I must have sighed because Jake asked me if anything was wrong.
“No, no,” I said. “Just tired, I guess. Long day. Long emotional day, you know?”
He gave a low tired chuckle. “Oh, I know. Trust me, I know.”
“It’s late,” I said. “And I’m too tired to be subtle. Are you staying over? I’d like you to.”
I saw him weighing the options and possible outcomes in his mind.
“You won’t be committing to anything, I promise,” I said. “It would just be nice to sleep with you. We never got to do that.”
“We didn’t, did we? Well, I mean, we had plenty of sleepovers.” He grinned.
“Not like this. Though believe me, I had some impure thoughts there when we were older,” I confessed.
He dug his thumb into the ball of my foot and cocked an eyebrow at me. “Did you now, Mr. Smallman? Please, tell me more about these impure thoughts.”
“I’ll make you a deal, you clean up the dishes while I strip the bed because those sheets are seriously gross, and then I’ll whisper dirty things in your ear in bed. How’s that?”
“Sounds perfect.” He pushed my feet gently to the floor.
As he passed me, I stopped him with a hand to his hip, and tugged him down for a long, slow kiss.
The bedroom looked and smelled as if two men had been having sex in it all afternoon. I opened a window, letting in the night air. My duvet was already on the floor. Had we thrown it there before or after we’d started? Did I need to wash the cover? It was white, so kind of hard to tell. Better safe than sorry. I started to wrestle the damn thing off when I felt Jake’s eyes on me. “Don’t just stand there, help with this thing. I swear it gets bigger and heavier each time.”
“That will teach you to get a king-sized bed,” he said, not moving from where he lounged against the door frame as if he was posing for a photo.
“As much as I like looking at you, especially when you’re wearing my clothes, if you want to be warm tonight, you’ll help me with the covers.”
“Fine,” he said.
He was oddly quiet as we went through the ritual of stripping and remaking the bed. I waited until we were under the covers, with him tucked into my chest to ask, “Is everything okay?”
“You must have done this a lot. With Ryan,” he said.
“Done what? Make the bed?” I joked.
“Yes. Exactly.”
I shifted up to see his face better. “Have you never had anyone help you make the bed before?” It hit me then, what an intimate act it was, what it implied about a relationship.
“No,” he confessed. “I've never lived with anyone. Rarely even had anyone stay over.”
“In fifteen years, you’ve never had a relationship?”
“I've had on and off relationships, friends with benefits. People I hook up with when our paths crossed. And of course, work-related assignations.”
“Work-related assignations? Why do you talk like that? You sound like such a douche.”
“It’s a defense response,” he said with exasperation. “You have to cut me some slack. I have been Carson Grieves longer than I was Jake Karlsson. It's hard for me to switch out of it.”
“You talk about them like they're two completely separate personalities. Which one is real?”
He snorted and tightened his arm across my chest. “That's what I'm trying to find out,” he said to my chest. “I'm afraid it's neither of them.”
“Maybe that’s a good thing,” I said.
“Maybe,” he said.
What could I do but kiss him? I had no answers for him. Not yet. If we had but worlds enough and time, but knowing him, we had only a few days together.
I held him until we both fell asleep.
16 Carson
Eric and I walked out together, travel mugs of coffee in hand.
Peeling myself out of bed and away from him had been one of the hardest things I’d ever done. I could get used to starting my morning with sleepy kisses and slow, sweet hand jobs. But we couldn’t stay in bed forever.
Eric had work to do at the rink, and I had to touch base with the boys and Miranda, I needed an accounting of where we stood on the larger issues at hand which, ultimately, were more important than my love life, concerning as they did my actual life life.
Eric stopped in the driveway and I narrowly avoided slamming into him. “Uh oh,” he said quietly.
Slightly alarmed, I turned to see what had caught his attention.