Page 78 of Back in the Saddle

It was the perfect time for a kiss.

He didn’t kiss me.

He took his hands from me, moved to some canisters, and ordered, “Grab the red sauce from the stove.”

I let my disappointment at no kiss go, put my glass down and headed toward his massive six-burner Wolf stove.

They said delayed gratification was a thing.

Though I hoped it wasn’t too delayed before I could be the judge of that.

* * *

For your edification,getting my head out of my ass might not earn me a kiss from Eric Turner.

But it did significantly alter how we watched a movie together.

That being, after we ate his delicious homemade prosciutto and fig pizza topped with mounds of arugula, I’d seated myself on one side of the couch. He’d come up to me, bent, caught my leg behind my knee, lifted it so my wedge was in his stomach, and then with a few tugs and a flick, the strap was released, and the shoe was gone.

He repeated that with my other shoe.

And then he put his hands under my arms, lifted me up, and stretched us out across the long back side of the couch, me tucked to his front.

Once he had us situated, he leaned into me to grab the remote from the coffee table but left his arm draped around my waist after he fired up his TV.

I wasn’t given the option of a different seating arrangement.

But no way in hell was I complaining.

He murmured, “Need anything before we start?”

He’d emptied the last of the wine in our glasses before we headed to the couch, but mine was on the other end of the coffee table now.

“Just a sec,” I said as I started to push up to reach for it.

But he growled, “Hold.”

I was so stunned by his growling, and his word, I held as he pushed up and nabbed my glass.

He put it in reach and settled back behind me.

I didn’t know how to respond to this.

“I can reach for my glass, Turner,” I told him.

“I know,” he replied. “Though, now that reach is easier.”

It definitely was.

Though, I still didn’t know what to do with a man who was so attentive, he wouldn’t allow me to execute about a second’s worth of effort to grab a wineglass.

As noted, I’d never had anyone look after for me, certainly not someone who would growl at me so he could retrieve my glass.

He was the kind of man who, in a different time, would throw his mantle over a puddle so a woman wouldn’t get her shoes wet.

Or knock the shit out of his opponent with his lance in a joust to earn the ribbon from her hair.

I felt this settle, surprisingly easily, into the space around my heart, as he asked, “All good now?”

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