Page 35 of A Lonely Road
“Open the door,” I ordered, but I didn’t release him. In fact, as soon as the key was in the lock, I kissed him again.
Jake barely managed to shut the door behind us and toss the keys in the vicinity of the hall table before sliding his hands under the hem of my tank top, pressing against the small of my back to fit me more closely against him. Pleasure hummed in my throat as his lips traveled across my jaw.
“Does this mean the cake has to wait?” I asked sweetly.
Jake threw back his head and laughed before cupping my face in his hands. “This means everything else on the planet has to wait.”
The joyous smile that spread across my lips told him that was the right answer, and together we raced up the stairs.
Chapter Eighteen
Jake
Wesettledintoacomfortable rhythm over the following days and, much to my delight, Nora also returned to her little booth in the corner several times that week. There was something intensely satisfying about being able to look over and speak a thousand words with just a glance. It was that same pleasure I’d felt when she first started coming in—multiplied by a thousand now that our connection strengthened day by day.
As a bonus, I started counting the number of times I was able to inspire a blush in her cheeks with nothing more than a raised eyebrow.
My current record was three in one evening, but the payback came when she held my gaze and popped a piece of strawberrybetween her lips. I almost abandoned the bar to drag her into my office then and there.
After we left The Mermaid, our nights were spent together, exploring one another and testing the limits of the hurricane forces between us. It was a perfect technique for drawing her out from behind her walls, because my intuition about when to press forward and when to back off seemed to reassure her more than words ever could.
Of course, the fact that she trusted me enough to be so responsive was why I was able to read her so well. As a result, I could barely remember a time when I’d been so happy and so fulfilled all at once.
Since I knew that Nora’s shopping trip with Sam was weighing on her nerves, on Thursday night we left the restaurant early to go back to my place. I’d caught the way Nora eyed the huge bathtub at my house with something pretty damn close to longing, so I asked Sam to pick up some kind of girly bubble bath, which she’d sneakily delivered to me at work the previous day. Before heading to The Mermaid for my shift, I'd positioned candles around the master bathroom.
Nora cocked a suspicious brow when I told her to stay put downstairs, covered her eyes as instructed when I brought her up, and gave a girlish shriek of sheer delight when I revealed the candlelit bathroom and steaming tub filled with bubbles.
She turned and threw her arms around me, though not before I caught sight of her radiant smile—and, I thought, the sheen of tears in her eyes.
“Oh my god, Jake,” she whispered, “I thought maybe you were leading me to a sex dungeon. Oh, this is beautiful, thank you, thank you, thank you!”
I burst out laughing as I clutched her tight to my chest. “Sex dungeon, huh? I mean, if the lady desires, I’m sure I can adjust my renovation plans. I’ll just need a few extra supplies to make that happen.”
She whacked my shoulder lightly and surreptitiously wiped at her eyes before turning back to survey the scene before us. “This is a pretty big tub,” she mused. “Will you be joining me?”
I started pulling off my shirt before she even finished the question. “Hell yes, but the point of this exercise is relaxation, so don’t go getting all handsy on me.”
Nora’s beautiful laughter echoed off the tiled walls, but when she sank chin-deep into the water, it was her sigh of pure bliss that wound its way around my heart with a gentle squeeze. I never even used the tub, nor had I really ever expected to, but we stayed in there for almost two hours with nothing more sexual than a game of footsy to accent our soft conversation.
Nora looked so at peace that I was just about willing to add this into our nightly routine. With her dark hair piled high, her eyes closed, and her head tipped back against the porcelain, I had a tantalizing view of her neck and shoulders. Only the upper swells of her breasts were visible until the bubbles at last began to collapse on themselves, then I caught the occasional glimpse of deep, rosy pink beneath the water and my mouth went dry.
A sheepish grin tugged at my lips when she caught me staring.
“I was told the point of this exercise was relaxation,” she informed me primly, but the glint in her eye told me she was finished with that portion of the evening.
“I have a very delicate constitution and the water is freezing now,” I protested. “I had to warm myself up somehow, didn’t I? Do you want me to suffer from hypothermia?”
She crawled over to me, sweeping away bubbles with her hand until she was straddling my thighs. “You have a rock solid constitution—among other things, it feels like—so why don’t you let me warm you up?”
With a wide smile, I enthusiastically agreed. Though I was always happy to take the lead whenever she wanted me to, letting Nora guide our lovemaking was a gift in itself. She was as inventive as she was playful, easily coaxing me into trying out whatever it was she had in mind.
So far, she’d never steered us wrong.
Sometimes I thought about her declaration that she wanted nothing from me beyond friendship—especially when she was doing wicked things with her mouth or when she was writhing underneath my own—and I had to keep myself from laughing and ruining the moment.
When we abandoned the tub, though, bubbles dripping down our bodies to join the puddles on the floor, Nora’s limbs wrapped tightly around me, laughter was out of the question.
She was as likely as not to disappear before I awoke, but she lingered in bed with me on Friday morning, welcoming the soothing way my hands stroked over her hair and skin as I woke up to her in my arms. We lay there in the stillness of the morning, listening to the birdsong outside the window as I basked in the warmth of her soft body tucked against my side.
