“We can go as fast or slow as you want,” I tell her truthfully. “As long as I know you’re mine, we can take all the time you need before we…” I add, raising my eyebrows in quick succession, trying to make light of it but noticing her face redden as she looks away again.
“I want to, I really do, James,” she says, “I need it,” she admits, sighing with a tremor in her voice that’s matched by her body.
“It’s just…”
I lean over, covering us both with the covers from the bed, and putting my arm around her, I pull her close and feel her start to relax a little.
In the dim light of my bedroom, which I don’t even think I’ve slept in, I feel her getting more and more relaxed next to me.
We lay in silence together until I can hear her breathing change and her heartbeat slow until I know she’s asleep.
Me, I don’t think I’ll ever sleep again. Not until I know I have a place for us both that isn’t here.
Our first time needs to be special and in a proper setting.
As I feel the sensation disappear from my arm, I smile to myself, not minding it one bit.
I start to consider the houses I have, the parts of the country they’re in. Wondering if she’d even like any of them let alone want to move there.
Maybe she wants to stay in her home town, maybe she wants to be with the new Mayor of Woods End?
I wonder if she wants to start a family first, or does she want to travel, be carefree and see the world?
So many things run through my mind as I lay with her, listening to her breath and make little sounds in her sleep.
Content, happy sounds that tell me I’ve satisfied her and now I can keep her safe while she sleeps.
She shifts a little after a while. Murmuring something which breaks my train of thought.
Here I am already whitewashing the fence of our dream house and she’s only been dozing for an hour, maybe two.
I kiss her forehead, telling her softly how glad I’m I came to Woods End.
“If I hadn’t seen you on the TV… If I hadn’t been watching PBS, I never would have found you. Never would have wanted to Mayor of Nowheresville…”
I’m not really thinking, just talking out loud, but my words act like ice water and she bolts upright in the bed, gasping for air suddenly and gripping at her naked chest.
“What is it?” I ask, worried as all hell.
“I gotta go, my dad!” she wheezes, scrambling free of me and struggling back into her gown, her hair coming down and cursing as she tries to find her shoes in the semi-darkness.
I lay back, sighing a little, “You’ll come back to bed is what you’ll do. I’ll deal with your Dad if you think it’s gonna be a-”
She cuts me off, changing the topic entirely too.
“What did you say about me being on TV, about why you came to Woods End?” she asks, frantically looking for her second shoe and groaning as she checks the time on the digital clock by the bed.
“I said if it wasn’t for that story they had that showed last year’s ball, I would never have seen you. Never would have wanted to come here at all,” I repeat matter of fact as I hold the covers back, willing her to come back to bed.
But her face twists and contorts in anger.
“You used the election as an excuse to get in my pants?” she almost shrieks, making me sit up now.
“Uh, that’s not what I said, Krystal.”
She shakes her head, holding it with both hands when it looks like it’ll spin right off.
“I gotta go, my dad. He’ll kill me as it is… And if you think I would ever… You’re messing with my dad’s whole career, our whole life in this town. All so you can…? Errrgh!” she growls, storming out of my room and out of my little office house before I can even get my own pants untangled from around my ankles.
I get to the bottom of the driveway in time to see her speeding off, not even looking back as I toss my hands up in desperation.
What the fuck just happened?
Chapter Seventeen
Krystal
I’m almost a hundred percent asleep, dozing in James’ arms, warm in his bed, and completely satisfied.
But then that little alarm bell goes off in my head, the one with my dad’s face on it. And right at the same instant, I hear James telling me he only came to Woods End, running for Mayor so he could claim me as his?
I don’t know which one gives me a bigger jolt, knowing I have to leave and face the wrath of my dad or knowing James has been undermining my dad’s whole career from the minute he got here just so he could…