Keeping Pace (12 page)

He made himself at home in one of the seats opposite my desk. I wish I didn’t notice how his royal blue shirt brought out the color in his eyes, but nothing else was going my way today, so why should this? A few stray hairs peeked out of the gap at the top of his shirt, sending my mind down paths of imagining. How much hair had turned gray on his body exactly? Was it only on his chest or maybe all over now? Was there more or even less than the last time I’d seen him? I shouldn’t have had the thoughts plaguing me, but that didn’t stop the questions from forming.

Lou glanced at the door he’d shut behind him. Leaning forward, he looked straight into my eyes. “Are you avoiding me?”

“Of course not.” I had been.

“That’s good to know. Given what we discussed any more thought?” A look must have crossed my face, because he added, “I know I’m throwing a lot at you, so why don’t we take it slow?”

“And taking it slow would mean…”

“Let me take you out to dinner Friday night. Someplace nice in the city.”

The situation with Josh was tenuous at best. Nothing prevented me from accepting. “I’m sorry, Lou, but I have plans.”

“Yeah?” Something in his eyes flashed. “That guy at your house—what was his name—Josh! With him?”

“No, not with him.” At least that wasn’t a lie.

“Who was he, anyway? If you don’t mind me asking.”

It dawned on me why I’d become so uncomfortable with Lou’s sudden pursuit. He pressured me unnecessarily out of the clear blue. The Lou I thought I knew was a patient man with a lot more finesse than the person in front of me displayed now. There was more to his behavior, but I couldn’t put my finger on what exactly.

“In fact, I do mind you asking.” I struggled to keep my voice even and nonthreatening. “On top of that, I have a righteous headache right now and can’t think straight. So…rain check, huh?”

Lou reached across the desk for my hand, curling his around it. “I’m not going to keep asking, you know.”

“I know.” With everything in me, I prayed I wasn’t making a mistake. “It’s just really bad timing for me.”

He smiled at me, and I felt something inside melt a little. “Don’t wait too long.”

Things weren’t completely resolved between us, but Lou stood and left. I followed the motion of his ass, not feeling the least bit guilty about it. He filled his pants out nicely, but he didn’t have that sway Josh had turned into an art. The kind that left me breathless.

A shudder went through my body as I allowed my thoughts to drift to him. God, I did miss that man. Not just the sex but him. Our talks. The way he furrowed his brow when concentrating. The scent of him when he hugged me. How he managed to coax out the things that were bothering me before I even knew they were.

I hated that we were fighting. A two-day separation shouldn’t have affected me as deeply as it did, but my aching heart didn’t want to hear that.

Even more, I hated the last words I’d said to him.

When I arrived home that evening, I looked toward his house, but the familiar black Range Rover wasn’t sitting in the driveway. My house on fire wouldn’t have gotten me to go over there, but it miffed me that he wasn’t sitting there, pining, waiting for me to drive up so that he could run over with a dozen roses in hand to apologize.

I chuckled to myself, amused by my runaway imagination, and automatically headed toward the sliding glass door as was my habit when I came home from work these days. The picture ahead of me was wrong somehow, and it took almost a full minute to realize why.

I’d expected a familiar little package to greet me, his reassurance that all was right between us despite our disagreement. But two pink roses didn’t rest against the glass waiting for me. All I could see was the blackness of the night.

By Wednesday evening, I was determined to get some sleep. My late hours and the subsequent tossing and turning were beginning to take their toll at work. I was snappy toward everyone, and dark circles seemed to have taken up permanent residence beneath my eyes. While the thought appealed to me on one hand, I resisted the temptation to take a pill. It seemed wrong to have to rely on pharmaceuticals for something that should have come naturally.

I suffered for my stubbornness. Roaming the house brought me no relief. Lights were turned off and on as I looked for something to occupy my mind enough to make me drowsy. Mostly, I wandered; no good books to read, nor good TV to watch. It took me hours to fall asleep, and when I finally drifted there, I dreamed.

There’s a place between waking and sleeping where dreams blend with reality. Where the noises of the house, such as the insistent ticking of a clock, became the sound of footsteps in the mind. Where the radio announcer on the radio whose alarm you’ve slept through became a sportscaster at the parade you’ve led.

