Truly (New York 1)

He held her as their breathing settled, and she must have slept, because he woke her in the dark with slick fingers sliding over her clit. He moved inside her from behind as soon as he knew she was with him.

He pinned her down in softness, her hips high, her face in the pillow, and brought her to climax in a frenzied rush of heat and breath, a dream-orgasm that lasted as long as he kept saying her name, mumbling May into the space behind her ear.

It was almost unreal, their frenzy when they were alone together. Something like a fantasy. But she kept a list of its mundanities—his elbow getting caught in her hair, pinning her to the bed; the stinging pain of overtaxed tissue when he pushed into her at dawn; the used condoms piling up in the trash can by her bed like ugly sea creatures drying in the sun. She lay awake as the room began to brighten with the first light of the day he would leave her, and she ticked through her mental list, because she needed to remember that he was real. They were real. However much pain came to her after he left, at least she’d had this.

She could tell the difference between fantasy and reality.

If life ever gave her another opportunity to make the choice, she knew which one she would choose.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

May had been awake for a few minutes, looking at the ceiling and deliberately not thinking about anything, when she heard the car pull into the driveway.

She immediately rolled out from under Ben’s arm and looked around for pants. Any pants.

The doorbell rang just as her eyes landed on the clock: 9:45.

Bad. Very bad.

Nine forty-five was deep into the morning by her mother’s standards, which meant that it could very well be her mother at the door, and here May was—two different kinds of pantsless, with a naked man in her bed.

Robe.

She headed for the bathroom, ignoring the rustling sounds of Ben waking up.

But her robe wasn’t on its hook, because it was in New Jersey. At Dan’s house.

She found her underwear on the shaggy bathroom rug. Balanced precariously on one foot, then the other, she yanked them on. If she’d tried this maneuver in Ben’s bathroom in New York, she’d have hit her heel on the toilet or whacked a hip against the edge of the sink.

So there was the bright side to the situation: even though she’d never see him after this morning and she was about to introduce him to her mother with sex hair, at least there was plenty of space for panty-yanking maneuvers in her capacious bathroom.

The doorbell rang again, DING-dong DING-dong DING-dong.

Allie. Thank God. Their mother would never ring like that.

May’s relief lasted for three whole seconds, until she remembered that Allie still had a key to the doorknob lock, and she wouldn’t be shy about using it.

The thought sped her up, and she raced through the house, carrying all their clothes along with her. Ben came into the kitchen, bare-ass naked, just as she was doing a shimmy-wiggle-hop to get her jeans on. Her bra did nothing to restrain her boobs. He didn’t even pretend not to be watching.

“Can you erase that image from your mind?”

He gave her a cheeky grin. “What image?”

She pushed his clothes toward him. “Put pants on,” she pleaded. “You’re about to meet Allie.”

He diverted the clothes to one side and snaked his free arm behind her back to draw her close and kiss her, sleepy and slow. He was still warm from the bed, and his bare stomach pressed against hers. Her heart flung itself against her ribs. She pushed him away, trying to be stern, but smiling instead, because she couldn’t help smiling at naked Ben. “Pants,” she insisted.

“I like you frantic. It’s a good look for you.”

He put them on. She wiggled into a long-sleeved shirt and sprinted for the door.

May’s sister stood on the other side, feeding what looked like cold sausage to a little dog tucked under her arm. “I told her not to come,” Allie said.

She wasn’t even pretending to look at May. She’d already risen on her toes to peer over her sister’s shoulder, and when that didn’t work, she dropped back down and leaned to the side to see around her.

“Hi,” Ben said from the living room. “You’re Allie.”

May’s sister turned the last of the sausage over to the dog and gave Ben a little wave. “You’re Ben.”