Riley cleaned his plate and complimented her throughout the meal. 

“You cooked, so I do dishes,” he said, and he cleared the table. 

After all was cleared, refrigerated and cleaned, he reminded her to take her antibiotic.  They headed upstairs to the TV.  They had a few minutes to wait. 

“Can I ask you a something?” Riley asked as he turned on the TV.

”Anything,” she purred as she tucked her leg underneath her and turned toward him, careful not to get too close.

“Well, I’ve been wondering why you stopped dancing,” he said, twirling her ponytail through his fingers.

“Why were you afraid to ask me that?”

“Well, I thought there might be painful memories attached.  But I’m curious. I assume you were pretty good?”

“I was okay,” she modestly smiled.  “Mom thought I was better than I was, though.  She’s the one who pushed it.  My dance teacher saw some talent and suggested I join one of her competitive dance companies.  Mom signed me up.  We didn’t discuss it, she just did it.  She even home schooled me for a while so I could compete.  That’s about the time I started to hate it.”

“But you loved it once?” he asked, searching her face for the truth.

She sighed wistfully. “Yes. Very much.”

“What kind of dancing did you do?” he asked, sliding a finger slowly from her temple to her jaw.

She leaned into his touch.  “Jazz, hip hop, contemporary.  Really everything but ballet.  I didn’t have the feet for it.  And I wasn’t super great at tap, either.”

“And you haven’t danced since?”

“Yeah, I have.  I took a dance class my freshmen year in college for my PE credit.  I was very rusty.”  She closed her eyes as his finger did another pass down the side of her face.

“And how did that feel?”  She opened her eyes, feeling dreamy, and not sure what he saw, he smiled, his eyes dilating slightly.  “To dance again, I mean.”

“Good.”  She could tell by his line of questioning that there was something he wasn’t telling her.  She sat up, shaking his hand from her face.  “Are you going somewhere with this?”

He smiled.  “It amazes me how perceptive you can be, Dr. Taylor.”  He looked down at his hand.  “Wednesday is Darby’s birthday.  She has reservations for a room at one of those trendy clubs for the evening.  I really need to go and make an appearance, and I want you to come with me.  I just needed to know the dancing thing wouldn’t bother you.”

She laughed.  “You realize it’s not the same type of dancing, right?”

“Well, yeah, but I didn’t know if it would bother you or not.  And with Darby there, we won’t get away with sitting all night.”

“I bet not.”  She leaned closer.  “And spending another evening with you is a plus.” 

He kissed her, not so tenderly this time.  Just when she surrendered to the kiss and opened her mouth, he pulled away, kissed her gently one time, and nodded toward the TV.  “It’s starting.”

 

***

 

“I have to admit, I now understand the draw to this show,” Vanessa said turning toward Riley.  He was asleep.  She laid her hand on his chest.  “Riley?”  She whispered loudly.  No response.

Man, is he beautiful, even when he sleeps.  So now what do I do?  Do I try to wake him up and move him to his room?  If I do that, it will really be difficult to let him leave me, and he’d be all Iron Man about it, with this falling-for-each-other thing he insisted we do.  Should I curl up next to him and try to go to sleep myself?  That was good last night, but he doesn’t look comfortable, and I don’t think I could sleep.  I’ll just try to make him comfortable and go upstairs.  That’s best for both of us.  But, God, I don’t want to leave him.  But it’ll be too much temptation if I stay here.  Things are hard enough.  Go upstairs.  Just do it, Nessa.  And be careful not to wake him up. 

She gently pulled his legs up onto the couch.  She laid a pillow at the opposite end and slowly guided his torso and head toward the pillow.  He barely stirred.  She covered him in the same blanket that he covered her with last night.  She watched the rise and fall of his chest for a few minutes, fighting the urge to wake him or touch him.  After muting the TV, she bent down and kissed his temple. 

“Whatever you are doing, it’s working, Riley Tate,” she whispered softly in his ear.  “I’m falling. Hard.”  Once she kissed him lightly on the lips, she headed upstairs.

All night, she slept rather restlessly.  She kept dreaming two types of dreams of Riley.  The sexy dreams were wonderful, but she would wake up right before anything really good happened.  When she tried to go back to sleep from those, she would end up awake again because the dreams where Riley left her, usually taunting her with claims she was never good enough for him, hit too close to home.  After two or three of those dreams, she had a hard time wanting to go back to sleep.  Since there was no cookie dough to be had, a little habit she hadn’t yet revealed to Riley, she resorted to another trick from her psychology background:  a relaxation technique where she envisions a “happy place.”  She hated the class where she learned it because it was taught by one of those humanistic, radical left-wing psychologists who believed in things like reenacting your birth and pretending you’re a tree, but around 3:30 in the morning, she was desperate enough to try anything.  It worked for a while, but she found herself staring at the clock at 7:30 a.m.