I hovered there, at times opening my eyes to capture a shadow on the wall, sometimes mistaking a shape for something it couldn’t be. An impossibility. Boiling hot, I cast aside the sheets only to bundle beneath them hours, maybe only minutes, later because I was freezing cold. I didn’t rest during this time, but I clung to what little sleep I could manage.

In my dreams I found Josh again, because somehow in the waking world, I’d lost him. My broken heart mended during those times, and I rejoiced in the smell of him, the feel of him against me. I cried for him, and I laughed with him; at times I did both simultaneously. There was no sense in my whispered words when I awoke, but in my dreams, I said his name again and again, crying out for him because, in my heart, I knew how much I needed his love.

I allowed myself the freedom to care for him openly here, to give my heart to him without fear of losing him to an illness that came unheeded. My feelings blossomed, growing on the certainty that he loved me back with all of himself. Here, no one judged us for our differences, because here, only he and I existed.

My eyes opened to more shadows, to indistinct shapes. I whimpered in protest at the darkness. I needed sleep. I needed Josh. I had neither.

I drifted back into the haziness where I felt his kisses, hot against my mouth. He cupped my face in his palm, outlined the shape of my breasts with his fingers. Josh studied the curve of my hips, explored the vee between my thighs.

“Josh…” It was a simple sound of yearning. A part moan, half asleep, half awake. Begging for more. For him. Needing.

A shadow moved in my bedroom. “I’m here.”

“Josh?” I blinked rapidly but did not wake up.

“The lights…” He sounded hesitant. Unsure.

I remembered now he had a key. But that didn’t matter. Or did it? I was punch-drunk on fatigue, on my body’s desperate need for rest. It was hard to tell if I dreamed now or if I was awake.

The shadow moved toward me. “Regina.”

Suddenly I wasn’t sleepy. My vision wasn’t as hazy. Somehow Josh found me in my desperate hour. He came to me when I needed him most. The fog around my vision cleared, and I studied his outline in the silhouette of light bathing him. Lights in the hall I’d neglected to turn off. The same ones he used as a beacon to guide his way back to me.

I lifted my arms, weighed down by the fog still enveloping me, and Josh fell into them. The last shadows of sleep vanished the moment our skin touched. There was no place for tiredness or dreams in this moment. The only thing that mattered now was the way my once-broken heart melded back together.

“I missed you,” I murmured between the kisses pressed to his lips, his chin. My mouth trailed over his neck, found the pounding pulse there.

“I shouldn’t have stayed away,” Josh replied. His voice was thick with emotion, and I knew he’d suffered from our separation too. “Tell me we’re not through.”

My hands pushed up the soft cotton of his shirt, exposing his perfect, flat abdomen. I sat up, kissing that wondrous stretch of skin and muscle. “If we are, I don’t want to know.”

Chapter Thirteen

He made a noise, a whimpering sound, and when my tongue followed my lips, the sound morphed into something more erotic.

“No.” He lifted his head away from mine, the strain of doing such a simple act evident in the way he breathed. Panted. “I didn’t…” he said softly.

“Shh…I know.”

I didn’t come here to have sex with you
, he tried to say. I didn’t have to hear the words to understand what wasn’t said. Somehow, though, he knew how I’d needed him, and as if we were in tune with each other’s thoughts, he’d heard me.

I studied him in that dim lighting. My gaze went over his outline, the hallway light creating an aura-like effect around him. He stood over me as my angel. My savior. Josh brought me from the brink of loneliness and made me face his passion. He’d become a partner to me in a few short weeks, one I didn’t know I’d been looking for.

“We’re messing this up, Regina.”

My lips traveled to his neck, pressed a bruising kiss there. “What?”

“This.
Us
.” His mouth brushed the side of my face. “We’re so good together, but we’re not taking it seriously. There’s more to us than just—”

I cut off his words with a searing kiss on his mouth. I distracted him because I didn’t want to listen to rationale thinking. Whatever lecture or chastisement he’d been about to voice could wait. I wanted him inside me. Needed it.

