6
Dave
After we finished our drinks, I led Lisa to my favorite of the guest rooms, which—bonus—was on my side of the house, on the opposite end of the mansion from Grandma. One thing I wanted to avoid, at all costs, was Lisa getting turned around in the dark of the night, flipping on the bathroom light, and finding herself faced with Grandma’s teeth in a glass. She’d been through enough already.
“This is really nice…” Lisa said, trailing off as she lightly touched the end of the big mahogany bed frame with her fingertips. She turned to me and blinked. “…So fancy. I’ve never been inside a house this beautiful.”
You’re making it a fuckload more beautiful. “The bed is super comfortable,” I told her, turning on the light switch on one of the side tables. “And it adjusts.” I didn’t give her the whole goddamned showroom shtick, but I raised and lowered the knee rest and a few things like that. I opened the cabinet under the TV and grabbed a few bottles of water for her and put them on her bedside table.
“Thank you,” she said again, with her eyes twinkling with heavy yawn tears. One of them tumbled out and spilled down her windburned cheek. And every fiber in my being said, Wipe it off for her. Touch her. Do it.
But I didn’t. I kept my shit together and played the gentleman. “There’s a spare toothbrush and everything you might need in the bathroom. But if you’re missing anything, just let me know. I’m sure we have it here somewhere. I’ll just be down the hallway. Fourth door on the right. I’ll leave my door open. You’re sure your head is okay?”
It was like the question startled her, like she’d forgotten, and her fingers moved gingerly up to the cut at her hairline. She winced as she touched the wound, and my goddamned heart dropped. “I think so. It’s sore, but I’m all right.”
I wasn’t so sure, though. I took a few steps closer and stood in front of her, holding her by the shoulders. What I meant to do, of course, was check to make sure her pupils weren’t different sizes, to make sure there was no obvious sign of a concussion. I wasn’t exactly an EMT, but I’d played soccer long enough to know a thing or two about what a mild head injury looked like, or worse. But instead of actually checking her pupils, I got totally lost in her eyes. They were this deep green, with brownish flecks at the edges, and one tiny darker fleck inside the outer rim of the left one, giving her the most mesmerizing asymmetry.
She pressed her lips together. “Do I get the all clear? Dr. Dave?”
“I’ve got no idea what I’m looking for, to tell you the truth.” But you are so fucking pretty.
Something between a honk and a snort shot out of her nose. Fucking adorable. Cute, pretty, sweet, and in my pajama pants. “Me neither. But I think I’m okay.”
“You need an Advil?”
“I’m good.”
“They’re in the medicine cabinet. And Tylenol. And some fresh soap.”
She nodded and looked like she was going to giggle. “You’re pretty cute, you know? For a guy in a mansion.”
Awwww, fuck.
Before I literally couldn’t pull myself away—ever seen a magnet get too close to another one and actually become airborne?—I let her go and stepped back.
But her hand snuck out and grabbed mine. It was like a fucking earthquake inside me, like some deep need was coming to the surface. Her thumb was pressing into my palm, her small fingers on the back of my hand. “Really. Thank you so much. I’d never have survived if you didn’t answer the door.”
“I think you’d have been fine.”
“Own it, Dave. You’re a hero.” She lifted her shoulder, which made my hoodie slip off her bare skin just enough to give an eighties vibe to the whole scene, Christ almighty. “No shame in that.”
Yeah, see, this woman was hitting the spot every goddamned which way. All it would have taken was one lunge, and I could have shown her exactly what she was doing to me. But I didn’t. My birth certificate didn’t say Prince of Lower Moravia for nothing. “Have a good rest. Come get me if you need me.”
“Okay,” Lisa said and let my hand go, smiling. With soft footsteps on the thick carpet, she made her way over to the bed and flopped down on the thick, down comforter. The comforter, the feather bed, the sheets, and the duvet almost swallowed her up, but not completely. I could still see the line of her breasts through my hoodie, and her adorable feet dangling off the side, with my socks—far too big for her—hanging off her, too. “This is amazing. I feel like I’m on a cloud.” She kicked her legs and then raised her arms, flopping them back behind her like a snow angel. She reached for the controller and then elevated the top half of the bed so she could see me. “I love this!” she said as she lowered herself back down flat again.
“That’s the idea,” I told her as I switched off the main light and stepped out into the hallway.
“Dave,” she said, poking her head up from the pillows.
Holy fuck. Yes. This. Goddamn it, yes. “Yeah?”
