Her eyes roamed his face for a long moment. Finally, she said, “Nobody’s caught and nobody’s lost. We’re both works in progress.”
Her fingertips skimmed along the front of his hair. She was a toucher, he’d already noticed, and anything textured drew her—the flannel shirt he’d worn to the hospital, his sweater, his hair. As an artist, the tactile tendency probably came with the territory, but he’d have to get used to it or spend the next few weeks dealing with a constant hard-on.
“How’s your head?”
Let me pull it out of my pants and check.It felt like someone had taken a hammer to his frontal bone, but he said, “Fine.”
“Sure it is. And your eye always twitches in time to the invisible drummer banging on your skull.” She strolled into the kitchen, opened a cabinet, and pulled out an industrial-sized bottle of ibuprofen. “How many would you like?”
So much for his tough-guy stoicism. “Three hundred.”
She laughed, tipped three tablets into her palm, and handed them to him, along with his glass of water from dinner.
He downed the pills while Savannah yawned so big he could have examined her tonsils if she hadn’t brought her fist up to block her mouth. “Tired?”
“I guess I am.” She leaned against the kitchen counter and glanced at the clock on her stove. “God, how pathetic. It’s noteven nine.”
“I’ll shove off and let you get some rest. Tomorrow I’ll come by, get my chairs, and we can talk. Decide how we play this thing out.”
“Wait.” She held out her hand, palm up. “I need a key so I can wake you up later and make sure your brain isn’t swelling.” With her other hand, she unconsciously smoothed her sweater over her hips.
Something was swelling, but not his brain. “You’re tired. Get some sleep. I’ll be fine.”
“Uh-uh.Iwon’t be fine. Dr. West gave me very specific instructions and I’ll lose sleep worrying about you if I don’t follow them to the letter. Name, birthday, and finger count, once at eleven and again at three. Two check-ins mandatory and a third at seven recommended. I’ve already set my alarm.”
“I don’t remember her using the word ‘mandatory.’”
“Are you afraid I’m going to laugh at your jammies or something?”
He spent another useless minute arguing the check-ins weren’t necessary, but she pulled out the symptom sheet she’d gotten at the hospital, ticked off headache, irritability, and memory loss, and suggested maybe she should go ahead and call an ambulance. He relented, retrieved his extra key, and handed it over with an exasperated, “See you at eleven. For the record, I sleep naked.”
“For the record, I’ve already seen you naked,” she tossed back, just before she closed the door.
Very funny. Sharing a bath as infants hardly qualified as seeing him naked. Even so, he caught himself smiling as he got ready for bed. In deference to his night nanny, he left the hall light burning, and pulled on an old pair of sweatpants and a not-so-old white T-shirt before he crawled into bed. He picked up the remote from his nightstand and turned on the TV centered onthe wall across from his bed. With the sound down, he clicked over to the sports network, thinking he’d catch some final scores, but then found himself listening to Savannah humming to herself through the wall. It took him a moment to place the song.
“Before He Cheats.” Yeah, this is where he’d come in.
When she got to the “pretty little souped-up four-wheel drive” part she broke off. A moment later her bedsprings squeaked and a light knock came from the wall behind his head, followed by a muffled, “Night, Beau.”
“Night, Savannah,” he replied, and tried to concentrate on the TV rather than every little squeak and groan of her mattress as she shifted around for a comfy position. His imagination offered up a graphic slide show of possible positions for her to assume.
He focused on the scores scrolling across the crawl at the bottom of the screen. North Carolina beat Duke. Good. Penn State beat Wisconsin. The Bruins beat the Trojansandcovered the spread. Miracle. The network cut to a commercial and he rested his eyes for a second…
Savannah’s scent surrounded him. Her breath fanned his cheek as she whispered his name. One busy hand drifted over his shoulder and down his chest. His subconscious mind hadn’t treated him to a dream this vivid in a long time, but his body rushed to enjoy it. “Lower,” he murmured. She shifted and said his name again, a little louder this time.
She liked loud. He wanted her loud. The creak of his mattress reminded him she also wanted a comfortable position. No problem. He could scratch that itch. He rolled, pulling her onto the bed, not stopping until he had her sprawled all over him, anticipating the slide of skin on skin.
Inexplicable layers of clothes and sheets thwarted the skin-on-skin goal, but the warm weight of her breasts rested against his chest. Her slender thighs straddled his waist, and incredibly soft, incredibly hot flesh kissed his abdomen. She wiggled backward—he couldn’t fathom why—but the move brought the yielding curves of her ass into contact with the straining head of his cock. He groaned his approval, and centered them up a bit.
“Beau.” Even louder now, and slightly breathless.
He tightened his abs, flattened his hand against the small of her back, and pressed her closer.
“Oh, jeez. Beau.”
Toes curled into calves. He slid his free hand up the back of her thigh, raising fabric as he went.
“Beau!”