He turned the shower on hot and stifled a groan as he stepped under the spray. The smell of Emily just intensified his arousal, as did the sight of her little pink robe hanging from a hook on the door.
With the water beating down on him, he wrapped his hand around his erection and pumped quickly, bracing himself with his other hand against the shower wall.
He tried not to visualize Emily, but he couldn’t seem to help it. He saw the tumble of her hair around her face, the lush curves of her small body, that irresistible expression in her blue eyes. He came, biting his lip to make sure he didn’t make any noise.
He grabbed the soap and lathered himself up, thinking about Emily waiting out in the bedroom for him, under the covers. He hadn't yet softened all the way and was hard again by the time he’d rinsed off.
Absolutely disgusted with his body, which hadn’t been this out of control since he’d been a teenager, he brought himself to another fast climax, this one relaxing him more completely.
He felt better when he finally turned off the shower. He thought he might actually be able to make it through the night without doing something unforgivably stupid.
Emily had turned off all of the lights in the room except for the lamp on his side of the bed. He’d been hoping she would be asleep or mostly asleep when he came in, but her eyes were opened and she watched him as he walked over and got into bed.
She smiled, and he couldn’t help but smile back. Fortunately, his body seemed to be satisfied for the moment. It didn’t do anything untoward, despite the fact that he was wrapped up in her fragrance again as soon as he slid into bed.
“Are you tired?” Emily asked, when he reached over to turn off the light.
“Yeah. It’s been a long day. I’m sure you must be exhausted, since you’re still recovering from the fever.”
He couldn’t see Emily’s expression very well in the dark, but there was a strange resonance to the silence in the long pause that followed his words. She sounded almost disappointed when she murmured, “Yeah. I guess I am.”
He wished he hadn’t brought up her being sick. She’d been having a good day, enjoying finally being in Egypt, and he’d brought her down by reminding her of depressing reality. He lay on his back, staring up at the ceiling. “You can sleep in tomorrow if you want. It’s usually more comfortable to go out early in the day, but there’s really no rush. I can reschedule our—”
“Oh, no. I’m sure I’ll be ready to get going early. I’m exciting about seeing everything.” She paused. “Do you snore or anything?”
He gave a huff of amusement. “I don’t think so. No one has told me I do, anyway.”
“Well, they might not tell you.” Emily’s voice was light and ironic, as if she were feeling less self-conscious. “I’m sure all of your bed-partners were secretly dreaming of being Mrs. Paul Marino and didn’t want to sully the experience for you with the unpleasantness of snoring. But, since I’m already Mrs. Paul Marino, I’ll definitely tell you if you snore.”
He smiled in the dark, although hearing Emily declare herself Mrs. Paul Marino, when they were lying in the same bed, did something odd to his chest. “I'll appreciate the honesty.”
“No, you won’t. You’d get all bristly if I were to tell you that you snore.” He started to object, but she must have predicted it and continued, “Don’t try to deny it. I know you too well. You would definitely get bristly. Not that it would stop me from telling you.”
“Never doubted it.”
Emily made the mattress shift as she turned on her side so she faced him. “You can tell me if I snore too.”
“I’m sure you don’t snore,” he murmured, smiling again as he turned his head in her direction. His eyes were adjusting to the dark, and he could see her dimly, her eyes wide, her mouth turned up, and her body softly rounded under the blanket.
“What makes you say that? Girls snore too, you know.”
He laughed. He couldn’t help it. “Are you discreetly trying to warn me about something?”
“No,” she admitted. “I don’t think I snore. But you shouldn’t make snap judgments based only on a person’s gender. Both men and women can snore equally.”
“Thanks for the insight. I’ll remember that the next time I’m tempted to be a male chauvinist.”
“I don’t think you’re a male chauvinist, although you do have an incredibly strong chivalrous streak in you that might occasionally be confused with it. But it’s not the same thing.”
He frowned. “I’m not chivalrous.” Even the word made him awkward, conjured up silly, romantic visuals that were not at all in keeping with the experienced, cynical man he took himself to be.
“Of course, you’re chivalrous!” She sounded absolutely astonished by his denial of what she evidently took for an undeniable fact. “What are you talking about?”
He looked up at the ceiling again and frowned deeper, feeling slightly flustered and not sure why.
She propped herself up on one elbow and gazed down at his face. “You’ve never been anything except chivalrous with me,” she murmured, very softly, her voice feeling to him almost like a caress.
He shifted his eyes and met hers in the dark. They gazed at each other for a moment that lasted too long, and Paul felt a tug in his chest that was both thrilling and terrifying. Emily seemed to be caught in the moment with him, and she adjusted a little, bringing her face closer to his.
It was all Paul could do to stop himself from grabbing her and pulling her into a deep kiss. His body wasn’t even reacting at the moment, but he still seemed to want her so much.
He clenched his fist in the bedding and fought the impulse fiercely. He wasn’t going to take advantage of this situation and use Emily as the fix to his horniness.
Desperately groping for a way out of the tense moment, he said, “You better get some sleep, if you want to have energy for seeing all the sights tomorrow.”
