Page 17 of Places in Time
“Ethan.” He reached out, clasped my wrist, and pulled my hand to his mouth. With his eyes on my face, he licked my palm and fingers clean. “So good.” He kissed my palm before releasing my hand and petting my hair again.
I laid my head against his thigh and closed my eyes, enjoying his soothing touch. “If I get to wake up like that every day, I might learn to like mornings.”
“Fan of morning sex, are you?”
“I usually wake up hard, so yeah, but nighttime sex is good too.” I gazed up at him and kissed his thigh. “I won’t say no to afternoons either, if that’s your thing.”
“Uh-huh. I see.” He nodded. “So pretty much any time then?”
“Pretty much,” I agreed.
“You got it, E,” he said easily. His eyelids drooped and then closed, but he continued touching my hair so I knew he was awake.
“You think I’m going to freak out about this at some point?” I asked as I slid my fingers over his leg.
“Maybe.”
“Like a bad freak out or a little one?”
He took in a deep breath, opened his eyes, and looked at me appraisingly. “I’m hoping for no freak out or mild freak out, but even if it’s a bad one, I’ll talk you down.”
I nodded. “What about you? Are you going to freak out?”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“On you.”
I looked at him and waited for an explanation.
“Sex with a guy isn’t new to me, E. Wanting you isn’t either.” He traced my eyebrow with his fingertip. “Neither is loving you.” He slid his finger over my cheekbone and then the perimeter of my ear. “This, here, with you, feels right to me. I can deal with you being scared or nervous or hysterical. We can get through that. The only thing I can’t handle is losing you.”
“That’ll never happen,” I promised him.
His lips curled up in a smile and his eyes closed. “Then I’m good.”
We got to Venice Bikram at a quarter after twelve, which meant we were early for LA Standard Time.
“Don’t forget you’re choosing the restaurant. I don’t care where we go.”
“Okay. Any places you want me to avoid?”
That might have sounded like what I’d just said, but to me, not having a preference on where to eat wasn’t the same thing as having places I didn’t want to eat, and Jude knew me well enough to recognize that.
“I just realized something,” I said as I twisted to the side and looked at him.
“What’s that?”
“We’ve been dating for years.”
He flicked his gaze toward me and arched his eyebrows in question.
“You know my quirks, I know yours. We’ve learned to tolerate each other’s parents. I say I don’t know where I want to eat, you figure it out. Isn’t that a relationship?”
“Pretty much.” Jude nodded agreeably. “But adding sex into it helps.”
I thought about the night before and that morning and my throat thickened. “Yeah, that, uh, helps.” I cleared my throat and scanned the crowded sidewalk in front of the yoga studio but didn’t see my parents. “There’s no way you’re finding a parking spot. I’ll hop out and find them.”
