Page 15 of Shelter for Martina

“You should know… My son-in-law is African-American. Is that a problem for you?”

Carrying the cups back toward him, she set them on the coffee table. “Nope. I don’t care if he’s purple with green plaid, as long as he’s a good guy.”

“He is. He’s a great guy. He’s a wonderful husband to my daughter and they’ve got a beautiful little boy. Dimitri’s like a son to me, and he was really good to Becky before she died.”

“Then I’m sure he’s a fine man. I’d like to meet him sometime. Dimitri… I like that name,” she said and took a sip of coffee.

“I’m sure that can be arranged.” He took a sip too, then set his mug down. “Now, where were we?”

“I think we were kissing, and you’d pulled me up against you, and I had my arms around your neck…” She moved closer and rested an arm on each of his shoulders. “Kinda like this, as I recall.”

He pulled her up against him again, but he decided to be a bit more aggressive, and the kiss he gave her was hotter and deeper. When he forced his tongue between her lips, she responded by pressing herself to him even tighter, and he could feel her breasts trapped between her body and his chest. They were small, but they were firm, and her nipples poked him, rigid enough that he could feel them. A warmth spread through him, and he felt like he was lit up from the inside out, light radiating from his pores. God, he hadn’t felt like that in… forever.

When they finally came up for air, she ran her thumb across his lower lip and he grabbed it with his teeth, sucking it in between his lips. That made her grin. He let it go with another little nibble and watched as her lips parted ever so slightly, the hitch in her breathing telling him he’d struck a nerve. Burying his face in her neck, he whispered, “Tell me what you want.”

“I want to give you whatever you want.”

This is just too easy, Bud thought. “I want you.”

“I think that can be arranged. Don’t you want to finish your coffee?” she asked, a naughty glint in her eye.

“I can have coffee anytime.” He gave her neck a little nip and listened to her suck in a breath. “Unless you really want coffee.”

She extracted herself from his grasp and stood, then reached for his hand. “I can have coffee anytime too.” As soon as he stood, she pulled him toward the hallway at the back of the living room, and he followed obediently.

Her bedroom was nothing spectacular, the colors suggesting that it hadn’t been redecorated in quite some time, but it was clean and neat, and unlike a lot of other women in his family, her closet door was closed. There were no piles of shoes here and clothes there. Everything was orderly. “Bathroom’s right there,” she said, pointing to a doorway on the far wall. “There’s another one out in the hallway.” As he sat down on the end of the bed, she walked past him, but he reached out and grabbed her, then pulled her up in front of him. Those blue eyes questioned him.

“Martina, I don’t believe in beating around the bush. You’re right—life’s way too short. I’m all for a relationship unless we find out we’re horribly incompatible. Short of that, I’m easy to get along with. I can work with just about anything.”

“I have this feeling we’re going to get along just fine,” she said, then leaned down and gave him a soft kiss. As soon as she broke it, she stood there in front of him, grabbed the hem of the little dress, and pulled it up and over her head. Standing there in nothing but the leggings and her bra, she had a limber, willowy look about her that was more like the body of a teen girl than a grown woman, but it bore the stretch marks of a woman who’d borne children, and he found that endearing. Instead of turning her loose, he reached around behind her, unhooked her bra, and watched as she shrugged the straps down and let it fall.

Two small breasts greeted him, more than a handful, but not much more, and although they had a tiny bit of sag, her nipples were huge and hard. Bud felt a stiffening behind his fly and wondered if she knew the effect she was having on him. Before he could reach out and grasp one nipple in his lips, she bent down, pulled the tail of his shirt out of his pants, and pulled it over his head. “Oh, my,” she whispered.

“What?”

“You. God, how many times a week do you work out?”

He chuckled. “I don’t. I just throw bales of hay around and do a lot of shoveling.”

“Well, I’d say you’d better keep that up.” With her finger, she traced the tattoo on his left pec. “What’s this?”

“Oh, just something me and a couple of the guys got when we graduated from the academy.”

“What does it mean?”

He looked down at it. “We called ourselves ‘The Trident.’ Law, order, and mercy.”

“And the other guys?”

Bud sighed. “Baxter was killed by a drunk with a gun the first year we were troopers. Wexler’s KDCI out of the central part of the state now. I still see him from time to time, and we still call back and forth. But without Baxter, it’s never been the same.” He slipped an arm around her waist and pulled her closer, then let his other hand cup her breast, his finger and thumb caressing her nipple.

“Your job is full of heartache and sadness. And your personal life has been too. You deserve better than that, Albert. You deserve a good life.”

“So do you, Martina, and I…” He didn’t get a chance to finish the sentence before she kissed him again.

He just pulled her with him as he fell back on the bed and let her drop onto him. Her weight felt natural to him as she relaxed on top of him, and when he rolled them to their sides, she was all his. Bud couldn’t believe how easy it was for her to mold herself to him, and he felt ten feet tall with her skin pressed against his. Everything about her, her lips, her arms, her body, fit him perfectly. As soon as she ran her hand down the front of his slacks, he whispered to her, “I don’t have any condoms.”

“I had a hysterectomy years ago. I wasn’t lying when I said I hadn’t been with anybody in years.”

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