Her desperate longing mounted.
She began to claw at his shirt buttons. Frustrated by her fumbling fingers, she shifted her attention to getting him out of his pants. He was busy shoving her dress up to her waist. All that mattered at that moment was the essentials.
All that mattered was that they were joined.
A frantic few seconds later, he lay on top of her on the couch, his cock sinking into her. She stared up at his large, shadowed form, her fingers digging into the rounded muscles of his shoulders. He filled her up so greatly. So perfectly. Not just his cock. She overflowed with feeling. It was all she could do to keep herself from screaming when he pressed his balls against her outer sex.
He went still between her thighs. He leaned down and kissed her mouth, his manner striking her as reverent somehow.
And then he was moving, building that friction in her that only he could, calling her name . . . forcing her to feel more, and then more, until she was bursting with it. He pounded into her body as she climaxed and spoke harshly next to her ear.
“Take it, Eleanor. Take it all. Because I’ve got so much more to give you.”
—
She thought about it frequently the rest of the day, him saying those words so feelingly next to her ear as pleasure lit up her body. She relived and questioned that moment again and again in her head.
Their lovemaking in the predawn hour had felt so passionate. So soulful. So much more profound than anything that had passed between them before . . . more intense than anything she’d experienced in her life.
Maybe it’d been wishful thinking on her part. But there, in that poignant moment with him, it had felt like he’d been telling her something precious with those fiercely uttered words.
—
She was surprised and pleased to see how much better her father looked when she returned to the hospital that morning. He was sitting up in bed, eating his breakfast and talking with her mom and Joan, who had arrived just before Eleanor.
“How are you feeling?” she asked her father after she’d kissed him in greeting and taken his hand in hers.
“Other than feeling a little stupid, I’m just fine,” her dad told her.
“You’ve got nothing to feel stupid about,” Eleanor insisted.
“Maybe you’re right. This time,” her dad conceded. “Now that I know how things stand with my heart, though, I’m responsible on a go-forward basis. It’s nothing that can’t be made right, bug,” her dad said, patting her hand and giving her a pointed look.
“I know,” Eleanor assured. “I’m not worried about that. We’ll whip you into shape.”
“Where’s Trey?” her mom asked.
Heat rushed into Eleanor’s cheeks. Last night, her mother’s assumptions that she and Trey were an established couple had embarrassed her. Today, everything felt different, although she had no solid evidence to prove why it felt different. No spoken words. No promises.
Still, last night felt very amazing to her: beautiful, but delicate.
Fragile.
“He’s on his way to work, I assume,” Eleanor replied lightly to her mother’s question. “He dropped me off this morning.” After they’d made love, Trey had insisted that he’d take her to the hospital, and he’d pick her up that evening at her parents’ house.
“I like him a lot,” Joan said, her eyes sparkling with warmth. “It’s not often that you run into men who are as nice as they are good-looking. And Catherine filled me in on how successful he is.” Eleanor glanced at her mother and rolled her eyes. Her mom had wriggled most of the crucial details about Trey’s professional life from him by the time they’d reached the cashier at the cafeteria last night. “He runs his own company, Dave. Big, lucrative tech business,” Joan told her brother. “I think you’ll approve.”
“It doesn’t bode well that the first time I met your special man, I was unconscious,” her dad grumbled.
“You guys are making more of a big deal about Trey and me than is warranted,” Eleanor felt obligated to say. Her dad squeezed her hand and gave her a look. She couldn’t help but smile when she saw the glint of understanding in his green eyes. She and her father had always been unusually close. He clearly had sensed her bubbling happiness and accompanying uncertainty when it came to the topic of Trey.
—
The day passed quickly as they conferred with the cardiologist, and a nurse educated them on future diet, medication and care. Her dad seemed so much his normal self that it had Eleanor second-guessing whether or not it wasn’t just wishful thinking on her part. The nurse assured her privately, however, that in instances of a heart attack as minor as her father’s had been, recovery could be rapid. Her dad left the hospital on his own two feet that afternoon. If it weren’t for the pallor of his skin, Eleanor would never have guessed what had just happened to him.
After they’d gotten her father home and comfortable, she and Joan went out to get her father’s prescriptions filled and to go grocery shopping for heart-healthy food. By the time they returned home and put everything in the refrigerator, it was dark out. Eleanor prepared dinner with her mom, making sure she stuck to the low-fat cooking regimen.
Her dad was tired after dinner, and her mom went up with him to bed. She and Joan were cleaning up in the kitchen when the doorbell rang. An anxious tremor of anticipation went through her at the unexpected sound.