The Cowgirl's Chosen Love - Vivian Arend Page 0,71
smiled. “Your situation is a bit different, but I will say my parents live to embarrass me and my sisters. I think they keep score, and at the end of each year, they compare notes to see who has managed to be the most obnoxious in each of our lives.”
“Like what?”
“Let me think.” Zach rolled slightly, hands under his head as he stared at the ceiling. His legs stretched all the way to the base of the bed, and as he adjusted position, he bumped knees with her.
Julia shifted, but instead of moving away, she curled around him a little tighter. She’d done it almost instinctively, but suddenly stilled. “Is this okay?”
No way was he letting her move from his side. Zach stretched one arm, lifting her slightly until her head rested on his chest and he could cradle her easier. “There. Now it’s perfect.”
Cuddled together, intimate and warm and yet completely chaste.
Definitely story time. “Oh, here’s a good one. Older sister number two had a steady boyfriend in high school. Family rule was no entertaining the opposite sex in our bedrooms. Which simply meant when they wanted to neck, they had to do it in the TV room, which meant grossing out all of us other kids.”
Julia snickered. “Even not having grown up around my older siblings, I imagine that was probably part of the fun.”
“Definitely. But remember, this was the TV room, which meant if we wanted to watch something, that’s where we had to stay. After a while we learned to ignore them. Only mom wandered in one day and decided for some reason it was a great time for an additional sex ed class. She pulled out a condom and a banana, and the next thing we knew, Mattie’s boyfriend had vanished.”
“Oh my God.” The light danced in Julia’s eyes. “That’s terrible.”
Zach shrugged. He liked the way the weight of her against his body felt. He liked the way she was tucked up tight, and he had no desire to escape to a new position. “I suppose in the end, it wasn’t that bad. Ronan and Mattie have been married for over ten years now.”
That got another laugh out of her. “I guess he knew what he was signing up for.”
They lay quietly for a while. Julia trickled her fingers over his chest, almost as if she weren’t aware she was doing it at first. Then a little more boldly. “This all right?”
He caught her fingers and brought them up to his lips. “You do whatever makes you happy. You take whatever you need to take.”
“And what do you get out of this?” she asked, once again a note of disbelief in her tone.
Hopefully forever.
Zach hummed thoughtfully. “Unlimited kisses, unlimited hugs. That’s not a bad place to start. And we are going to fool around a whole hell of a lot. Don’t get me wrong, Julia. I didn’t permanently turn off the sex button—”
He paused as she snickered.
“Okay, bad wording. We’ll deal with the whole whatever sex feels good thing as it comes, but everything else happened quickly as well.”
“It really has,” Julia agreed thoughtfully. “I’ll admit today was the first day I’ve finally felt as if I was able to take a deep breath after racing through the past week and a half.” She tilted her head and looked up at him, sliding one hand to brush her palm over the scruff on his chin and cheeks. “You are a very complicated individual, Zachary Beauregard Damien Sorenson.”
He was about to deny it, but then remembered something from the years of watching his father the inventor. “Sometimes the simplest solution comes once you’ve removed all the complicated setup beneath the surface. I’m pretty much a what you see is what you get kinda guy, but I’ve learned a lot over the years to get to be at the point where I’ve peeled away what’s not important to me.”
“And taking our time is important?”
Another shrug. “It’s more that we’re important. What we need to make it through, here and now, isn’t what we’ll need next week, or next month, etcetera. No use rushing.”
Julia stayed silent until her head rocked the slightest bit, as if she’d thought it through and was willing to acknowledge the truth.
She fell asleep in his arms not even five minutes later. A bundle of warmth and soft, feminine skin, the scent of her filling his nostrils. The feel of her in his arms soaked into his very core and changed him from the