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She had read The Gift of Fear. She listened to her gut. And Caleb didn’t ring any alarm bells with her. But that was sex and walking through her front door. She didn’t know anything about his driving.
They were standing close to each other on the sidewalk. She felt his every movement and had to focus on what he was saying instead of letting her mind wander to how his body would feel, naked against hers.
“Well,” he explained, “you don’t feel comfortable driving. And driving won’t be a problem for me. I could drive you to your house in my car and, tomorrow morning, drive you to come get your car. Or, I could drive you in your car to your house and I’m the one who has to come get my car in the morning. Me driving your car seems both the more gentlemanly thing to do and the most practical. If we were going to my house, I’d say we should take my car.”
She looked up at him and bit her lip. What if he wouldn’t leave in the morning? She’d been living alone in her house for over a year and, to be honest, quite liked it. The toilet seat was never up.
“Or,” he said as he leaned against the building and she felt like she had space to breathe—to think, “we could take our pizza and eat it over on the tables at Five Points and we can go our separate ways for the night. And there are hotels. Nice ones. If you’re looking for a night, but not another date.”
He shrugged. “But I’d like to see you another time.”
The shrug was the clincher, full of interest but no pressure that she raise that toilet seat because he expected it. “Drive me home. We’ll have pizza and see where we go from there. That sounds good.”
He peeled himself off the building and was back in her space again. She liked him in her space. Frankly, she wanted him to be in more of her space. For there to be no space. He probably had dark, curly chest chair and she wanted to run her hands over it.
“Great.” God, even his smile was romantic, slow and full of promises. She was going to have sex. She was going to come. For the first time in months, she wouldn’t be completely responsible for making it happen. And it was going to be awesome.
The woman at the hostess stand gestured to them from the other side of the restaurant’s big windows. Beck stayed outside while Caleb went in and got the pizza. When he hit the sidewalk, a box of hot pizza in his hand, she fell into step beside him while they walked to her car.
She didn’t say anything, wasn’t even sure there was anything to say. It felt almost like losing her virginity for a second time—she could either babble out her nerves or let them keep her quiet company. She chose quiet company.
CHAPTER FIVE (#uc8205a00-018e-573a-9ffe-d67265e0bf47)
BECK DIDN’T SAY a word the entire way from the pizza place to her car, three whole blocks. Caleb would have worried, but she didn’t seem reluctant to be coming with him. Or to have him coming with her, since they were on their way to her house in her car.
Nerves, he figured. He remembered those days, right after his marriage had ended when he’d been at a bar for the first time, looking for company. He hadn’t been very good at meeting women when he’d been younger. Memories from his early twenties bordered on painful. Whenever he looked at pictures of himself from those years, he couldn’t take his eyes off the Adam’s apple as big as his nose and the Ichabod Crane awkwardness, complete with trying to woo the beautiful Katrina with poetry. Caleb had kept his life, but there had been moments when he’d wondered if the poor schoolmaster had been relieved to have his humiliation disappear at the hands of the headless horseman. In those years, he certainly wouldn’t have turned down a big hole to swallow him up, Adam’s apple first.
That first night back in the game after his separation, he’d opened the door to the bar and his only thought had been, “Let me not be alone for an hour.” Instead of poetry, he’d walked up to the first woman who made eye contact and said, “Hi, I’m Caleb,” while sticking out his hand.
All his confidence about talking with random strangers after years of being a reporter puffed out in an embarrassing whimper when she’d said, “I’m taken,” making her friends laugh. Except one of the women had come up to him at the bar a little later and introduced herself as “Sabrina, but my friends call me ‘Not Taken.’” It was his turn to laugh. He’d stumbled through questions about her job and her interests and they’d ended up back at his house.
The nerves had only disappeared when Sabrina had left the next morning. And they’d shown up again and again and again for the first year as slowly the memories of shuffling his feet and bad poetry faded into the background. Sometimes he missed the nerves. He didn’t miss being nervous, really, but that lack of nerves reminded him that he’d been dating for a long time.
That was not a thought he liked, though he wasn’t sure what the alternative was. And without dating, he wouldn’t meet a woman like Beck. There was something about that square chin and big, round smile that did him in—reality was even better than her profile picture.
“Anything I should know about the car?” he asked after he’d put the pizza in the back and slid into the driver’s seat.
“Nope. Drives like it’s supposed to.”
He turned the key. “Good. I like it when the D means drive.”
Unless she was giving him directions, Beck also was silent for the entire drive back to her house. Which was also fine, since Caleb wasn’t certain he’d be able to hear her over the growl of his stomach as the smell of pizza permeated everything.
