Page 7 of Make You Love Me
“Then you can decorate the table with your beauty while I eat.”
“Not interested.” She sits up, leans back against the headboard, and crosses her arms in a show of defiance, not bothering to cover up.
Her comfort in her skin is one of the many qualities I adore about her. She doesn’t give two shits about me drinking her in every chance I get. Although, the opportunities she allows makes me think she likes it when I do. Our favorite pastime, other than the obvious, is to play cards, mainly various poker games. I’ve beat her a time or two. But I make little effort to win at sex poker—her invention—since her ideas for payment are infinitely more creative than mine. We play strip poker, too. The view may be spectacular, but it’s not as much fun as the alternative. Nothing beats watching the most beautiful woman come undone under my touch.
Speaking of Nora’s nude body. “And don’t you dare wear anything underneath in case I change my mind.”
A deep hum rumbles in her throat in response. My demands turn her on something fierce, but she holds back a reaction this time. Not what I hoped for, but exactly what I expected.
“If you insist on doing this,” she begins with her usual rebelliousness. “I’ll wear whatever the hell I want.”
“Go ahead. Your expensive panties mean nothing to me, and I’ll have no problem ripping them off you when the mood strikes. If you’re willing to sacrifice them…”
I know my girl and love pulling her strings. After all, what happens when those strings snap is quite satisfying for me, too.
“Damn you,” she growls and jumps off the bed to shower.
???
“We’re here,” Josie announces, interrupting my glorious daydream.
I crane my sore neck to see the red brick apartment towering outside my window.
“It’s the only one I could find within walking distance to the veteran therapy center. Since we’ll both be spending a lot of time there—”
“Other than dropping me off, why will you need to be there?”
She stares at me like she’s trying to read me before answering. “I’m painting a mural behind their reception desk.”
“Oh. That’s great. We can go together.”
“My thoughts exactly.”
She climbs out, but not before instructing me to wait for her. Since I’m twice her size, it takes plenty of maneuvering, pauses, and readjustments before I’m sitting in the wheelchair. Every inch of me screams from the jerky movements and her compact frame trying to support me. I’m afraid she may have a few new bruises just from this one exercise.
“My bad, sis.” I breathe deep, which hurts like hell, too.
The next several weeks of recovery and physical therapy may test our sibling relationship. We share everything. We’ve been best friends all our lives, but there are some things my sister doesn’t need to see.
I chuckle to myself, thinking about my 115-pound sister trying to get my slippery naked self out of the tub, and all the jokes I could make afterward. Even more hilarious would be her comebacks, falling just off their intended mark. She’s too sweet to make crude jokes, but she doesn’t know that.
Maybe sponge baths are a better idea.
“277 Smithfield Avenue,” I repeat out loud a few times to commit it to memory.
“What are you doing, silly?”
“Memorizing our new address so I can send it to Nora. Dr. Elvis said it might be hard to remember things for a while.”
With a curt nod, Josie lifts our bags from the trunk and drapes the straps over the wheelchair handles. She doesn’t want me dating Nora, and that’s fine…for now. She just needs to see Nora and I together to understand that we have more than a random hookup relationship. And now that Josie’s moved to Richmond, she’ll get to know Nora better and, hopefully, let go of the resentment she’s harboring for no good reason.
She pays the driver and pushes me up the ramp to the main entrance with everything we own either hanging off my chair or sitting in my lap.
“Thankfully, we’re on the first floor,” she says, stopping outside apartment 103. “The living room has sliding glass doors facing the courtyard.”
“Sounds wonderful.”
“You haven’t seen it yet.”
