Page 41 of The Claiming of the Shrew
“Fine with me.” Leah licked chocolate off her upper lip with an enticing pink tongue.
“Are you fed enough yet? Because I can think of other things you could put in your mouth.”
“Eeeeeeeeee!” was Leah’s only response, a high-pitched squeal that he suspected was similar to the voice of her inner shrew, and she pounced on him.
At least with only a bathrobe between them, undressing was easy. The honeymoon suite conveniently provided condoms in the bedside table, and in moments he was finally, gloriously pushing inside her, while Leah tried to climb him enthusiastically. It turned out she was a very active and vocal sex partner. (At one point someone banged on the wall. “It’s the honeymoon suite!” Fawkes yelled back, and Leah collapsed in giggles.)
When they finally wound down, she’d come twice and he had barely managed to hold himself back for the second one, collapsing finally on top of her with one elbow as a prop to keep him from flattening her. They were both covered in sweat, and most of the fancy pillows were on the floor.
“Do you think they clean those pillows between guests?” Leah asked thoughtfully.
Fawkes kissed her to end any further investigation of that line of thought.
They snuggled on the bed for a while, and then Leah said with a little sigh, “At some point I probably ought to get my crutches. They’re still in Joy’s room, I assume, along the rest of my clothes.”
“You’re pretty good at opening doors,” Fawkes pointed out.
“You know, Joy’s not going to be back until morning, and she did say I could use her room ....”
LEAH
“When I saidyou could sleep in my room, I didn’t say you could have sex in my bed,” Joy muttered, busily buttering a muffin.
“I didn’t have sex in your bed. We were in the other bed.”
“There’s a perfectly good honeymoon suite right here in this hotel!”
“We had sex there too,” Leah said, gazing into a distant corner of the hotel dining room over the top of her demolished pancake stack while she thought about the giant bed in Fawkes’s room.
“I don’t want to hear about it.”
Leah gave her sister a pointed stare. “If you want me to believe you and Bar are chastely using two beds like a 1950s TV couple, you appear to have overlooked an important bean-sized flaw in your argument.”
Joy made a face at her, then seemed to realize she had nearly wrecked her muffin by over-buttering it, and placed it delicately on the edge of her plate. “You’re taking precautions, right? Did you use protection?”
“And you say I don’t have a verbal filter! Are you going to have ‘the talk’ with me in a public restaurant? You know I’m an adult, right?”
“We’re not having ‘the talk.’ I’m just making sure you aren’t making unwise life choices.”
“As opposed to your very similar choices?” Leah asked archly, with a look at Joy’s midsection.
Joy sipped her cup of chamomile tea. “I’m your big sister. I always make excellent choices.”
“Yeah, I remember what that Christmas when you met Bar was like.”
Joy looked up and grinned. “I think you’re being paged.”
Glancing around, Leah saw Fawkes waving at her from the door of the restaurant. He had brought her coffee and breakfast in bed, which had delighted her endlessly, and then had disappeared for a while, after they had plotted in bed (among other things also done in bed). Fortunately Joy hadn’t returned from her Bar-related field trip untilafterhe’d left.
“See you later. I believe Detective Shrew’s duty calls.” Leah stuffed a huge bite of pancake into her mouth and bounded to her feet.
“I hope Fawkes loves a woman in uniform,” Joy said. “Don’t forget to call backup this time if you need it.”
Leah hopped swiftly over to the door, chewing and swallowing hastily. Fawkes was waiting for her, grinning in welcome. He greeted her with a swift kiss, and Leah snuggled up to him.
“Did you have a nice breakfast with your sister?” he asked, placing a hand at the small of her back. She still couldn’t get over the casualness of their sensual touching, the delight of it. Her shrew screeched once and then, astonishingly, settled down, as if it too was enjoying being snuggled up against him.
“Yes, but I wondered where you were. Are you going to enlighten me anytime soon?”