Emily let out a whoosh of air, as if she’d deflated. Then she flopped over onto her back, evidently realizing that she really was tired. “Yeah,” she agreed. “I do want to get out early. Goodnight.”
“Goodnight.”
Paul relaxed once she was safely on her side of the bed and not so tantalizingly within arm’s reach. He was still conscious of her. She’d rolled over onto her side, and her back was to him. She adjusted the covers several times and rearranged her pillow. He could hear her breathing in the dark.
Eventually, she fell asleep. Not long after, Paul fell asleep too.
* * *
He woke up before five the next morning.
The first thing he was aware of was that he’d slept surprisingly well—he hadn’t woken up all night, which was very unusual.
The next thing he was aware of was the fact that he was very warm and very hard.
And the next thing he was aware of was the feeling of a little radiator pressed into his side.
He blinked down and saw Emily, cuddled up beside him, her cheek pressed against the side of his chest and her arm wrapped around his middle.
She was sound asleep. He should have known she was a cuddler. During the night, she must have rolled onto his side of the bed and nestled into him.
Part of him liked the feeling. She was warm, her body soft and clingy against his. He liked the heat from her body. He liked the weight of her arm on his belly. He liked the way her hand instinctively clutched his side.
But the arm that had ended up wrapped around her during the night was numb from a lack of circulation. And arousal pulsed uncomfortably at his groin, no doubt intensified by Emily’s soft body pressed into his.
So he gently pulled his numb arm from under her weight and eased her back over toward the middle of the bed. Then he rolled out of bed and made his way to the bathroom to take an early shower.
* * *
Paul wanted to shake Emily, and she wasn’t even in the same room.
He was getting out of the shower, and she was in the bedroom. But he knew—he just kne
w—that she was still being irrational, stubborn, and infuriating.
She’d taken a shower earlier than evening, before dinner, so she hadn’t needed one before bed. Paul had showered earlier too, since he’d been hot and sweaty after sightseeing. He hadn’t absolutely needed a shower before bed either. The argument he’d been having with Emily had put a damper on any physical responses prompted by going to bed with her.
But he’d taken a shower anyway and had jerked off with quick efficiency under the spray, since his body didn’t necessarily follow the lead of his mind, and he didn’t want to risk it.
When he came out of the bathroom, Emily was curled up under the covers, facing away from both the bathroom and his side of the bed.
Maybe she’d decided to give him the silent treatment, which would be all right with him.
He sat down on the side of the bed and noticed she’d put a cold bottle of water on his nightstand, despite being angry with him. It touched him, for some reason.
He’d been a fool to let himself be distracted even momentarily by sentiment.
Without turning over, Emily said in a tight, defensive tone, “I’m not being irrational. I’m not being stubborn. I’m telling you that I’m not an invalid. When I don’t have a fever, I feel as good as anyone else, and I don’t appreciate your acting like I’m too sick to do anything normal.”
Paul rolled his eyes and let out an impatient exhale. “And I’ve said at least six times now that I wasn’t treating you like an invalid. It was the hottest part of the afternoon, and even healthy people get sick from the heat.”
“But I wasn’t getting sick. I was having a good time, and I wasn’t ready to go back yet.”
“I know you were having a good time, but we have two more days in Egypt to do everything you want to do. We didn’t have to pack everything into one day, when there was a chance that the heat could prompt a fever.” He turned off the light and got under the covers, lying on his back and looking at her tense shoulders and unyielding spine.
“I wasn’t getting feverish,” she gritted out, her earlier attempt to control her tone obviously failing as she got even angrier with him. “You’re treating me like a child who can’t tell whether she’s sick or not.”
“I’m not saying you were sick then. I’m saying you could have gotten sick. And there was absolutely no reason for you to risk another fever.” He rubbed his jaw in frustration and got tired of looking at the back of her head. “Would you please turn over so I don’t have to talk to your back?”
Emily rolled over, obviously not appreciating his exasperated tone. His eyes had adjusted enough to the dark to tell that she was glaring at him. “I get fevers because I have this virus. I don’t get fevers because I get too hot.”
“But how do you know external conditions can’t trigger a fever? You were hot, Emily. You can tell me all you want that you were fine, but you were getting too hot out there.”
Paul had been hit with a flare of worry that afternoon as he’d noticed Emily’s very flushed face and the dampness of perspiration on the back of her shirt. Since he’d already been tired and annoyed about other things, he hadn’t hesitated to call an end to their tour, digging in his heels despite Emily’s very vocal objections.
“Everyone was hot, and I wasn’t even walking! But you evidently think I’m so delicate that I can’t even get driven around in a Jeep.”
“We can go back tomorrow. You can still see everything.”
“But I liked having Akil as our guide, and he’s not going to be available tomorrow.”
Paul closed his eyes and clenched his jaw for a moment before he replied coldly, “Yes, you’ve told me several times now how much you liked him. But I’m sure our guide tomorrow will be equally knowledgeable.”
Unlike Emily, Paul hadn’t liked the very handsome Egyptian archeology student who had shown them around today. He especially hadn’t liked the way the man’s eyes lingered on Emily’s face and body.
