“Not hardly.” He nipped at her shoulder.
Still, he tucked her beneath him again and began purposeful thrusts she knew…would carry her…to…
Yes.
Completion.
“Penny for them.” Hank popped a candied date into Ginger’s mouth, wondering what swirled around in that brilliant mind of hers.
How long had it been since he’d genuinely worried about the inner workings of a female’s brain? Not that he didn’t care what women thought or felt. But tonight, her emotions mattered on an intensely personal level and, for a man who dealt in a more factual world, reading chick nuances wasn’t his strong suit.
“A penny?” Ginger teased a sugar-glazed grape along his mouth. “We’re in another country. The currency won’t work.”
“You’re evading.” He scooped up a handful of almonds.
“You’re perceptive.” She snitched a roasted chestnut from his palm and rolled to her back.
He might not be known for being emotionally perceptive, but he could see when a person was avoiding answering. “We’ve known each other too long to misread.”
Her emerald eyes finally slid up to meet his. “What do you see then?”
“You’re scared,” he said with a sudden surety.
He waited for her to deny it…but she didn’t.
A sad smile tipped her kiss-swollen lips. “Seems silly, doesn’t it? I’m forty-nine years old, Hank. I’m not some young thing to get all fluttery.”
Not young? Maybe. But he couldn’t think of a time she’d looked more beautiful to him than now with her hair all tousled around her face, her shoulders bare above the covers, a sexy hint of whisker burn along her neck.
He weighed his words carefully. “When I was a ‘young thing’ I used to think fifty-five looked old, but now that I’m there, I don’t feel old. I believe the heart doesn’t have an age.”
She blinked fast. “Oh my,” she cupped his face, “I never would have guessed you’re a closet romantic.”
“Shhh.” He winced in exaggerated horror. “Don’t say it quite so loud. You’ll ruin my badass warrior reputation.”
“Your secret is safe with me.”
He could sense the fear in her as surely as he’d ever felt it radiating off any airman about to head into battle. He couldn’t deny some of it stirring in his own gut. He’d been there. Felt the debilitating loss. “I know how you grieved for Benjamin. I was there just like you were there when I lost Jessica. Love like that is only supposed to come around once in a lifetime.”
“Soul mates.” Surprisingly, the words didn’t carry any kind of reverence, more frustration. “It scared me, thinking of all those lonely years, my children so big already since we’d started having them so early.” She shook off the faraway look and rejoined him in the present, taking another one of the almonds from his hand. “The offer to take over Benjamin’s senatorial seat was a godsend. With all that was going on in Congress, I had something to dig my teeth into.”
“You’ve got fight in you, lady.” Total truth, he’d always admired that about her. He wondered why he’d never taken the time to notice all the wonder of Ginger before. “You would have found your way around the grief, but there’s no question it’s to our country’s advantage you channeled that energy into finishing out Benjamin’s term.”
“When I lost him, I just remember being stunned at how you survived losing Jessica. I mean, at the time, when she died, I understood the tragedy of it all. Still there’s just no way to fully comprehend until it happens to you.”
“You had the Congress. I had my small kids. Just about broke my heart watching Alicia trying to mother the two younger ones when she deserved a childhood of her own.” He shrugged his shoulders. “I had to keep plugging along.”
Her wise eyes filled with indecision. “So what are we doing here?”
She’d turned to him for advice before. Why did now feel different? Still, he pushed ahead to answer as he always did when Ginger looked to him for support. “Acting like damn fool teenagers with our hormones raging out of control.”
“Your hormones are out of control around me?”
How could she not know? “Can’t you tell? Good Lord, woman. I’m fifty-five years old and we’ve had sex twice already tonight. There’s a good chance you’ll get lucky again if you keep wiggling around like that showing me curves that make my hands start itching and another part start—”
She kissed him quiet fast. Then slow. Then again for leisurely fun because she could and had been secretly yearning to for longer than she would admit to him. “I get the picture. And thank you, but I haven’t been a teen in a long time, Hank.”
Now there was a comment he couldn’t let go past. “You turn me on a helluva lot more than any giggling Barbie doll type.”