* * *
EVERYTHING WAS HAPPENING in slow motion, Beck realized as she stuck the key into her lock and turned it. Seamus was barking in the background. She could feel Caleb behind her, a large, mostly unknown presence that she welcomed, even if she wasn’t sure what she was going to do with him. Or, she knew what she wanted to do with him, but she just worried that she was out of practice with the whole process, from pre-sex to post-sex. The last time she had taken a near stranger to her house was...well, it would have been her dorm room in college and they had both been drunk enough that she couldn’t remember if she’d had a good time.
Since then, it had only been Neil. With a shock, she realized she was glad it wasn’t Neil tonight.
As soon as the door opened and they both stepped in, her dog was there, bouncing up and down and making any need to talk to each other moot. Caleb actually got down on one knee, holding the pizza box up high. Seamus gave him one big lick before settling down for a solid ear scratch.
“This is the famous Seamus,” he said, looking up at her. Seamus had a dopey grin on his face, his tongue lolling out to the side. The dog slobber added a shine to his nose, making Caleb even more perfect.
She nodded. “No green collar, though. Maybe for St. Patrick’s Day.”
He rocked back on his heels and then stood, still balancing the pizza box. “It’d look good on him. But the blue collar he has now looks good, too.”
“Thanks.”
They stood in her entryway, Seamus between them, looking back and forth, waiting for one of them to do something exciting. Give him a slice, probably. Lucky to be a dog and know both what he wanted and to not feel self-conscious about how to get it.
“What do we do now?” she asked.
“That depends on what you want out of the night.” He held his arms out. It felt like an invitation, though she didn’t step inside them. Not yet. “I’m here. If you changed your mind about what I’m here for, I’ll take an Uber back to my car. No hard feelings. If you didn’t...”
“I didn’t,” she interrupted. The last thing she wanted was for him to think she was changing her mind. “I’m just nervous. It’s been...” She paused. “A long time since I’ve done this.”
“Had sex?”
“Over a year for that. Divorce, you know.”
“I know,” he said with a slow nod and she felt that same instant connection she had in the bar, this sense that he understood her nerves and didn’t judge her for them. That she was safe.
“And sex during marriage is different,” she said.
“Well, sure. In the best case, you manage to be both experimental and steady about what gets the other person off. In the worst case...” He shrugged. She didn’t need him to finish that statement. In the worst case, you didn’t have sex and either your libido died a slow, lonely death or you relieved your frustrations elsewhere. Horrible cases, both.
“How about this? I need to wash the slobber off my face and Seamus probably wants a trip outside. Let’s take care of the practicalities and come back to reassess. We can talk. Drink a little wine. There’s pizza to eat. Calm the nerves a little.”
“Am I the only one that’s nervous?”
She must have caught him off guard, because his eyes went wide for a moment before returning to their regular, dreamy state. “I remember being nervous, but it’s been a long time. Maybe it went away. Maybe I just learned to ignore it.”
The other questions floating about her head settled into one decision. “The powder room is to the right. The kitchen is through there,” she said with a gesture of her hand. “The wine should be pretty easy to spot, if you want to open a bottle. The glasses should be easy to spot, too.”
“Okay,” he said with a long stride in the direction she’d pointed. She thought about it for a moment, but then she decided to be amused by how easily he moved through someone else’s house. If he was practiced, well, that would make the rest of the night, especially with her nerves, easier.
As soon as she heard the pizza box hit the counter, she set her purse down and snagged the leash.
Seamus did his business and then wandered back inside and straight into the kitchen to check out the new person in the house and the pizza. Beck dashed upstairs for the condoms she’d bought after signing up for online dating. They might make it back to her bedroom for round two, but she had spent the car ride imagining the snap of his buttons as she undressed him, and she didn’t plan to wait until after dinner. Nerves be damned.
Both Caleb and a glass of red waited for her when she walked into the kitchen. The wine glinted in the light above the center island. Caleb smiled at her and she had to take a deep breath before she was able to smile back. Tossing the strand of foil packets on the counter, she took the wine in her hand, tasted a sip just large enough to make her skin feel sensitive and then set the glass on the counter, next to the condoms.
He raised a brow at the string of condoms and then a corner of his lips rose as she took his glass from him and set that on the counter. But he didn’t say anything. His eyes followed her every movement as she walked around to stand directly in front of him and then lowered as she stepped close to him. It was her turn to be in his space. He smelled a lot like pizza and a little like wine and Dove soap.
The tip of her nose touched the underside of his chin, nudging his face up to expose his neck. “So, do we kiss first?”
She could feel his smile as the muscles of his face changed against her nose. “Is this Pretty Woman? Kisses aren’t part of the deal?”
