“Oh?” He stepped up onto his porch and pushed open his door, letting her enter first.
She ducked inside the small house and kept talking. “I’ve been on the road playing small clubs and bars for ten years. The industry has changed. It’s not about the music anymore.”
“It’s not?”
“It’s about money. And I’m done with it. Music will always be a big part of my life, but I’m ready to sing lullabies to babies.”
He hated to see her defeated, and as he looked more closely at her, he saw the sleepy lines around her eyes and lips. The past ten years hadn’t been easy for her. He’d only seen glimpses of her life on the road going from city bar to city bar. She gave her audience her heart on the stage and appeared to have gotten nothing in return.
He needed to give her heart back. She’d been holding onto his for a decade. Together, maybe they could heal. “How about a nap,” he suggested.
“A nap?” She looked confused, and then a small smile spread her lips. “I would love a nap.”
He led her to his bedroom where she kicked off her shoes and curled under the covers. When he started to back out of the room and give her privacy, she reached out a hand. “Join me?”
His shoes were off and he was next to her in the bed before her next breath. “Always.”
It was full dark when Allison finally stirred in the bed next to him. He’d been awake, watching over her for roughly four hours. It had been the best four hours of his life. Seeing his match in his bed brought on a contentment like he’d never known.
“Mmm,” she mumbled and stretched with her eyes still closed. She smiled. “I needed that nap.”
He stroked a finger down her cheek, noting how her breasts looked in the tangled shirt. Her eyes opened and they stared at each other.
“Hi,” she whispered. “Did you sleep?”
He shook his head.
“You lay here watching me? How boring.”
Another head shake. “I could watch you forever.”
“Just watch? Or did you want to touch?” Her smile was the smile of a woman confident in how much she was wanted.
“I needed to let you sleep, because I’m going to keep you awake for a long time.”
“Oh?” Her question was all seduction.
“We have ten years to make up for.”
“We better get started then.”
And then he was on her, like a ravenous beast, kissing and pulling at her clothes, hurrying to get her naked. She yanked at his clothes with the same urgency. He hadn’t seen her in ten years, and he was dying to know what twenty-eight-year-old Allison looked like naked.
“Oh, wow,” she breathed. “You’re as good as I remember. Better.”
“You, too.”
Their first coupling was hard and urgent. A few kisses, some fingering to make sure she was wet, and then he was in her, pounding away without finesse, both of them mindless to anything but coming together. They watched each other silently, with their limbs entangled as he pushed into her inch by inch. It was a homecoming. Their own personal reunion, ten years in the making. It was bliss, heaven.
The second time was slower. They were curled together talking in between soft slow kisses. A touch here. A stroke of a finger there.
“I’ve missed you every day,” Allison confessed.
“Like a piece of me was missing,” Peter said, examining the weight of her breast in a careful palm.
“I forgot how poetic you could be. All manly soldier, and then you say stuff like that.”
“Making love to you is a poem,” he replied, not caring how cheesy he sounded. His soldiers would howl for a week if they heard him speak like that, but fuck ‘em. They didn’t have the most amazing woman in the world in their beds looking at them as if they were the center of the world.