Page 34 of Crumbling Truth
“Yes.” It was barely audible, but her body shifted incrementally closer until she was standing between my knees.
“You want me to make you feel good.” My hands slid down until my pinkies swept over the lush curve of her ass. At her nod, I grinned. “Because believe me, Esther, I am completely on board with that.”
“You are?”
“Are you kidding me? Why wouldn’t I be? You’re incredible. Beautiful and intelligent and strong,” I replied, brushing my thumbs back and forth along her hip bones.
“No strings,” she said, still sounding a little breathless. “Just sex.”
An icicle of doubt pierced through the haze of desire. “This isn’t because you feel bad about last night, right?”
“Jesus, no.” The protest was immediate and firm—and exactly what I needed to hear.
“Okay, good, because you don’t need to feel guilty. You’re sure about this?”
Esther nodded again. Those soft pink lips parted as my gaze zeroed in on her mouth. When a tremor ran through her, I tugged her down onto my lap, lifted one hand to cup her cheek, and traced my thumb along the curve of her lower lip.
“It’s been a long time for you?” I asked.
“Years.” A soft puff of breath grazed my thumb as she spoke.
I didn’t like the thought of her going without for so long, but after our conversation last night, I couldn’t blame her for it,either. Determination to make this arrangement benefit her as much as it did me crashed through my chest.
Still stroking her lip, I said, “I suspect you’re a very different woman than you were all those years ago. Tell me what you want from this. How do you see this going?”
“It stays casual. This is just our current arrangement plus sex.”
“Right, okay. No catching feelings,” I agreed.
That was an easy one. I liked Esther, respected her, certainly desired her—but I didn’t do long-term relationships, even if we had lived in the same state.
No attachments meant no pain.
She tilted her head, considering. “At the end, we part ways amicably. I don’t want things to be awkward with your parents.”
“Agreed. I had no intention of sharing details with them, anyway.”
The thought that my mother had a hand in this was a little unsettling, but I doubted she’d anticipated anything blatantly sexual between us. She obviously knew I was approaching forty and hadn’t introduced her to a girlfriend since high school, but we didn’t discuss it.
Not now, not in the years since I left Spruce Hill. Not since the early days after the accident.
Esther bit her lip. “No sleepovers. For now, at least. I’m used to being on my own.”
“We can take that part slow and reassess if you want to. Anything else?”
A shuddering sigh coasted over her lips before she said, “I want to feel free again. Like there’s no dead husband weighing me down, no whispers or rumors or nosy townsfolk keeping tabs on me.”
“I’ll do everything in my power to shield you from that. Even from our friends. Do you trust me?”
“I think so,” she whispered.
“Good. The only rule I want to add is that you come first in this.” A choked laugh escaped her at my phrasing and I grinned, shaking my head. “Yeah, literally and figuratively. Anything you’re not comfortable with, anything that doesn’t work for you, I want to know so I can change it.”
“Yeah. Okay. Definitely.” The words tumbled from her lips and I bit back a smile.
“Good. Now, I haven’t eaten anything with any nuts since we talked about it. I wasn’t assuming anything was going to happen, I just wanted to keep you safe.”
Surprise and pleasure flooded her features as she slid her hand around to the back of my neck. “That’s good. I think you should shut up and kiss me, then, if that’s all right with you.”
