas. The set he now wore had a garish camouflage pattern.

“What do you think?” Zae asked softly.

“About what?”

“Me and Chip.”

CJ shrugged. “Chip is cool. He teaches me lots of stuff.”

“Yeah? Like what?”

“He taught me how to do a spinning ax kick when I first started karate, and how to do that magic trick with the quarter and the ballpoint pen. He taught me that sentence to remember the planets,” CJ said.

“ ‘My Very Exciting Magic Carpet Just Sailed Under Nine Palace Elephants,’ ” Zae muttered. A ten-year-old girl crafted that mnemonic device to remember the eleven known planets and dwarf planets in the earth’s solar system. Chip had been so impressed by the youngster’s effort, he’d discussed the sentence with anyone who’d listen.
I should have known then that he wanted to be a teacher
, Zae mused.

“He showed me how to put a lobster to sleep,” CJ continued. “Remember our Labor Day party, from when I was really little, and Chip took the lobsters and stood ’em on their claws after he put them to sleep? That was so cool. I tried to do it with the crayfish at school before we dissected them, but my teacher said we had to put them to sleep another way. Chip taught me righty tighty, left loosey, too, when he and Gian were building our deck. He knows so much stuff.”

“I’m glad you like Chip.”

“Is he your boyfriend now?”

Zae hesitated. “Would that be all right with you?”

“Sure,” CJ stated matter-of-factly. “I like the way you are when he’s around.”

“What, I’m a big ol’ bitch the rest of the time?”

CJ set aside his game controller and placed the near-empty cereal bowl on the table before him. He turned to face her. “Mama, he makes you sing. That’s what I like the best about him.”

Zae captured CJ in a hug. His efforts to pull away dragged Zae over the arm of the sofa. She hugged him, kissing his cheeks until he laughed and hugged her in return.

* * *

Zae hung their coats on the stand at the corner of their booth. CJ scooted in first, grabbing the box of thick, broken crayons in the center of the table. He immediately began drawing on the brown paper covering the oval table.

“You guys come here often?” Chip asked. This was his first visit to Sauce, a storefront restaurant on the border between University City and Clayton. Its location made it an ideal after-hours spot for college students, night clubbers and the theater crowd. A comic book motif dominated the décor with Marvel heroes occupying positions more prominent than those with D.C. origins. Huge posters of comic book heroes and villains hung from the walls. CJ had chosen an empty booth watched over by Wolverine, Storm, Cyclops and Jean Grey from the X-Men.