While his brain and body patched itself back together, he stroked Sage’s glorious frame and dropped gentle kisses on her mouth, her cheekbone, her jaw. His hand stopped when it reached her stomach and his big hand covered most of her slight bump.
His. The thought came from his heart and skittered through his body. The baby was his and so was she. Somehow, in whatever form they took, and on some level they would always be his.
* * *
The next morning, Sage stood in her shower and lifted her face up to receive a blast of hot water. She ached in places she didn’t know she had, good places, places that had been long neglected. Her body felt like she’d spent the day at a spa, loose and relaxed.
Her mind felt like a turtle trying to walk through peanut butter.
Sage placed her hands on the wall of the shower cubicle and watched the water swirl around the drain. What were the implications of making love with Tyce? Was it a once-off thing? What did any of it, all of it, mean?
Sage closed her eyes in frustration and slapped her hand against the white tiles. What had happened to her ordered, calm life? Three months ago she felt calm and in charge and one night—one night!—with Latimore flipped everything around.
Tyce was an amazing lover, but he was also a good man. Good seemed like a bland word but Sage thought it was underused and misunderstood. Good didn’t mean rich or good-looking; it meant that someone was prepared to do the right thing, the honorable thing, to take the path less traveled, even if it flew in the face of convention. Good, to her, meant that he was responsible, honorable and honest.
She liked him…
Sage sighed. She’d forgotten how much she enjoyed his company out of the bedroom. She spoke more than he did but, over these past few days, Tyce held up his end of the conversation. They’d discussed movies and politics, books and, of course, art. Actually, they’d argued about art… Tyce, surprisingly, had a fondness for the Dutch Golden Age of painting, artists like Hals and van Baburen, and Sage preferred art from the twentieth century.
But whether they were talking art or music, spending time with Tyce was…fun. Stimulating and relaxing at the same time. She felt she could say anything to him and he wouldn’t judge her. Connor was like that and Sage was reminded of how much alike they were. Strong, alpha, honorable men. Honest men…about everything. Including their antipathy toward relationships and commitment.
Like before, Tyce tempted her to open up, to give him more, to delve beneath the surface of her armor. That was still a very dangerous path to walk down and she couldn’t allow herself to take it. She could not drop her shields and let him into her heart. That way lay hurt, disappointment and madness. Tyce had the power, like nobody she’d ever encountered before, to turn her life upside down. Loving and then losing him would devastate her and having to interact with him as they raised a child together would be like trying to dodge asteroid strikes while walking through the last level of hell.
Frankly, that scenario was best to be avoided. If she was smart she’d say thanks for the fun time and push him out of her apartment and her life. She’d done it with other men, not many, and she could do it with Tyce. But she didn’t want to. She wanted more sex, more conversations and yes, she thought as her stomach growled, more of his fabulous cooking.
Maybe she could have a fling with him. She could enjoy his body and his mind and when they ran out of steam, which they would, she’d revert back to being friends and co-parents because she’d been sensible and kept her heart out of their interactions.
She could do that, she decided. Connor told her she could do anything she wanted to…
Okay, maybe he hadn’t been thinking of her in terms of her having a no strings fling when he imparted those words of wisdom. But she was a smart, modern woman and like millions of smart, modern women she knew that the act of sex was not a declaration of love, commitment or anything other than the giving and receiving of pleasure.
She could keep her heart out of the equation and stay emotionally protected.
Couldn’t she?
CHAPTER NINE
Tyce looked around as Sage finally made an appearance the next morning. She looked better than she had last night, but her walk down the cast-iron staircase suggested that she was still feeling a little stiff. Standing at her sloping windows, he watched her as she headed straight for the coffee machine, her eyes foggy from sleep. They’d only been together a few weeks so long ago but some things hadn’t changed: the great sex, obviously, the fact that she squeezed toothpaste from the middle of the tube and that her brain didn’t start to work properly until after nine and three cups of coffee, now decaffeinated because of the baby.