He would go back to work, trotting off all over the globe.
Me, well, I would be stuck in Navesink Bank, going right back into my old life.
The only problem was, now I knew there was something missing from it, something I had convinced myself I didn’t need anymore.
And I was pretty sure that that wasn’t just companionship, a man in general.
No.
I think it was Quinton Baird.
As if thinking his name called him back, he came in from the bathroom, flicking off both the lights before making his way toward the bed.
I scooted back, making room, having not realized until that moment that he was actually going to stay. It didn’t seem like men such as Quin spent the night after sex.
But maybe I just didn’t know enough about the man to come to such conclusions.
He moved in under the covers, settling on his back, then throwing an arm out, curling it around my body, and dragging the good side of my face to his chest. His arm settled like an anchor around my hips, preventing retreat even if it was something I wanted. Which I didn’t. Because his heartbeat was under my ear, strong, sure, steady, and it was the most soothing sound I had ever heard in my life.
Beneath me, his body loosened, his breathing went deep and even with sleep, passing out faster than anyone I had known before. But it seemed like he hadn’t gotten a good night’s rest in days – or weeks – and the sex probably just took what little reserve he had left.
I stayed awake a little longer, finger gently tracing over the lines of his body, somehow wanting to commit them all to memory, a part of me knowing that this was the first and also the last time we would lay like this.
Even as I drifted off to sleep, the idea came with a pang, dull and insistent.
—
I woke up to a tickling sensation on my nose, making me scrunch it up and exhale sharply, trying to make it stop, my brain not ready to be awake. But when that action was met with a chuckle that rumbled through to my chest, alertness came at me in a blinding flash.
I was in bed.
Resting on Quin.
Because he had spent the night.
After we had had sex.
And that tickling feeling was a strand of my hair in his hands, running over the tip of my nose.
I pressed up, looking down at him, a little annoyed at how sexy he could look first thing in the morning when I probably looked like a troll, my hair all over, my face likely creased with little lines from the chest hair I had fallen asleep on.
“You sounded like an angry little bull,” he informed me, smile warm, more open than I had ever seen him before.
“You know, you could have just called my name.”
“Where would the fun be in that?” he asked, shrugging, running his finger down my nose.
He looked rested. He was as unshaven as ever, but the circles under his eyes were gone, and there was an ease in his features that hadn’t been there since I met him.
“What time is it?” I asked, the only window in this room being in the bathroom.
“Six.”
“AM?” I balked, dropping my forehead back down on his chest. “Why are you awake? Why are you making me wake up? Six AM is sleeping time still.”
Another of those rolling chuckles reverberated out of him and moved deliciously through my insides.
“Six AM is sleeping in,” he corrected, folding up slightly, rolling me onto the side. “We’re burning daylight.”
“Oh, hang the daylight,” I grumbled as the bed shifted, then bounced as he got up.
“Want to share a shower? Be green and shit?” he asked, standing in the doorway to the bathroom, still gloriously naked, without a drop of self-consciousness, a sexy smirk pulling at his lips. “I’ll wash your back. And your front.”
“Ugh, you’re evil,” I said, stretching, then moving to stand. “Bribing me to get me up at this ungodly hour.”
But I followed him in, letting him pull me into the shower, pressing a soft close-mouthed kiss to my lips since neither of us had brushed yet.
His hands had just slid down to my ass when there was a pounding on the door to the hall, followed by Gunner’s clear voice across the space, loud as could be. The people on the street could probably hear him.
“Yo, Quin. Get your ass out here. No time for a morning fuck. Someone just pipe-bombed Fenway’s Porsche.”
I shocked back at those words, at what seemed to be the truth of them, the reality that this was the kind of thing he dealt with daily in his life.
“Fuck,” he growled, reaching for the soap, scrubbing bubbles over every inch of skin and hair somehow in less than a minute, then turning under the water to wash it off. “Sorry, babe. Got to get to a meeting,” he said, touching my hip on the way out, wrapping a towel around his waist, then disappearing out into the bedroom.