“Thank you again.”
It wasn’t what I wanted, but it’d have to do. “Sweet dreams.”
* * *
This time, it wasn’t a thumping that woke me up but a raging goddamned hard-on. The sexiest women I’d ever seen in my life was less than fifty yards from me, in my house, probably half naked now because I’d kicked up the heat and because she was underneath a whole stack of feather duvets. I turned over in my bed and listened to the wind howl, and listened too for any sound from down the hallway. Her punching her pillow, her adjusting her comfort zones, her adjusting the lumbar support so that her hips would be at exactly the right angle to… Fuck.
I sat up, drained my glass of water and then headed into the master bathroom to take a piss. The storm was still raging, even worse than before. I grabbed my phone and looked at the weather alerts, all of them stacked on top of one another, just minutes apart. I even saw a news alert that said the National Guard would be arriving in the morning, to help “extricate the citizens of Essex County.” But that wasn’t really what worried me at all. Thanks to my grandma’s Depression-era habit of hoarding all the essentials for some always-looming catastrophe, I’d had a huge generator installed. My basement had not two but three chest freezers and enough gallons of water to see us through an actual nuclear winter. We’d be fine. But what I was less sure about was Lisa. And that head wound. I’d gotten lost in her eyes before, and I hadn’t even really checked her pupils. Which was, technically, her fault. But I couldn’t really blame her for having eyes that made a guy forget everything he was doing.
So I looked it up on my phone, Symptoms of concussion. The usual array of super serious shit topped the list—vomiting, hallucinations, bleeding from the ears—Christ almighty. But then some less common but still scary-as-hell possibilities: Recurring unconsciousness. Irregular breathing. Seizures. And WebMD was clear about it, Those suffering from suspected concussion should be woken every three hours. Looking at the time, I realized it was almost exactly three hours at that moment. I’d left her at 11:30. Now, it was just about half past two. I raked my hand through my hair and thought about it for about one millisecond. I should check on her—I should definitely check on her.
Forcing my hard-on to relent and adjusting my package so I wasn’t coming at her with the flagpole at full staff, I walked down the hallway and listened outside her door. I had left it cracked, and she hadn’t shut it all the way. I pushed it open an inch and listened for her breathing or for the sounds of her shifting on the sheets. I didn’t hear anything, so I opened it a bit wider. And there she was, like Sleeping Beauty herself, surrounded by fluffy pillows and the down comforters, with the eerie storm glow from outside lighting up her profile.
I watched her breathing to see if it was regular and normal, but I just couldn’t tell from where I was standing. Advancing with careful steps farther into her room, I found myself beside her bed looking down at her. Much to my relief, her breathing was regular. And fuck me, she was even smiling a little. Like my hand wasn’t even attached to my body, like I was fucking dreaming, I moved a lock of her hair away from her forehead. She moaned and turned toward my hand, nudging me with her cheek and nestling farther into the covers.
“Lisa,” I whispered.
She stirred but didn’t open her eyes. Her pretty eyebrows furrowed together, though, like I was interrupting a dream and she was annoyed about it.
“Lisa, wake up,” I whispered again.
This time, she made this cute little whine, like I’d imagine she would when her alarm clock woke her. She rolled over in a huff and stuffed her face into the pillows. She was probably thirty or thirty-five, but right then, she was every bit as spoiled as a sleepy teenager, and I fucking loved it. But still, she slept.
I placed one hand on her shoulder and shifted her onto her back. I leaned in closer to get a look at the wound, to make sure it wasn’t bleeding again. It wasn’t, but her face was so damned beautiful, so peaceful, so sweet, that suddenly I just found myself bending over her. I was drawn to her like that; she was just so irresistible. As I got closer, I could smell a faint scent, something like strawberries, possibly. Or flowers. Or strawberries and flowers together. I couldn’t put my finger on it exactly, but whatever it was, it was seriously crazy-making. And before I knew what I was doing, I brought my face down to hers, and I was pressing my lips to her forehead.
Which was, of course, exactly the moment when she woke up. “Oh, fuck, what is going on?” she gasped, jerking away from me and giving me a startled shove like any normal human being would when they found a guy hovering over them in the middle of the night.
