Page 65 of Moonshine Lullabies

“You good?” I asked.

She smiled up at me, perfectly at ease and relaxed and said, “Mm, better than good, but I really do need to pee.”

“Oh, shit,” I tried to push myself up but moved a little too quick and I was afraid my arms and legs were still kind of wet noodle consistency. I half slid along the covers, the palm of my hand going right out from under me, but I caught myself before I collapsed onto Jess completely.

Thankfully, she found my trials amusing and was giggling her head off, and I had to admit, it sounded mighty fine her bein’ so happy.

Eventually, I sort of just keeled over, careening off to one side, and dropped to the bed as she sat up beside me and gave my thigh a squeeze on her way by as she scooted off the bed. She was a sight, the long nude line of her back, the perfect hourglass curve of her body into some ample hips and an ass I just wanted to grab and haul her up my body to get her lips on mine all over again.

She turned into the bathroom, the light flicking on and then immediately dulled as she shut the door behind her.

I let myself fall back to the bed, turning on my back to stare at the white ceiling and drumming a nonsensical tattoo on the center of my chest with my fingertips. I settled and went limp and just closed my eyes and basked in the glow some more.

I could still smell her on my skin and I loved that. I wished I could carry it forever like an indelible mark, you know? I liked the idea of being hers and I knew she felt some type of the same when she came back to me and immediately snuggled into my side, her head on my chest now, and her breath sighing out along my skin in utter contentment.

I held her close, rubbing one hand up and down her back and the other along her arm. She was cooler to the touch than she’d been before she got up and I asked her, “You cold?”

“A little,” she confessed.

“Well hell, let’s move under the covers, then.”

She nodded against me, and we did just that and it was almost instantly better.

I kissed her forehead, neither of us needing to speak, both of us just as content as could be, and I think we both slept the best sleep either one of us had gotten in our lives. I know it was that way at least for me.

Wasn’t a single doubt in my mind that I loved this girl, and come what may, I wanted to make it work if she’d let me.

CHAPTERTWENTY-THREE

Jessie-Lou…

Coming up out of my sleep the next morning was like the slow rise of a monster gator out the bayou. Where they come up, up, and up, and all that pokes above the brackish water was their eyes and their snout. I think I gave a long, slow blink, like they were wont to do, too. I was snug as a bug in a rug, tucked up tight against Collier, his arms around my back, his hand resting over mine where it rested on his chest, which rose and fell in the deep and easy rhythm of sleep.

I closed my eyes and just enjoyed listening to the cadence of his breathing and how he held me fast, even as he slept, as though I was his most precious and treasured thing.

I’d never felt that way before with no man.

Like they cared aboutmean’ not just what I could do for ‘em.

It was something I could love him for, and I lay in the quiet of the early morning hours and tried not to panic when I realized that it was too late – my heart was already involved and that Ididlove him.

It was scary.

I’d loved so freely and so often before without really having that love returned that it’d like to break my heart a thousand times over.

I didn’t know what I’d do if he broke me. I didn’t think it could break anymore to be honest.

I mean, what did you do when your heart had been smashed so many times that it might as well return to the sand the glass was made from in the first place?

Collier sucked in a deep breath, and startled awake and I looked up at him even as he looked down at me with the expression of a man that’d been freshly woken from his sleep.

“What’s wrong?” he asked as his eyes cleared and his thoughts came back online and I realized my own thoughts must be worn on my face plain for all to see… it was a good thing that ‘all’ in this case was just him.

“Nothin’” I tried to lie, but then he took his hand off from the top of mine and touched the side of my face in that sweet way of his. The way that he looked at me when he did that sent my whole heart bouncing from my chest to my toes and back up to my throat. It was the only excuse I had for how it’d like to choke me up.

“You don’t need to lie to me to spare my feelings, honey. I can take it,” he said.

…and how did he know exactly the right thing to say? The thing I needed to hear the most, when I needed to hear it?It was like this man held some kind of voodoo magic where I was concerned and I couldn’t help the hopeful whispering voice out of the back of my mind that said,well maybe that’s because it’s meant to be… Maybe you’ve finally found your person.

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