The Other Man

“Keep your hands there,” he said, and went back to work, licking lower and being thorough about it.

When he delved between my thighs, he seemed to still be on his mission to ferret out every last drop of spilled wine.

I was pretty certain he’d gotten it all, but I wasn’t going to hold him back.

The thought never even crossed my mind.

His scruff scraped against my inner thighs, his nose pushing insistently against my clit as his tongue curled into my sex, lapping in slow, deliberate scrapes like he was still on that determined hunt for any errant wine.

I had to lean back on the counter, than perch there, throwing my hands back to brace as he just kept going.

He pulled my legs over his shoulders and went to work, my heels digging hard into his back.

I came twice before he pulled back and looked up at me.

I bit my lip, trying not to blush at how wet the lower half of his face was.

“Did I get it all?” he asked.

I nodded, still catching my breath.

I only noticed that the tiny cut on my chest was still bleeding when he stood up and started tending to it.  It was really quite sweet, the way he took care of that minor cut like it was utterly important, holding a tissue to it until the bleeding stopped.

“I’m going to clean that glass out of your tub,” he told me.  “Why don’t you go fix yourself another helping of wine.”

On trembling legs, I grabbed my robe and headed for the kitchen.  “Would you like a glass?” I asked, an afterthought, glancing back at him.

“Um, no.  Do I look like a man that drinks wine?” he asked.

I laughed and he smiled.

I was sitting in my little dining room just off the kitchen when he joined me, though he didn’t sit.

“Anything I need to do to make this work for you?” he asked suddenly.

I just stared at him.  He was constantly unexpected.  Nearly everything that came out of him was a surprise to me.

“Anything that I’m not doing . . . correctly,” he clarified.

I smiled at him, my chest warming in a very cozy way, almost like this thing between us was something normal—something romantic, even.

“Say something sweet to me,” I told him, feeling playful.

He studied me very seriously, like it hadn’t even occurred to him that I wasn’t being entirely serious just then.

Flirting was a foreign concept to him.

“You’re a peaceful woman,” he said, each word uttered very carefully.  Like they had some special meaning.

I blinked, long and slow, lashes peeling apart liked they’d been coated with honey.

I was trying to decide what to make of that pronouncement.

Peaceful sounded just a touch too close to boring, I was thinking.

“What I mean is, you make me want peace . . . you bring me peace.  Believe it or not, this is a very mellow version of me.

I eyed him.  “Are you serious?”  I sincerely did not think he was.

“Yeah.  Scary, huh?”

To be honest, it was a bit scary, because I’d never seen him approaching anything close to mellow.  Never seen him at anything less than intense.

I’d hate to see him at full speed.

Yikes.

And then my mind wandered back to what he’d just said and how it pertained to me.

Wow.  He really had come up with something sweet.

He with the deeply cold eyes, always so intensely frigid had somehow found the words to warm me, head to toe.

I thought he might have stayed the night that time when he was finished with me in the wee hours of the morning, but I wasn’t sure, because I was certain that he didn’t sleep in my bed with me.  I’d have noticed a thing like that.

Instead, I suspected he camped out in another room, on my couch maybe.  I couldn’t have said why I suspected that, looking at the thing.  Not a cushion was out of place, but that was no matter.  He was the type to leave things just how he’d found them.

I’d never seen him relax, not for a second.  Even when I was sitting, drinking my wine, he had remained standing, pacing, waiting.  Never just holding still, and only lying down for activities that did not involve anything remotely close to sleeping or resting.

Either way, he was gone in the morning when I woke up.

It should be noted that casual sex might have suited me just fine.  I’ll never know.  Heath was simply not the man to try it with.  He hit every single one of my hot buttons.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

I shut and locked the door, lingering there for a moment.

What a strange night that had been.  What a strange kiss.

It was the oddest thing.

I’d just been on a date with my friend Dair.  We’d been flirting for quite some time, but we were both so busy, and hesitant, that it never went anywhere.  And then he’d called me out of the blue, wanting to go out on an actual date.  I couldn’t think of one good reason to turn him down, and so I went.

I really liked Dair, knew he was the kind of man I should want, but my heart just wasn’t in it.

Perhaps I wasn’t ready to move on yet.  The divorce had happened over a year ago, but it had been a long, ugly marriage.

Oh, and there was the small matter of my sometimes lover.  But that situation was less about moving on, and more about getting off, or so I told myself.

“What was that?” a deep, biting voice barked at me from the darkness of my living room.

Of course I knew who it was instantly, but still, I jumped about a foot.