"Sounds good," Virgin declared immediately, dropping his big body down on the couch, his gaze focused on me.
"Are you really going to sit there and watch me?"
"I'm really going to sit here and watch you," he declared shamelessly.
And so then he did.
Never had I been more acutely aware of every single one of my movements as I was while I moved around the kitchen, grabbing ingredients, bowls, a tray.
Flustered, I reached for the iPod Thad kept in a dock on the counter, picking his Smooth Like Molasses playlist at random, not realizing until it was too late that the playlist was straight up sex music. Of the classy sort, but sex music all the same. And I couldn't change it because that would seem like it bothered me. Yet leaving it on might be seen as forward, right?
Never before had I so thoroughly overthought a playlist as I did while I broke eggs into flour, cocoa and baking powder, sugar, salt, and butter.
"Relax," Virgin's voice demanded.
But not from where it should have come from.
Not from the couch, a safe distance away.
Oh, no.
His voice was directly behind me.
Even as I realized this, I could feel his body move in close.
Big hands came down on my shoulders that were, admittedly, tense.
"You mix," he suggested, thumbs pressing into the knots in my shoulders. "I'll work on the relaxing part," he suggested, his hands working magic across my shoulders, neck, upper back.
Then, as I poured the batter into the pan, the center of my back, lower, over my hips where I didn't think it was possible to hold tension, but hold it there I did, the muscles loose, lax by the time his hands slid forward.
I sucked in a shaky breath, not realizing I was leaning backward until I felt my shoulders press into his solid chest.
His hands paused at my hipbones, seeming to give me a moment, to pull away, to push him away.
Virgin didn't strike me as a passive man, a take things slow kind of man.
But it struck me that he was being careful, going at my pace. Because he knew it had been a decade. Because, as he found out over dinner, I had barely gotten a chance to engage in the physical sides of a relationship with a man even before I went away.
Realizing how unexpectedly sweet that was, my heart skittered around in my chest, chasing away the nerves that had situated there sometime early in the morning in anticipation of this reality.
Seeming to feel me relax into him, his hands moved again, flattening over the tops of my thighs, sliding down. The thin skirt material was a pathetic border. I could even feel the heat of his hand searing through as his hands kept sliding downward. At my knee, his hands started scrunching up the material, making it glide deliciously over freshly shaven skin until it was all in his palms.
His thumb held the material up as his hand flattened again, this time on the bare skin above my knee, the sensation soothing and exciting somehow at the same time.
Virgin's palms were rough from years of working with his hands, oddly smooth in other spots - scars from his enforcing days.
My head turned, resting just inward of his clavicle, as his hands slid up higher, teasing near the smooth skin of my inner thigh.
"Wait." I hadn't even known I was going to say anything until the word was out of my mouth. It didn't even sound like me, quiet, airy.
His hands froze but didn't move away.
Waiting.
Like I asked.
"Yeah?" he asked, his head shifting, his lips pressing a sweet kiss to my temple.
"What's your name? Your real name," I clarified.
Virgin paused, seemingly hesitant. I wanted to say never mind, that it wasn't a big deal. But, in the moment, it felt like a big deal. I felt like it was impossible to go this step with a man whose name I didn't know.
But before I could feel worry that we might be at an impasse, he spoke, voice low and rumbling, a sexy sound that shivered across my skin.
"Ty," he told me, sounding like he was telling me a secret. "Tycen, but... Ty."
"Ty," I rolled the name around, finding I liked it more than his road name, that I liked the honesty of it, the privateness of being privy to it.
A low, rumbling, almost... growling sound moved through Ty's chest at me saying his name.
"We un-paused now?" he asked, voice rough, a little impatient, needy.
Even as I thought that, I could feel his hardness pressing against me, as desperate as the throbbing, aching need between my thighs.
"Yes."
The word wasn't even fully out of my mouth before his hand shot upward, pressing hard over the panties between my thighs. My one arm flailed, looking for something to hold onto. Finding nothing, it moved upward, winding around the back of his neck.