Smooth, you weirdo. Smooth. “Sorry. I was checking for a concussion. I had a bad feeling and… Sorry.” Just keep on digging, asshat. I stepped back like I’d been tased. What an idiot. Kissing some total stranger on the forehead while she slept? Telling her I was checking for a concussion? I’d be lucky if I got out of this thing with only a restraining order to show for it. I rubbed my stubble with my hand and looked away. “Jesus, I really am sorry. That was totally out of line. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
Such total bullshit. I knew exactly what I was thinking. About her. And me. And how badly I wanted her. About how her body felt against mine when we were curled up on the couch, about how relieved I felt when the violent shivers shifted to regular, calm breathing. About how good she felt there tucked up against me. With me. I wanted her then, and I wanted her even more now. It was really that simple.
Lisa sat up in bed, her hair in a loose ponytail. “It’s okay.”
“Sorry, I’ll let you sleep,” I said and began to walk away.
But before I could get more than a step away, her hand left the comforter and she reached out for me. It was awkward—she grabbed my first two fingers like a little kid might have—but it was enough to get me to stop cold. Then her grip shifted to something way more adult, and she flattened her palm up against mine, pivoting her wrist so we could have been on either side of a pane of glass in prison. In that moment, I swear to God I could hear the grandfather clock a whole story away going tick-tock, tick-tock.
Moment of truth. Now or never.
But I wasn’t going to push. Fuck knows I’d pretty much pushed my luck to the limit already.
“It really is okay, Dave. I’m glad you came to check on me.”
“Yeah?”
“Oh yeah,” she said with a smile in her voice. I don’t know how I could hear it, but I could. I could hear her smiling, even though I couldn’t see her. So I took my chance. I bit the bullet for the second time that night; I shifted my fingers slightly and knitted our hands together. My grip tightened, but hers tightened even more. It absolutely did. For a minute, I let myself get caught up in the size of her hands against mine. She wasn’t some shrinking violet—she was strong enough to hike four miles in the worst weather I’d ever seen—but still delicate. So much the opposite of me, really. In size, and the softness of her skin, and the tenderness of her touch.
“Please don’t tell me you’ve got some boyfriend worried sick about you,” I said. “Because I’d be fucking wrecked.”
She laughed softly through her nose. “No, I don’t.”
“Or a husband.”
“Not that either.”
“Or a girlfriend. Or a wife.”
“Or that,” she said, laughing a bit more. “You’re sweet. But, no, there’s nobody. Not even a dog. I work too much for any of that.”
I wished I didn’t understand that, but I absolutely did. “Good. That you don’t have anybody. Not that you work too much.” Hear that sound? That’s the hole you’re in, getting bigger.
But Lisa was either still half asleep or infinitely patient with my BS. “Well…maybe,” she said softly, “we shouldn’t think about work.”
Goddamn it. It was happening. “Agreed. But I’ve got something else we should think about.”
“Do you?” she said, and her left eyebrow arched just a fucking millimeter.
I moved the pad of my thumb down her lip. “Yeah. I do.”
Still holding my hand tight, she moved the comforter back to make some space for me. “Come on. Get in.”
When she pulled the sheets off of her body, I actually growled. She wasn’t in my pajamas anymore, but instead, in her lacy panties, a shock of pink against the white sheets.
Seeing that made something inside me go crazy for her. Up until that moment, I’d managed to resist her somehow, to ignore the thing that had to happen—but then I saw those bare hips and the curve of that ass and her inner thighs, and I was fucking powerless to stop myself. The need to have her took over—so simple, so basic, so exactly right. I didn’t listen to logic; I didn’t listen to rules. Instead, while it sounded like the world was ending outside her window, I listened to my cock. I got on top of her, my knees on either side of her body, and took her other hand in mine. I pinned her hands back onto the sheets, on either side of her head. I leaned in and nudged her cheek with my nose and dragged my stubble against her cheek. Yeah, flowers. Yeah, strawberries. Yeah, everything.
“I think you were kissing me when I woke up.”
“I was,” I told her, letting her feel my weight, making her understand what she was in for. “Just on the forehead, though. Not like I wanted.”
Lisa nodded, her hair shifting. “I think you should do it again. For real.”
“Oh yeah? You want me to kiss you?” Now my hard-on, which had been raging, was becoming almost unbearable. I shifted my hips, and my cock emerged from the opening in my pants. I let the head of my cock slide along the lacy edge at the top of her panties, moving toward her belly button.
“I do.”
“Kissing you isn’t all I’m going to do,” I told her.
And how did she answer me? There, pinned underneath me, so fucking sexy I couldn’t even see straight?
She pressed her hips into me, bit her lip, and said, “I sure hope not.”
Fuck.