He was close to the bed when I pulled my eyes from his dick and looked at his face.

“You so totally like me,” I declared.

I let out a shrill, girlie scream when he reached out a long arm and jerked the sheet away from me.

I emitted another girlie scream when I was again hooked at the waist with his arm and yanked up to slam into his body. He put a knee to the bed, twisted us, and I crashed into the mattress on my back with Deke on me, puffing out a breath at taking his weight and forcing focus on his face.

Not hard since it was right in mine.

His big hand cupped my jaw and he said, “Yeah, gypsy, I like you.”

I knew I was smiling big and happy when I corrected, “No, you so totally like me.”

Deke smiled back when he confirmed, “Yeah.”

That smile.

God.

I wrapped my arms around his shoulders, lifted up my head and gave him a hard, closed-mouth kiss.

I dropped back to the pillows and whispered, “You relaxed now, honey?”

“First thing in the morning run for condoms,” was his answer.

I kept smiling.

I had a feeling I could do that without being grumpy.

“Absolutely,” I agreed.

Suddenly, he dropped his head and moved his hand from my jaw to the side of my neck so he could slide his lips surrounded by wiry whiskers from my chin to my ear, all this shooting tingles down my neck straight to my nipples. “Gonna get my shorts. Want you back in your PJs. Just because. Okay?”

Maybe he was relaxed, and he sounded it, no longer edgy.

But he wasn’t taking any chances and he didn’t want either of us naked on the off chance something happened.

I nodded. “Okay, Deke.”

He pulled us both out of bed, on our feet and handed me camisole, panties and shorts before he bent to retrieve his.

We dressed.

Deke pulled me back into bed, flicked the covers over us, and tucked me under him in our normal sleeping position.

But this time he lifted my hips, twisting them so I got the hint he wanted me to hook a knee around his thigh, something I did.

This gave him access to shove his fingers up my camisole at the small of my back and down into my shorts and panties, where he cupped my ass. Not a cheek. Right at the center so his middle finger was resting just inside the crease.

I bit my lip and shivered again.

“Go back to sleep, Jussy,” he ordered.

I pressed my hips against him. He pressed his hand deeper at my ass, his other arm pushing under me, curling around my back to hold me closer, and I shut my eyes.

“Just to make it official,” I whispered into his throat. “I like you too.”

I heard his soft chuckle and fell in love with that soft chuckle as I felt a warm squeeze at my back, an intimate one at my ass, and the stirring of my hair when he whispered back, “Good.”

I settled in, smiling, warm, sated and happy.

Deke Hightower so totally liked me.

On that thought, still smiling, I fell asleep.

* * * * *

With his restlessness the night before, it wasn’t a surprise that next morning, for the first time, I woke before Deke.

Nope, not a surprise.

What it was was more bounty.

Because this meant I could watch him sleeping.

His face lost years in sleep. Not boyish, exactly, but there were hard lines and edges I hadn’t really noticed when he was awake that smoothed out in sleep. They were around his eyes and at the set of his cheekbones, which I realized on close inspection were very high, like he had Native American blood or something. Even at his jaw, which was hidden mostly with his beard, but I noted a definite lack of tension there in the peace of sleep.

He had stubby eyelashes, but a lot of them, and there was a vulnerable beauty to them as they rested against his cheeks.

It was a fascinating display that fascinated me so I allowed myself to take it in for a long time.

Then the knowledge that it was morning, we were in my bed, safe, no return of the bad guy, this meant I was probably free of that threat…

And Deke liked me.

Not to mention he was good with his mouth, fingers and cock.

So I wondered why I laid there staring at his face when I could have been doing other things.

Thus I decided to do those other things.

Tracing the tip of my finger over his hip, I lifted up and touched my lips to his.

His head shifted slightly on the pillow, his arm gave me a light, reflexive squeeze, and then his stomach tensed as I trailed three fingertips over it, down it, and touched my tongue to his lower lip.

His eyes opened.

I smiled at him and flattened my hand on his lower stomach, pushing down, my fingertips now inside his shorts and resting at the upper base of his cock.

“Morning,” I whispered.

“No condoms,” he growled, and I knew why because I felt something happening against my fingertips.

I also felt my smile change.

I pressed that smile to his mouth and whispered, “Hand job, honey,” right before I wrapped his hardening cock with my fingers.

“Fuck,” he grunted, a word I felt drive up into my womb.

I hooked him steady with my leg around his thigh and stroked.

“Fuck,” he grunted again, his hips flexing.

I kept smiling.

And stroking.

“Hand job?” he asked, his morning voice rough with residual sleep and throaty with what I was doing to his cock.

Yes. That voice in the morning in my bed with me when he could do something about it (and so could I), just like I thought many weeks ago.