towel around his waist—he just took a shower—as I’m putting my makeup and toothbrush back into my little case. He stands behind me, meeting my eyes in the mirror for a minute before tilting his head down to suck on the side of my throat in a way that makes me squeal.
He likes to make me squeal. He does it on purpose. I’m absolutely sure of it.
Laughing, I turn around and push him away, but he pulls me into a hug and then kisses me. “You sure you don’t want me to go with you to the airport?”
“Yes, I’m sure. Your flight is four hours after mine. You’d have to sit and wait forever. Gallantry is all well and good, but there are limits.”
“Okay. I’m not actually known for my gallantry, to tell you the truth.”
“Really? I’m not sure I believe that.”
“Why wouldn’t you believe it? You think I’m hiding depths of chivalry beneath my cynical surface?”
“Maybe.” I rub his chest, playing with the hair there for a minute as I process what I’m feeling. Tender.
That’s the way of heartbreak for me, so I stifle the feeling immediately. To distract myself, I yank the towel off his waist and give his naked body an exaggerated leer. “Not bad.”
“Not bad?” His eyebrows go sky high.
“I mean for a forty-eight-year-old.”
He makes an outraged sound that makes me giggle. “Forty-six.”
“Are you sure? I’m sure I recall you told me you were forty-eight.” I give him a little swat with the towel.
He laughs and reaches for it, but I don’t let go. We end up having a small scuffle over it. A scuffle he wins.
He doesn’t put the towel back on, however. He drops it and grabs for me, swinging me up into his arms and carrying me over to the bed. He dumps me on the foot and climbs over me, wrapping my legs around his back as he kisses me hard.
We have sex like that—him completely naked, me wearing most of my clothes. It’s quick and hot and deeply pleasurable. I claw lines down his back as I come.
We’re both panting and still tangled together as we come down. His head is buried in the crook of my neck.
“Wow,” I gasp, caressing his back before moving my hands up to his hair.
“Yeah. Not too shabby for a forty-something-year-old.”
I giggle and hug him hard before I remember I need to get to the airport, and I really need to control any and all sappy impulses when it comes to Richard.
So I let go of him and push him away until he lets me up. I clean myself up and straighten my clothes and finish packing my bag.
Richard is still naked on the bed when I lean over to kiss him. “Thanks for everything,” I murmur. “I had an amazing time.”
“Me too.”
I wait for just a moment, but he says nothing about next time.
I don’t either.
With one more wave, I leave the hotel room, and I don’t look back even once.
FOR THE NEXT COUPLE of weeks, I try to go through each day of my normal life.
I work hard. I hang out with friends. I schedule an evening to have dinner with Ashley and Sean and the guy they want to fix me up with. I get the random desire to redo my bedroom, so I paint the walls, buy new bedding, and rearrange the furniture over the course of one weekend. Every time Richard passes into my mind—which is honestly quite often—I push away the image of his handsome face and dry half smile.
I’m not going to let him infect my real life. I promised Ashley that as soon as he did, I’d give up my weekends with him. And I really don’t want to do that yet.
On a conscious level, I’m quite successful, but I go through the days with constant low-level jitters of excitement. Expectation.
After the first time, Richard waited a month before he sent me the package with the invitation for more. After the second time, he waited three weeks. So a tiny, silly part of me that I simply can’t control wonders if he’ll send the package after two weeks this time.
He doesn’t send it after two weeks. He sends it after one week and six days.
It arrives on a Thursday. I pick it up from my post office box as I’m coming home from work, and the rush of pure giddiness I feel when I see it should have caused alarm bells to clang deafeningly in my head.
They