Rex is facing the door when I walk back in and I can see him relax at the sight of me.
I hesitate a foot from the bed.
“Um, do you want me to take off?” I ask, trying to sound neutral and failing.
“You don’t have a car,” Rex says evenly.
“Oh, right.”
“I can take you home if you want,” Rex says, “but I wish you’d stay.”
“Yeah?”
He smiles. “Yeah.”
He reaches for my hand and I let him take it. He pulls me on top of him, sliding my underwear back off, and I let him. I let him settle me next to him too, where he cradles my neck in his hand and strokes my hip with the other.
“Do we need to take Marilyn out?” I ask.
“She’s fine.”
“Should we do something to the fire?”
“It’ll die out.”
“Do you want me to—?”
“I want you here, in this fucking bed,” Rex says, and he pulls me closer against him, palming my ass with one big hand and turning off the bedside lamp with the other. I slide my hand under his shoulder for balance and lean my cheek on his chest. He rests his chin on my head. “Just stay,” he murmurs. He traces the cleft of my ass with his finger, slipping in the lube that’s still there. He slides his finger back inside me, just as he did that night in the woods. I huff out a breath.
“I just want to be inside you,” he says softly. He’s already falling asleep. I sigh, not letting myself think about the fact that I’ve never slept beside a lover before—not unless I’d passed out drunk, anyway. I try to match my breathing to Rex’s, feel his rib cage rise and fall, carrying me off to sleep like a ship held safe in port.
Chapter 6
October
I WAKE up wrapped in a cocoon of delicious warmth, with a bone-deep feeling of satisfaction and comfort, so I know I can’t be at home. I’m not sure what’s causing it until I open my eyes and see that I’m basically lying on top of Rex, holding on to him like I’m a squid and he’s the whale I’m trying to snuggle the life out of. My face is nuzzled into his neck, my arms are wrapped around him, and my leg is slung over his hip in a way that would be borderline obscene if we weren’t sleeping.
It’s the way I used to wake up wrapped around this stuffed lion that I slept with as a kid. Sam won it at a school carnival for some girl, but when he found the girl to give it to her, she was making out with a guy on the basketball team behind the water ice stand, so he called her a slut and threw the lion on the couch when he got home. That was right before my mom died and I slept with it for years.
One of Rex’s arms is holding me and the other’s stretched under his pillow, his biceps round and strong even in slumber. I allow myself a few moments to look at him—the pulse beating in the vulnerable hollow of his throat, the scar under his right eyebrow that’s only visible when his eyes are closed, the perfect teardrop indentation above his upper lip—before I convince myself that I need to extricate myself from the death grip I have on him before he wakes up and thinks I’m some kind of desperate limpet.
I start to inch off of him slowly, but he makes a small sound and pulls me closer. He’s not even really awake. I kiss the underside of his chin—the only place my mouth can reach now—and he makes a soft mew of what might be satisfaction or just sleep, and puts his other arm around me.
I feel the first tinglings of panic—the kind of claustrophobia that comes when you know you need to sit very still—and I pull away a little.
“Daniel?” Rex murmurs softly. “Y’okay?”
“Yeah,” I say, pushing myself off him and rolling away. “I’ll be right back.” I retreat to the bathroom and splash some water on my face. I wonder if I should get out of Rex’s hair before he wakes up, but that doesn’t feel quite right. Besides, I hated it when I woke up alone the morning after we met. And it’s cold in the bathroom. I walk back to Rex’s room and look at the man spread out before me on the bed. He looks so young when he’s asleep, his face slack, his body relaxed, all that powerful muscle rendered merely decorative.
I slide back into bed beside Rex’s warmth, thinking I’ll just sleep for a few more minutes. The next thing I know, I wake up to Rex’s warm hand on my waist, his thumb stroking my hip bone.
“This is new,” he says, “right?” He’s looking at “Let Sleeping Bears Lie” inked above my hip and I groan in embarrassment.