His comment seemed to prompt in her another cause for irritation with him. She snapped, “And, by the way, there was no reason for you to be so rude to the poor guy, after he’d been nothing but nice to us.”
“He’d been nice to you,” Paul corrected, rather gutturally. “And I definitely wasn’t blind to why he was nice to you.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean? I liked him and thought he was smart and funny. I wasn’t flirting with him or anything.”
“I didn’t mean to imply that you were flirting,” he said, although he hadn’t been at all happy with the way Emily was grinning and laughing with the obnoxious man. He hadn't for a minute thought she would do anything. It just bothered him to see her enjoying another man the way she sometimes enjoyed him. “I was referring to his obvious interest in you.”
Emily actually snorted. “That’s ridiculous. He knew we’re married. I mean, you were right there glowering at him the whole time. He wasn’t coming on to me. He was just nice.”
“No man has a reason to be that nice to my wife.”
She made a wordless sound of frustration in her throat. “So I’m not allowed to have another man even talk to me?”
“You’re intentionally misunderstanding me. Of course, you can talk to other men. Of course, men can talk to you. What I have a problem with is men making obvious moves on my wife.” He saw her open her mouth to argue. “You might not have realized that’s what he had in mind, but I promise you it was. He didn’t just want to talk to you. He wanted to get you into bed.”
Emily’s lips parted as she stared at him, and for a moment Paul felt a tug of desire. He was still too annoyed for it to develop into a problem, though.
“I don’t think that’s right.” Her anger had faded into slight confusion. “He was being nice.”
“You’re a beautiful woman, Emily. There’s a reason why so many men want to be nice to you.” He’d spoken without thinking, to make a point in the argument. But, after the words were said, he wasn’t sure they should have been.
Finally, she shrugged. “I can’t go around assuming that every man who talks to me wants to jump me. I just can’t believe it’s true, and—even if it was—I couldn’t function that way. If a man gets inappropriate with me, of course I would put a stop to it. But, to tell you the truth, no one has even tried to be inappropriate with me.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean, I’m not the kind of girl that men come on to.”
He swallowed, bristling at the thought of all the blind fools who had made Emily believe herself to be undesirable, even as he was aware that he used to be one of them. “You’ve been around high school boys,” he said matter-of-factly. “And high school boys are stupid most of the time. You can’t judge yourself by what happens in high school. Men will want you, Emily.”
It was too dark to read the expression in her eyes clearly. “Do you think so?”
“Of course.”
She smiled at him, and he smiled back. They seemed to be caught in that intense gaze again, and this time he couldn’t pull out. He couldn’t look away. He couldn’t say anything. The only thing he was capable of doing was barely restraining himself from hauling her into a kiss.
If he kissed her now, in their bed, he wouldn’t be able to stop.
After a long moment, Emily broke the spell. “Anyway, I’m still annoyed with you for cutting my day short.”
He rolled his eyes, almost relieved that the tension was broken. “I’ve told you hundreds of times now that I’m not going to back down about your health.”
“I know you’ve said that, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.”
Evidently tired of arguing, she rolled over, showing him her back again. This time Paul didn’t complain.
He lay in bed and stewed about her stubborn irrationality for a long time.
Then, without warning, Emily said into the darkness of the room, "I'm sorry if I was too stubborn. I know you were just trying to look out for me."
He hesita
ted, mostly to swallow over his surprise and not because he didn't want to apologize too. He'd never met anyone who had apologized to him so genuinely. Finally, he was able to say, "Thanks. I'm sorry too. I shouldn't have been so bad-tempered, especially about…"
"Akil," Emily finished for him, a smile in her voice. "That's all right. I forgive you."
* * *
Paul woke up just after five o’clock the next day. And, just like the previous morning, his personal space had definitely been invaded.
He was sleeping on his side, with his back in Emily’s direction. But, during the night, she’d pressed herself up behind him in her sleep, spooning him cozily with her arms wrapped around his middle.
He was partly erect but not as hard as yesterday, and he was too groggy to want to pull away. She felt nice pressed up behind him—warm and soft and feminine.
Paul had never had the instinct to cuddle before. With most of the women he’d slept with over the years, he hadn’t even spent the night. When he’d had serious girlfriends, he’d tried to hold them for a while after they’d had sex, but he’d always needed his own space to sleep.
He wasn’t really any different now. He was sure this wasn't any sort of impulse to cuddle. But there was something he liked about the way Emily clung to him in her sleep.
He could feel her damp breath against his bare back. He could feel her loose hair tickling his skin just slightly. He could feel her soft breasts pressed tightly against him, with only a thin layer of cotton between their skin. Her legs were tucked snugly behind his, her small body molding his perfectly. And she was squeezing him lightly with her arms, her hands clutching at his bare belly.
He lay like that for a long time, dozing and enjoying the feel of her against him, but then she started to shift in her sleep, her breasts brushing against him, her pelvis pushing against his ass, her hands fumbling at his abdomen as if they were groping for something to hold onto.
She was still sound asleep, but her breathing had accelerated. He assumed she must be dreaming. The little squirms and gropes she made started to turn him on, his half-erection hardening completely.
Listed: Volume II Page 9
