“It wasn’t?”
“No. Have I just ruined your bad-girl status?”
“I don’t know. I guess that depends on what happens next.”
He turned his head and trailed his mouth across her jaw and upward, his lips lingering on the corner of her mouth. She felt his hands cup her cheeks and then his mouth, firm, coaxing and then demanding, slow expert kisses that demolished her ability to think.
“Ethan—”
He lifted his mouth from hers just enough to speak. “I don’t know where this is going. I don’t know what this even is, but right now I’m not sure I’m ever going to let you out of my bed again.”
She didn’t know where it was going, either, and she didn’t care.
She was dizzy with it.
She loved the shape of his mouth. The firm lines and the way the corners tilted when he smiled.
“This is my bed. We’re in my bed.”
“In that case you’re going to have to call someone to have me forcibly removed. In fact I’m not sure I’m going to move again. When I find the energy to pick up my phone, I’m going to call work and resign. We can both stay here until we die of thirst or starvation.” He slid his hand over her hip and lower, lingering on the junction of her thighs.
She caught her breath and arched against his seeking fingers, her body heavy with sensation and saturated with need. She’d never fe
lt this way about anyone before. Not ever. Never felt this all-consuming, intimate connection with a man.
His touch was sure and skilled and she wondered how it was that he could know exactly what she wanted and needed when she hadn’t said a word. The only sounds that came from her lips were soft moans of pleasure and he captured them with his mouth, intensifying sensation with kisses that blew her mind.
And in the back of her mind, the only part that hadn’t blown a fuse, a question began to form.
If this wasn’t a one-night stand, what was it?
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
SHE WALKED ON AIR, her smile so wide that people turned their heads to look at her as she walked the dogs, curious as to what had made her so happy.
She could have told them in one word.
Ethan.
Ethan, Ethan, Ethan.
“You look as if Christmas came early,” Glenys said as they walked slowly along Fifth Avenue. “So it’s going well then with the doctor?”
“Oh—” Harriet blinked. Was it that obvious? “Well, he’s working a lot of the time of course, but we’ve seen each other occasionally.” And each time had been better than the last. She never would have believed dating could be so easy.
“I knew right from the beginning that he was the one for you.”
Harriet felt her heart skip. “I don’t believe in ‘the one.’ How can there only be one person for us? What if ‘the one’ lives in Peru and I’m in New York? How am I supposed to find him? I don’t think my internal GPS is that reliable.”
“You found him, didn’t you? Life has a way of sending us to the right place at the right time.”
“You think spraining my ankle was all part of some master plan? Because that wasn’t even the start of it. If it hadn’t been for the dog sitting, I never would have seen him again.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.” Glenys was cryptic.
Harriet sidestepped a patch of ice. “Be careful here. How’s your hip?”
“Much better thanks to you. The doctor says all the walking has been good for me.”