“Your arm?” I asked.
His hands felt nice, light, sweet, and tender as they roamed my skin and he answered, “Weird, I don’t feel it when you’re fuckin’ me or I’m eating you.”
I giggled into his neck.
Then I got serious.
“You need to put the sling back on.”
“In a minute.”
“Danny—”
He wrapped one arm around me and gave me a squeeze. “In a minute, Evie. All right?”
I drew in breath, held it and let it go.
It was hard, letting that breath go, and with it, letting the conversation do the same, seeing as he hadn’t sprained it, he’d been shot, and we really shouldn’t be engaging in these activities so soon after that occurred.
Engaging in them repeatedly.
But he was a grown man.
And it was his decision.
That was something I’d learned the day before.
My decisions were my decisions.
And the people around me made their own decisions.
And those were theirs, and whatever came of that, I had to let it go.
He didn’t say anything.
I didn’t say anything.
And all of a sudden, I felt weird.
We were just lying there, still connected (though I was losing him), post sex.
Good sex.
No, great sex.
Sex during which I hadn’t thought for a second about if I was doing something he liked (or not), what he thought of my body…nothing entered my head at all but enjoying him, giving him me…
And connecting.
I knew he liked it.
I definitely knew I liked it.
It was natural.
It was like bickering with him practically the minute he first walked into my apartment. It was like giggling at him being sexy and flirty and playful over brunch. Or sitting next to him at Mexican last night, Mag with his good arm around my chair, both our chairs tucked close, me with my boyfriend, him with his woman, and we’d only really had one date.
It was us.
I didn’t know if I’d ever been an us with anybody, not even my ex.
But Mag and I had been us since the beginning.
On this realization, I relaxed against him and enjoyed the moment.
That was, I enjoyed the moment until he tightened his arm around me for a second and muttered, “Gotta clean up. Be back.”
I slid off and he slid out of bed.
I found my panties in the sheets and had them on by the time he got back.
He stood, naked and beautiful, in the dawn’s early light beside the bed and donned his shorts and sling before he got back into bed and claimed me, pressing me down his healthy side.
“Do you need a pill?” I asked.
“No. Before bed only,” he answered.
“But if you’re in pain…” I let that trail.
“Got a high threshold for pain,” he told me. “But even if I didn’t, I need sleep to heal, I need the pain gone to sleep, so before bed only and only for a few nights. Painkillers will fuck you up and my life just took a good turn, not gonna let dick fuck it up.”
Oh my.
He’d been shot yesterday, and he thought his life had taken a “good turn.”
That turn being me.
Oh man.
I liked that.
A whole lot.
“Okay, then I’m going to make breakfast in bed for you.”
His body started shaking so I took my head off his shoulder, pushed up and looked down at him.
Yes, he was laughing.
“What?” I asked.
“No fair. I get shot for you, and you get a leg up on the breakfast game.”
My face must have registered my thoughts because his arm moved in its sling, he winced, then he took his other arm from around me and cupped my cheek.
“You didn’t shoot me,” he said softly.
“Danny—”
“Stop it. Now.”
I closed my mouth.
“I don’t blame anyone but Fletcher Gumm for this,” he declared. “And I won’t ever blame anyone but Gumm for this.”
“It could have been worse.”
“It wasn’t.”
“It could have been catastrophic.”
He slid his fingers back into my hair, pulled my face to his and said low, “It wasn’t.”
I took in air and nodded.
“We done with that?” he asked.
“I reserve the right to feel bad, freak out or otherwise react to it for the foreseeable future. Though you’re allowed to get angry about me doing that if that lasts longer than, say, ten years.”
He burst out laughing, doing so pulling my head further down, which meant my body went down with it, and he tucked my face in his neck.
He then rounded me with his arm, tensed it and kept it that way to hold me close.
When he got control of his hilarity, he agreed, “Okay. Ten years. Starting now.”
I smiled against his skin.
“So, today, breakfast, your turn ’cause I wanna make a few calls, and you’re right, I should take it easy. Then we’ll hit your pad to get your vinyl and anything else you wanna grab—”
“Danny—”
“It’ll fuck with me, but you can carry,” he grunted.
Okay, I could do that.
I said no more.
“We’ll grab some lunch, hit the grocery store and stock up then back here to take a load off.”