He moved his chin a little and her nose bumped against his skin. “Which one of us are you implying is the prostitute?”
That question made her look up. His pupils had gotten big, making his eyes nearly a forest green with only the slight line of sea green around the edges. Angry? Aroused? Probably a little bit of both, given what she hadn’t meant to imply. “I’m not sure what to do,” she said.
“What do you want to do?” he asked, his voice deep and gravelly.
Beck pressed her two palms on either side of his face and pulled his head down to hers for a kiss. He had large, romantic lips and he knew how to use them. She sank into the kiss, sank into him and sank into the touch of another person.
She could disappear.
Their lips stayed connected as he sidestepped a couple feet to one of her barstools and hopped up on it. He opened up his knees and pulled her in between his legs, nibbling the edge of her lips and cradling her body in his. He was hard; she could feel that through his jeans and her thin skirt. Strong thigh muscles, too, probably from the biking he said he was into—her last conscious thought before he shifted forward in the stool, slipping his hands down her back to her butt and pushing her forward. The movement pressed the wetness of her panties against her and the evidence of her own desire aroused her more.
“This will be my first time in a long time,” she said after she pulled her mouth away and was dropping kisses on his jawbone. He had a sharp jawline and the scruff of his beard was rough against her skin. A good kind of rough. A rough that she would remember tomorrow, long after he had left.
“I know.” He leaned back in the chair, pressing harder against her. “You mentioned that.”
Emboldened by his casual acceptance, she shifted so that she could kiss her way down his neck. As she worked her way down from his neck, the buttons on his shirt popped open with the same satisfying noise that she had hoped they would. He sucked in his breath when she took his nipple into her mouth, the mess of dark hair she’d expected tickling her nose.
She had never wanted to enjoy the male body so much in her life. Never before wanted to explore its hard edges and soft lines, to match a kiss and a touch to a noise of pleasure. Like water, she’d thought of him before, only now he was water in a desert and she was thirsting. His fingers slipping beneath her underwear to her pussy hinted at the relief of a deep drink, though pressing her forehead against his chest wasn’t enough to quench her ache. His fingers stroked and twirled and played. If she didn’t think, she wouldn’t remember to breathe. Then there were no thoughts left to be had, no breath left to be had and she came in a glorious, light-filled rush.
“My turn,” he said.
She was too empty to pay much attention as he shifted her around a bit to undo his jeans and slip a condom on. His hands were back on her butt, lifting her and moving her, and suddenly she was straddling him on her tiptoes and he was inside her.
“Oh, God,” she said in a hot breath. “I have missed this.”
“Yeah,” he said, moving her on him in long strokes. His palms gripped her tightly, his fingers prodding into her flesh and guiding her where he wanted her to be. “Like it?”
“Yes,” she said, throwing her head back and pushing herself forward, pushing him deeper.
Sex was great. She hadn’t forgotten, just hadn’t wanted to remember, so that she didn’t feel lonelier. With Caleb inside her, there was no reason to feel empty. Plenty of reason to look at him, though. She snapped her head back forward so she could see the way the muscles of his face tightened with his pleasure, enjoying the tensing of the ligaments of his neck and feeling the hot burst of breath against her cheek as he grunted with his efforts. Her first sex in well over a year and she was going to memorize the details, hold them out and examine them when she was lonely.
His hands stayed on her butt while his nose bumped up against her face. A handsome, kind, interesting man buried deep inside her. He’d given her pleasure and she was giving him pleasure. This—this man and this moment—was what she had been looking for when she’d signed up for online dating.
Especially this man. When she turned, his lips caught hers, and with one gentle bite, he held her mouth against his. Then his muscles stilled and he grunted with a couple last hard pushes inside her.
He lay his forehead against her and they stayed still, connected and intimate. Then he shifted, pushing her gently away. “I’ve got to go take care of the condom.”
“Of course.” She pulled herself off him, feeling empty as he slid out of her and headed to the powder room. She had missed sex. But she had especially missed married sex, where sex didn’t have to end because of a condom, but you could stay joined until the man’s cock softened enough that he slipped out. She missed a man’s softened cock between her legs in their shared dampness.
Well, that wasn’t going to happen while she was dating. That was a committed, monogamous relationship feeling only.
She shimmied a little and adjusted her panties so they were back in a comfortable position. Married sex was a thing to miss, but this non-married sex had been wonderful and she’d take advantage of it for as long as she could.
She swiped the empty foil packet off the counter and tossed it into the trash. After Caleb was out of the bathroom, she slipped in and she washed her hands. To her pleasant surprise, Caleb was already getting out plates for dinner.
