Morning, Sleepyhead. I’m off to take Errol to his rehab appointment. There’s orange juice and homemade bread and honey from the co-op for toast. I should be back at around noon.
P.S. One of my bells from my anklet popped off! Let me know if you find it. Katie
He shook his head. Who knew where that bell was after the workout they’d given it last night? He’d taken such a liking to the clear, sweet sound of them as they made love repeatedly that he hadn’t let Katie take off the anklet. He’d become con
ditioned, just like Pavlov’s famous dog, during those carnal hours. He’d probably get a boner every time he heard a bell ringing in the future.
He snorted at the thought and went about the business of getting himself coffee and breakfast, grinning like an idiot the whole time. Katie’s absence disappointed him, but it was probably for the best. If she were here, he’d have trouble focusing on his writing, and he found that was precisely what he wanted to do: write. Experiencing the old, familiar drive to get a new project down on paper felt terrific. There were times in the past year and a half he seriously doubted he’d ever feel the urge again.
Besides, with Katie absent, it was easier to avoid the question of just what it was he’d started with her.
“One day at a time,” he muttered to himself as he headed back toward his bedroom. Despite growing enthusiasm to write, he ended up spending fifteen minutes looking under the bed and stripping the sheets, looking for Katie’s bell. Once he’d found it, he took a shower and wandered out into the yard, where he tested the dryness of the varnished tree-swing seat. He reattached the seat to the ropes that hung from the old oak tree, went back into the house and began to write in earnest.
Four hours later, he blinked and glanced up from his computer screen when he heard a sound he couldn’t quite identify. He rose slowly from the makeshift desk he’d created for himself and looked out the window.
He smiled at what he saw. The sound he’d heard had been the noise the ropes made rubbing against the thick tree branch.
For a minute her two, he watched Katie as she soared through the air on the swing, her booted feet pumping and her long hair flying out behind her. She looked like an earthbound angel, striving to take flight.
Something about the thought struck a chord of memory in him. His brow crinkled as he tried to bring the recollection into focus. Nothing clear came back to him, but he found himself getting aroused for some reason.
Really aroused.
Not that he should have been surprised by that. He was watching Katie, after all.
He grabbed something from his bedside table and headed out of the house.
“You didn’t tell me you fixed it!” Katie called to him excitedly when he walked around the side of the house to the backyard.
“You never gave me time to come up for air last night. I didn’t have an opportunity,” he said. He came to a standstill and watched her.
“Why are you frowning like that?” Katie asked as she tucked her feet back and began to let the tree swing slow to a halt.
“What?” Rill asked. The shadow of the elusive memory had flitted once again in his consciousness as he looked at Katie’s face. He walked toward her. “Sorry. I’m just preoccupied.”
“Were you writing?” she asked him brightly. Her green eyes shone. She seemed to glow with happiness as she half stood, half sat, her legs straightened, her boots on the ground, her bottom on the seat of the swing and the ropes in her hands. She wore a multicolored gypsy skirt that looked as if it could have passed for the bottom of one of her belly-dance costumes (except this one didn’t include a sheer panel) along with an ivory sweater. She looked a picture with the brightly colored woods as her backdrop. He approached her and reached for a golden curl that had fallen on her cheek.
“Yeah,” he said as he tried to push back the coiling tendril, but ended up stroking her ear instead. “How was Errol’s rehab?”
“He’s coming along. He never complains,” Katie murmured. He wondered distractedly if her voice had gone hushed because of his touch on her skin. “Dave thinks he’ll need at least four weeks of therapy, three days a week.”
“Who’s Dave?”
“Errol’s physical therapist.”
“You have a tiny ear,” he observed.
“It hears just fine.”
He smiled and leaned down to examine it with his lips. Her floral scent filled his nose. She placed her hands on his ribs. He bit gently at the delicate shell of her ear and felt her shiver.
“It seems to feel just fine, too,” he said through a smile.
He pressed his mouth to her neck in order to better feel her soft laughter. Her hands came up to caress his shoulders.
“I’m not so sure you’d laugh if you knew what I planned to do to you,” he told her quietly. “You have to be taught there are consequences for distracting me every opportunity you get, Katie Hughes.” She pulled her head back in order to see his face. Her eyebrows went up in a mixture of puzzlement and interest when he looked back at her soberly.
“Consequences?”