He groaned when my tongue pushed past his lips, teasing inside until we kissed with the fiery abandon I’d come to know when I opened myself to him. As always, Josh responded to my fevered touching. His body heated beneath my fingertips, and without brushing his cock, I knew he was ready for more. Ready for me.

Josh somehow found the will to pull away. He searched my eyes. “How many chances do we give ourselves to get it right?”

I struggled to hide my confusion. He was here, and we were mended. What wasn’t I understanding? “We are getting it right. Every time we touch. Every time we kiss. We’re doing it.”

“I want more than sex with you, Regina.”

“And we have more than just sex.” The words felt wrong as they left my mouth, as if they knew there was an undercurrent of doubt hidden within. “We talk and we laugh. We’re so good together.”

There was conviction in those last few words, a surety I’d inserted. Something inside me blossomed. It knew the truth it heard. Whatever doubts I had about being with Josh were assaulted by the understanding that we did talk and laugh together. We belonged with each other.

Still another part of my mind balked, though.

To my own self, I hid, then. Hid by reaching for Josh, pulling him to me until our mouths crashed together and his tongue lashed mine.

He tasted of the night, like summer. His breath was clean. Pure. His taste was both rugged and masculine. All I knew at that moment was that I was addicted and wanted more. The rest of him to feast upon.

I pulled at his shirt, feeling the material stretch in my grip, defying my want. I cried out my frustration for there was too much material in my way. Josh took my hands in his, putting an end to my frenzied groping. My appetite for him had grown to immense proportions, ready to consume us both in its intensity. So Josh stoked my urge, not by matching it but by forcing me to endure him at his pace.

He kissed over my lips, taking his time with the exploration. No part of my mouth went untouched. Josh tugged on my bottom lip with his teeth, kissed both corners of my mouth. When his tongue teased over my top lip before stealing inside, my heart roared. No matter how I sighed beneath his strong grip, his kiss was unhurried. He pressed his mouth to mine as if time did not exist, or if it did, he couldn’t care less if it left him behind.

We didn’t speak after he pulled away. Instead, Josh kneeled over me, straddling my body, and removed his shirt. Unable to help it, I sucked in a breath at his naked beauty. Somehow the light had found him just right—highlighting the perfect places, hiding the imperfect ones. His skin was flawless, missing the stretch of too many indulgent dinners or too many beers. Muscles in his abdomen flexed with his movement, as they similarly did in his arms. He was young. So incredibly young, but once again, I tried to ignore it.

Behaving myself was a chore, but I didn’t move when he slipped off simple black shorts. They hadn’t been able to disguise his growing arousal. My eyes drifted to the swollen head of his cock, already glistening at its slit. My mouth watered with the anticipation of tasting him. He was so aroused. So hard and ready.

He elevated himself over my hips, almost giving me no place to look but at the decadence of his body, or if not there, gaze into the hunger in his eyes, at the tension in his strained muscles or at kiss-swollen lips. My hands went to the material of my nightgown, for I wanted to feel all that masculinity against my bare skin with no more clothing between us.

Josh stopped me. “No.” His voice was almost guttural. Strained. “Let me.”

There was heat in his eyes when he gazed on my uncovered nudity. The same type of gaze men get when they hold themselves back with every bit of restraint they have in themselves. The same parted mouth and eclipsed gaze that made a woman melt inside.

This was no dream when his fingers whispered over my skin, memorizing my every curve. The feel of my flesh. My nipples tightened when he circled them, and when he slid his hands between my thighs, I was wetter than I could ever remember being.

He studied my every reaction, stroking places over and again when they made me cry out in unashamed abandon. Kissing away the tickle if I smiled. He tested the feel of my heartbeat beneath my breast. Tasted the skin of my neck. His touch was light when he parted the lips of my pussy, his arms nudging my legs wider apart. And that heat in his eyes went molten as he stared at what he’d bared. My swollen lips, my hardened clit. The moisture I knew had gathered.

He skated one finger across the delicate folds, a feather-light caress enough to make me buck when he touched me. Then that finger pushed into me, sliding into my body. He watched where he entered me, his gaze almost palpable to my tingling flesh. When he withdrew it and brought his glistening finger to his mouth, the lust in his eyes made me break out in goose flesh.