Thirty more minutes of clock staring made Vanessa realize her efforts were futile.  She rolled to a sitting position, rubbed her eyes and moved to the bathroom, noting that the stiffness in her ankle had almost subsided completely.  She flushed and brushed and checked the healing cut on her arm.  It looked much better than yesterday, and it only hurt when she touched it.  She dressed in something sort of presentable and headed downstairs.  She looked on the couch, but Riley was not there. She moved downstairs to the kitchen, no Riley.  She ventured a peek into his room and found an older Hispanic woman, whom she assumed was Javier’s wife, stretching clean sheets over the bed.  Javier was next to his wife helping her lift the mattress. 

“Hello,” Vanessa greeted, but she remembered Riley saying that Javier’s wife didn’t speak English.  “Hola.  I’m Vanessa.”  She walked toward the woman and held out her hand to shake it.

The woman threw herself at Vanessa and hugged her, rattling off a long speech in Spanish, speaking too quickly for Vanessa to pick out any words she recognized.  The woman broke the hug, holding on to Vanessa’s arms, and kept speaking so fast.  Then she hugged her again.  Vanessa couldn’t help but smile as she looked to Javier for help. 

“No hablo español, except what I learned in high school,” Vanessa said to both of them.  

“She says you are an angel, and she is so glad you have come into Riley’s life.  That you have made him so happy and she appreciates you for it and that she likes you much better than that puta that was so bad to Riley.”  Javier walked to the door and smiled briefly at Vanessa.  “I think that, too.” 

Javier walked out of the room.  Vanessa wanted to stop him so he could translate, but he was already gone.  She turned to the woman.  “Como se llama?”

“Graciela.”  She spoke again, all in Spanish, to Vanessa, walking around the room with a laundry basket, putting up folded clothes in the appropriate drawers.  Vanessa understood a few of the words, like bonita, esposa and bebes, the words for pretty, wife and babies.  Even though she got the gist, she pretended she didn’t understand any of Graciela’s speech.

“Where is Riley?”  Vanessa asked.  Then she tried in Spanish.  “Donde esta Riley?”

Graciela answered in Spanish.  When Vanessa looked confused, Graciela made an elaborate pantomime to show that Riley was jogging.

“Oh, okay,” Vanessa said, unable to hide the disappointment in her voice.  “Gracias, Graciela.  It was nice to meet you.”  Vanessa headed toward the door, and Graciela stopped her.  She grabbed Vanessa’s face and patted her on the cheek. 

“Que linda.  Mucho gusto, Banessa.” 

Vanessa left the room feeling like she had been accepted by the family.  It felt quite satisfying.  She grabbed a granola bar from the pantry and a bottle of water and headed upstairs to her room. 

Once there, she unpacked her computer and checked her e-mail.  47 e-mails, none of importance.  She deleted them all without opening them, finished her granola bar, shut down her computer and took her antibiotic. 

She made a quick check-in phone call to her father.  Another round of  “are you sure you know what you are doing,” and “yes, Daddy, I’m a grown up” found its way into the conversation. 

Showering seemed like a good idea to pass the time until Riley’s return. Even though she took a shower yesterday when Riley worked out, she didn’t wash her hair then.  It needed to be done after all the time outside yesterday.  She plugged in her iPod and set it to her favorite play list. 

The night’s dreams made it into her head, but only the good ones.  She focused on creatively finishing the ones she couldn’t finish last night.  Working herself up so much, she seriously contemplated doing something she didn’t do often to help relieve the throb her fantasies created.  Finally giving in and sliding her hand down her stomach, she almost moaned out loud when she felt how wet and swollen she actually was.  The bathroom door flew open and slammed closed, and her music abruptly halted. 

“Vanessa, did you say something to me last night after I fell asleep?” Riley’s voice boomed above the water.  She saw his form pacing back and forth through the opaque glass.

She contemplated lying, but decided she wanted to see where this led.  “Yes,” she almost whispered.

“So you did say you were falling?” he demanded. 

“Yes,” she answered a bit louder. 

“Did you mean it?”  Riley questioned, running his hands through his hair and still pacing.

