The Hard Bounce - страница 75
Hot shame flooded my cheeks at her touch. She looked me in the eyes, cupped my chin, and kissed me deeper while pushing me toward the bedroom.
Clumsily, I pulled off my jeans and underwear in one quick hopping motion that almost sent me toppling. Laughing, Kelly rolled back on the bed and gracefully slipped out of her skirt and panties. God bless her.
I kneeled at the edge of the bed, and she sat up to draw me on top of her. Our eyes locked. Her lip curled up in that sly smile. “My tough guy,” she said. Lying back, she took me in her hand and gently glided me inside. She let out a small purring sound as I started rocking myself into her.
She turned me over and straddled me, forcing me deeper and deeper. I luxuriated in the smell of her, the skin beneath my hands, the tickle of her hair on my nose as I kissed underneath her ear.
It was a close one, but I managed to hang in there and Kelly groaned just before I did. Ain’t I a champ?
She wasn’t blue by the end, but I still felt pretty damned good about myself.
We lay on top of the sheets. I rested on my back and Kelly had her arms and legs wrapped around me from the side. I couldn’t help staring at her naked bone-white skin. Softly, I ran my fingers back and forth over her curves, like lying with a soft marble statue. I realized she didn’t have any tattoos on her. She was the first woman I’d ever been with, that I’d seen naked, who had none. The uniform purity of her skin fascinated me.
I inhaled our mingling scents. The day was turning hot and humid again, but there wasn’t any discomfort as we lay together, sticky sweat dripping off us. I wouldn’t have traded that position for the whole world and half the moon.
She lay her head on my left shoulder, her breath tickling the sparse chest hair that determinedly poked through the thick scar tissue. Her fingers traced the outline of the pink disfigurements.
She didn’t ask.
They all asked.
I didn’t want to tell any of them before. I didn’t feel like telling her yet, either. We both just lay there silently until we dropped into sleep, her hand resting on the scar tissue over my heart.
I awoke with a sharp intake of breath. Kelly was towel-drying her hair in the long mirror suspended on the inside of my bedroom door. I rolled to my side and admired her nudity as she dried herself. She caught my staring in the mirror and smiled. “What?”
“What, what?”
“You’re wearing a face.”
“I have a face most days. This is mah thinking face.”
“Thinking about what?”
“If I told you, you’d have to shower all over again.” I wiggled my eyebrows at her.
We showered together the second time.
She was scrubbing my back when she said, “I was thinking about getting a tattoo.”
I couldn’t explain to her why I laughed so hard.
After the shower, she gathered up her things in a rush. She poked and lifted objects around my room, looking for a missing something or other.
“What’s your rush there, Reese?”
“I do have to show up at the campaign office at some point today. Have you seen my shoe?”
I halfheartedly looked around. “Nope.” I flopped back onto my bed, the beaded water cooling my skin in the slowly moving air.
Kelly found one shoe under a pillow. “Jeez, now I have to run home and finish my hair.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
She shot me a look.
“What?” I asked. “Isn’t the wet look back?”
“Yeah. And if it dries in this humidity, it’ll look like a Brillo pad.”
“You girls and your doings, I swear…”
“Well, maybe if my shirt still had some buttons on it…”
“Don’t blame me. Blame your sultry ways. I couldn’t control myself.”
She chucked the pillow at me as she hopped on one foot, putting her shoe on. “Get up, put on a pair of underwear, and walk me out like a gentleman.”
“Wasn’t it my roguish devil-may-care demeanor that attracted you to me in the first place?” I said, pulling on a pair of reasonably clean shorts. She just kept muttering to herself as she hustled her way out.
In the doorway, she tried to give me a quick and cursory goodbye kiss, but I held tight and planted a kiss I wanted her to feel in her toes.