His last thought, before he finally succumbed to sleep, was that this was exactly how he wished he could spend every night of the rest of his life.
Warm.
That’s how Tina felt. Warm and comfortable and contented. She opened her eyes. It was still dark. Just before dawn, as far as she could tell. Pretty much the time she usually got up. But she couldn’t remember the last time she’d ever been this well rested.
Harris was in bed with her. She was pressed up against his chest and surrounded by his wonderful scent. Memories of the night before—highs, lows, darkness, and light—gently ebbed and flowed through her mind. She inspected each memory carefully, turning it all around in her brain, testing her reaction to each one.
Nothing. No panic, no regret, just serene acceptance of last night’s every word, every action, and every emotion. Who knew what she would say, do, or feel today? There were so many capricious external factors that it was hard to predict. All she knew was that her world—for once—felt completely right.
Her hand crept beneath Harris’s shirt, stroking his firm, hot flesh, rediscovering the angles and planes of his chest. He awoke almost immediately, and his breath hitched before speeding up. The boxer briefs he wore did nothing to disguise the growing erection against her thigh, and she undulated lazily against him, wanting him to know that she felt it and she wanted it. Her hand continued to languidly explore, finding a hard little masculine nipple, and he groaned. He pressed his own hand—through the thin fabric of his shirt—against her busy one, flattening it against his pec in an attempt to still the movement.
“I should leave,” he said, his voice having that attractive morning huskiness to it.
“Why?” she asked, lifting her head to meet his eyes, and she sucked in a sharp breath. There they were: her missing panic and regret, swimming around in his liquid gaze.
“It’s a lot, Tina,” he said.
“I know,” she responded tightly, dragging her hand away. His abdominal muscles jumped beneath her fingertips as she pulled her hand out from beneath his shirt. “I know it’s a lot. And sometimes it feels like too much. But you’d be surprised by how very much you can bear.”
“I also have to bear the additional burden of having to live with the knowledge that I was a callow, irresponsible idiot who didn’t deserve a single moment of your time ten years ago. You should have met someone worthy of you. Instead you had an encounter with me. The fucker who ruined your life. I don’t know how to begin making amends for that.”
“You don’t have to make amends,” she said, and he shook his head in vehement denial of her words before sitting up and putting some space between their bodies.
“I fucking do. But I can’t—everything I did was unforgivable. How can I expect you to forgive me, like me . . . love me, when I can’t fucking stand to be in my own skin?”
Love him? Why would he mention love? It had no bearing on their situation. Never had and never would. He got out of bed, still magnificently aroused, his shorts merely serving to accentuate his impressive hard-on. Tina tried not to be distracted by the eye-level erection and kept her gaze on his face. He looked torn and tormented.
“Intimacy will complicate everything even more. I know you want to compartmentalize it. Call it just sex or fucking . . . or whatever the hell else. But I can’t do that. I never could. Not with you. And especially not now. Not after . . . not after him. After Fletcher.”
“But . . .”
“I need some time to think.”
“What do you want from me, Harris?” she asked, her voice a whisper, and he paused as he considered her question.
“What are you willing to give?”
“I’m not sure.”
“How do you feel about me?”
“I don’t know.” He covered his eyes with the palm of his right hand; his lips compressed and his nostrils flared as he struggled to keep his breathing even.
“That’s the problem, Tina,” he said, his voice shaky. “You don’t know. How could you? Anything you feel for me will be forever entangled with so much negativity and ambivalence. Any positive emotion will be massively outweighed by pain and grief and absolute horror. For ten years I’ve been waiting for the chance to tell you I was sorry. To explain what happened, why I did what I did. I’ve been trying to apologize for a foolish young man’s mistakes . . . thinking that if I could only get you to hear what I had to say and see my absolute regret, you’d forgive me, and maybe we could reset. That was a tall-enough order . . . ,” he said with a humorless laugh.