She watched his movement, not sure what his mood was.  He seemed angry and anxious, but without seeing his face, she wasn’t sure.  She wanted to open the door and snare a peek, but she stood frozen, except for swallowing the enormous lump in her throat.

“Yes,” she said, her voice ringing clearly this time. 

“So I didn’t dream it?” he asked, still seemingly agitated.

“No.” 

The door to the shower flew open.  Before she could process that Riley was in her shower, dressed only in the same basketball shorts he wore when they first met, he moved toward her, grabbed her around the backs of her thighs and lifted her, wrapping her legs around him.  She clasped his shoulders, closed her eyes and braced for the crash as he backed her against the shower wall.   It was not as bad as she expected, and when she opened her eyes, he looked at her with confusion, searching for answers.

“I dreamed about you all night,” he began.  “I can’t get you out of my head.  I want you… so much.  All I can think of is being with you.  When I’m not with you, I don’t like it.”  He searched her eyes again.  “It seems impossible, doesn’t it?”  He paused, waiting for her to say something, but her words failed her.  “But it’s true.”  He kissed her gently, then whispered against her lips,  “I’m falling for you, too, Vanessa.” 

He kissed her deeply, not waiting for the invitation to engage her tongue with his.  He furiously yanked at his shorts with one hand, while the other moved up inside of her thigh finding what he wanted, and he groaned at her readiness.  She, in turn, moaned against his kiss and arched her back as he spread her wetness around her with his fingers, not exactly certain how he held her up the entire time. 

He pulled back from the kiss, stopped all movement of his hand and waited until she opened her eyes.  He slid her down his body, closer to his hips, and guided himself to where his other hand was just a moment before. 

“I have to know what it feels like to be inside you.  Please say it’s okay.”  She barely nodded her head before he thrust forward, stretching and filling her to the point of pain in one stroke.  She whimpered and sucked in a quick breath, biting her lip until, after a couple of slow thrusts, she was used to his girth.  She felt him progress further and further with each push, and finally, his pelvis met hers when she could accept all of him. 

“You okay?” he asked.  “Because I’m having a hard time holding back.”  She nodded again, and he picked up the force of his thrusts.  She moved in rhythm with him.  Her hands still clutched his shoulders.  His hand moved around from her back to her breast, massaging, gently tugging her nipple as he kissed and licked her neck.  His hips picked up the pace.  She felt a tightening and held her breath.  It was strangely familiar, but she had never experienced it like this, not from sex.  She moaned as the tightening intensified, so she focused on it, but just before she exploded, he groaned and quickly withdrew from her.

“What…” she gasped.  “Why did you stop?” she said in his ear, realizing he wasn’t quite listening since his head had dropped to her shoulder, eyes tightly closed as he held his breath.  She feared he would say this was a mistake.

He kept his head against her shoulder, caught his breath and spoke.  “Oh, God, I’m sorry,” he said between breaths.  Shit, he really is going to say it.  “That’s not at all what I wanted to happen.”  Here it comes.  He took a deep breath.  “I’ve just been thinking about you all morning, and I guess I kind of got carried away in my head, got a little too ready for this.” He picked up his head and ghosted his lips next to hers and whispered,   “But, oh my God, that…” He kissed her lips softly.  “That was way better than I could have possibly ever imagined.” 

Ohhh, IT didn’t come.  HE did. 

She sighed and smiled, both in relief.  He looked her in the eyes.  “That was so fast.  I’m not normally that fast, but… you were just so…”  He blushed, then a pained expression took over his face.  “Plus, we haven’t talked about… well, protection yet.  Who does that these days without having that talk first?” He leaned his forehead against hers, and the next words tumbled out of his mouth in a panicked stream.  “Then I just… I’m so sorry.  I swear, that was my first time ever without a condom.  Jeez, I’ve never been that irresponsible.  How colossally stupid of me, and I don’t even know if I have any...”

She placed her fingers to his lips to quiet him. “Shhhh.  You don’t have to worry.  It’s okay.”  She moved her hands to his chest and lowered her eyes.  “We have all day.”  She released her legs from around him, and he helped her land gently.  “And that was not that bad, Riley.”  When he looked at her with a confused expression, she looked up through her lashes and added,  “For the opening act, I mean.”  His fully dimpled, devilish grin appeared.  She couldn’t help but lick his left dimple.  “That was probably the hottest experience of my life.”  He smiled.  “Anyway, I need to finish my shower.”  She licked his right dimple, then whispered huskily in his ear.  “You are going to stay and help me, right?” 

His eyes dilated, and his hands clasped around her waist.  “Definitely.”