“I hope you don’t mind,” he said as he rested two plates on his forearm. “I figured we were both hungry, so I should get everything as ready as I could.”
“I don’t mind at all,” she said, enjoying the truth of that statement. He stood in her kitchen like he belonged there.
CHAPTER SIX (#uc8205a00-018e-573a-9ffe-d67265e0bf47)
CALEB TOOK THE plates to the dining room while Beck grabbed flatware and wineglasses. They both came back for the pizza box and wine bottle. Which had come first, she wondered, his ability to move through another person’s space with no self-consciousness or his reporting? He’d said he started reporting with his college paper, and it was fun to imagine him busting into the dean’s office, some hot question on his mind and his reporter’s notebook in hand.
For some reason, she didn’t picture him as a hot college student with his romantic hair and intense green eyes. He’d probably had the eyes, but she imagined him more awkward, with a buzz cut, maybe, and needing time to grow into his limbs. It fit better with how at ease he could make her feel—like he knew what it was to be out of place and ensured those he cared about didn’t feel that way.
Cared about. Silly turn of phrase after one date. If she wasn’t careful, she’d get ahead of herself.
“The pizza’s gotten cold,” he said, pulling her out of her imaginings as the box slid out of his hands to the table.
“It’ll be good anyway. And it was a good trade-off,” she said, with a shy smile, the idea of caring about someone after one date lingering in the back of her head. What did it even mean to care about someone? And how much did letting a man inside you change that? How much did being inside a woman change that?
Did sex have to change it at all?
“Absolutely,” he agreed. “This is a nice room, by the way.”
“Thanks.” She hesitated, with more she wanted to say on her tongue and too much on her mind to remain light and funny. Of course, he’d not remained light and funny with her—not with that story over drinks. If he could share something so personal, so could she.
She was at least that brave. And he was at least that safe. “One night, not long after Neil moved out, I was sitting on one of the barstools, eating a frozen dinner, when I realized that I had this huge house and was only using one bathroom, one bedroom and the kitchen. So I’ve been eating in the dining room ever since.”
“Making the space your own. I remember that feeling,” he said with a nod, and she knew she’d made the right choice—the right choice about everything tonight.
Caleb reached out and opened the pizza box. To Beck’s surprise, he first grabbed her plate. “How many pieces do you want?”
The pizza smelled amazing. It had lamb meatballs and kale, and she could eat every slice, if she put her mind to it. Back when Neil had first moved out, she’d been afraid to allow herself any indulgence, for fear that she wouldn’t be able to stop. Like with the dining room, she’d been letting her fear ruin her enjoyment of her house, of food and of her life.
“Two, please.” They were small pieces, and she had come a long way since Neil had moved out.
He placed two pieces on her plate and then set it in front of her and filled up her wineglass. “Mind if I take the rest?”
“No. Help yourself.”
“Thanks.” He took the other two pieces and then sat back in his chair.
They each ate a couple bites in silence until Caleb took a sip of wine and cleared his throat. Beck looked up from her own food. “I was the one who moved out. I moved into this random town house. It was the first thing I could find after we decided to separate. I still live in it, actually.”
He took another drink of wine and she realized that, for the first time tonight, he was nervous—though he probably didn’t realize it. “I spent the first three months thinking, ‘this is where Leah would put...’ whatever it was I was holding in my hand. She was particular about where she put stuff, more so than I am. I think it took longer for me to get used to putting pictures up where I wanted them to go than it took me to get used to sleeping in a bed alone.”
“I’m still not used to that,” she admitted before she took another bite of her pizza, which was salty and rich and delicious. After she swallowed, she said, “It’s one of the reasons I got a dog, actually.”
“Seamus sleeps on your bed?” he asked, with a raise of one eyebrow as he looked around the room for the dog. “Will I fit, too?”
Her forty-five-pound hound mix sat patiently by the edge of the table, waiting for handouts. Begging was on the list of things to work on, after he stopped jumping up on people.
Beck shook her head and chuckled. “A dog on the bed seemed like a good idea at the time, but Seamus doesn’t like sharing a bed with me any more than I like sharing a bed with him. He likes his personal space. I don’t like to be kicked. I got him an expensive dog bed for the bedroom and now we’re both happy.”
“Good. I was hoping to stay the night. And I don’t share.”
Warmth from the pizza, the wine and the heated look in his eyes spread through her body. “I was hoping you would, too.” He would wrap around her body quite nicely in a bed, her butt tucked against his crotch and his arm draped across her shoulder. Both naked, because they’d just had sex and she was the satisfied kind of sleepy that only came post-orgasm.
