She had a great, strapping, sexy man in her bed and they were about to eat dessert together. It felt very . . . couple-like. A dangerously good feeling, but there it was nonetheless.
He was waiting with an arm tucked behind his head, propped up on two pillows.
She settled down next to him and handed him one of the two spoons she brought.
He sat up and took it, then looked at it as though he didn’t know what it was. “Seriously?” He tossed it aside. It thudded to the carpet.
“Why did you do that—”
“We just had sex. We can share a spoon.” He scooped up a bite of the creamy deliciousness and held it out to her.
She opened her mouth and he inched the spoon toward her but at the last second he swerved and fed it to himself.
“Hey!” She lightly punched his arm.
He laughed until the taste of the tiramisu fully settled on his tongue. “Damn. What is this!? It’s amazing.”
“Tiramisu. Remember?” She stared at him.
He stared back at her blankly. She giggled a little and added, “You don’t know what tiramisu is? Where have you been living all your life? Under a rock?” The moment the words flew from her mouth she felt like an idiot. She closed her eyes in one long blink and reopened them to stare at his face. “Sorry,” she mumbled.
He shrugged. “It’s okay. I have been living under a rock for a solid part of my life. Pretty much literally.”
She felt even more of an idiot right then. Yeah. He had been living under a rock. At Devil’s Rock Penitentiary.
She moistened her lips, unsure how to talk about this with him, knowing she should. She wanted to. Really. “That must have been really hard. I can’t imagine—”
“No.” He cut her off. “You can’t imagine. You couldn’t ever imagine it.”
His words weren’t hard necessarily, just firm. Even so, they stung a little.
He held the spoon up to her mouth, grinning at her. “C’mon, baby. Your turn.”
She opened her mouth. “Mmmm.” She moaned at the first taste, covering her lips with her fingers.
A corner of his mouth kicked up as he spooned himself some dessert. “You make that same sound when I’m inside you.”
Heat flamed her cheeks. “Stop.”
“You’re blushing now? After what we just did?”
“You’re bad.”
He snorted and scooped up another bite for her. “You already knew that before we fucked.”
She winced. He paused and looked at her, not missing her reaction. “What? You can’t hear it or say it but you can do it?” He laughed lightly. “You’re such a good girl, Faith Walters. Too good.”
She sniffed and started to pull back. “I’m not that good.”
He plucked the bowl from her hands and set it aside. “Oh, baby, you’re good.” He grabbed her around the waist and rolled her onto her back. She yelped, unable to blink, staring up at him with eyes that felt wide and aching in her face.
His head dipped and he kissed her hard and long. He pulled up for air, speaking against her lips. “You, Faith Walters, are very, very good.”
“Yeah?” She breathed raggedly against his mouth, shocked to feel him again, hard and ready against her thigh.
“Definitely.” Lowering his head, he kissed her again until she wasn’t blushing anymore. Until she wasn’t doing anything except gasping yes and pulling him closer.
Because North Callaghan making love to her felt like the most natural thing in the world.
North never once let himself fall asleep beside Faith. He’d surrendered to everything else his body craved, but not that. He clung to consciousness and that was something new. Those rare instances where he spent the night with a woman or a woman spent the night with him, he instantly conked out after sex, exhausted and replete, sinking into the tempting pull of oblivion. Not so with Faith. He felt wired. His mind awake, skin alive and jumping with awareness of the woman beside him.
She was the temptation, far greater than anything oblivion offered him. Unsurprising, he guessed. Everything with her was different; why not that, too?
His fingers walked over her skin. He drew small circles on her arm, his stomach churning and knotting in an unfamiliar manner. For the first time being with another woman, being with her, filled him with a sense of wonder. Like when he was welding and creating something from nothing. Correction. Creating something beautiful from nothing. God. He was almost poetic, and that was a joke. He was not a poet.