who delivered pleasure and hit the road unsatisfied—but for some reason, I feel…incomplete.
But then, making love isn’t just about getting off. That’s a part of it, obviously, but at its core, good sex is about giving and receiving pleasure. And I’ve always been more of a giver. I love watching my man’s eyes roll back in his head as I drive him over the edge. I love the sounds he makes when he loses control and knowing I’m responsible for the goofy, blissed-out grin on his face after.
Logically, I understand and appreciate why Zack made the decision he did, but emotionally I’m kind of messed up about getting finger-banged and bailed on.
Which is bad news. If I’m this volatile now, I can’t even imagine what a basket case I’ll be once the pregnancy hormones set in.
Pregnancy hormones…
It hits me all over again that this baby-making thing might actually happen. Zack turned down an orgasm—one he wanted as much as I wanted to give it to him—in order to keep his sperm count high.
If that doesn’t prove last night and this morning weren’t just moments of weakness, I don’t know what would.
It’s also insanely hot. Maybe it’s my ticking biological clock talking, but knowing Zack is holding back so he can have a better chance at knocking me up makes me so insanely frisky that, after I finish crying and go upstairs to unpack, I can’t resist having a moment with myself in the shower. And it’s not Fernando—or Thor, God of Thunder, my only fictional crush—that I’m fantasizing about as I come on my own hand.
It’s Zack—sweet, intense, sexy-as-hell Zack who is hotter than any movie star.
After I’m clean, I change into a slinky green sundress far too sexy for lounging around a haunted house, waiting for the ghosts to make contact, and roll my suitcase out into the hall. I assume Zack still wants to sleep separately tonight, and even if he doesn’t, I’m going to have to insist on a couple of doors between us.
If he’s lying in bed next to me, I don’t trust myself not to pounce him in my sleep.
I choose a small bedroom decorated in delicate pinks and yellows, with rose-patterned wallpaper and a fluffy white comforter that is as soft as it looks. After checking the closet and the small adjoining half bath to make sure nothing is lurking in wait to spook me later, I wander downstairs.
There’s still no sign of Zack or Jed or Nancy, so I grab my book and head out to the pool. I resist the lure of the sunny side of the blue water—I’ve been working so hard this summer that I’m still winter-pale, and a burn would seriously spoil my plans for the week. Instead, I settle into a shady lounge chair, where I open my book and disappear into a world of lords and ladies and a beautiful nanny who is a commoner, unfit to marry a duke, but she will.
I know she will.
Even though I’ve read at least a dozen variations on this same historical romance plotline, it doesn’t matter. I love it as much as I did the first time. I still can’t wait to be there as the love story unfolds. I will still swoon when they kiss for the first time, and rage when the Duke’s evil sister is terrible to the nanny, and sigh with happiness when the hero and heroine fall in love and form a family with the motherless little girl the nanny’s come to love like her own.
Family has always been a part of the ideal happily ever after for me. Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve leaned toward stories of broken people, of motherless or fatherless children coming together to heal each other’s hurts and create something beautiful out of the shattered pieces the bad guys in their past left behind.
Deep down, I know a part of the reason I desperately want a child to love is that I didn’t experience that boundless mother love I’ve read about when I was growing up. But I know it’s more than fiction. I’ve seen it in up close with Theo and her sweet mama and with my other friends who were lucky enough to be born into the kind of loving families I daydreamed about growing up.
And I know I can be that kind of mom, the kind who loves my precious son or daughter enough to make them feel they can take on the world