“It’s not going to come out wrong again.”
“We’ve spent weeks talking. It’s already completely different. If we’d been able to talk back then even a little bit like we talk now . . .”
“I like sex. A lot.” He continued. “I think about having sex with you all the time. I just want you to know that I don’t take sex lightly. I’m not one of those guys who can do it and forget it.”
I was glad to hear that. I wasn’t going to be able to have hot sex with Tim, period. He was letting me off the hook.
I should have been relieved. I was relieved. And I was disappointed, too.
“I guess the truth is, I’m dying to get inside your body,” he said, the words coming in gusts of energy that might just blow me away. “I need it too much. And I don’t want the sex to get in the away again. I also want you to know that you don’t have to justify your past to me. I want to know about your past so I can have a full understanding of your emotions and how you got here, but that’s it. I don’t know if I ever made that clear.”
I didn’t know what to say, and he just kept talking.
“We have some really important stuff to do in Atlanta. Things to talk about and deal with, and they come first. If I had sex with you, you wouldn’t be allowed out of bed until it was time to catch our flights home, and we wouldn’t get a word in edgewise.”
He still wanted me. I smiled. “Even you would need a breather.” I was getting better at the banter, at least.
“With you? I wouldn’t count on it.”
“Okay.”
“That’s it? Just okay? What do you think about having sex with me?”
“I think that I have no idea what we’re going to do when we see each other,” I told him honestly, embarrassed, looking at the floor. “I figured we’d wait and see what happens when we get there.”
“Okay.”
“And . . . I know I . . . want you to hold me. I need to feel your arms around me . . .”
More heat between my legs. Heat with empty promises.
“I need that, too.”
“Good.” I let out the breath I’d been holding. “Then we can hold each other and talk.”
“And whatever happens, happens.”
Did that mean we might have sex after all? Or that he might try? I got nervous again.
“What about birth control?” I was a responsible woman.
“All taken care of.”
So he was prepared to have sex with me. Or just prepared for any eventuality?
“How long has it been for you?”
His question embarrassed me. Chris and I had never talked about sex. Or during it, either, for that matter.
“Twelve years.”
“Seriously.”
“Yeah. I ended that part of my relationship with Chris. I told you that.” It had been the morning after the night he’d woken me up when he got into bed by hauling me over and climbing on top of me. He’d been angry and let me know that he had every right to have sex with his wife.
He’d hurried up and finished that night, too.
And that had been the last time he’d had sex with his wife.