Men came and sat beside her, one after another, young and old, but they always left after a few rounds.  She didn’t seem to be turning on the charm for them.  In fact, I never saw her head so much as turn in their direction, which did very good things for my very tight chest.

And all the while, her stack of chips grew.  By a lot.

I didn’t hang around long after two hours.  I lost my nerve.  I didn’t want to be caught following her.

I couldn’t imagine she’d be coming back around if she realized I’d invaded her privacy like this.

I was home for an hour and thirty-six minutes, wide awake in my dark bedroom, when she opened the door and slipped inside.

I had a dozen questions for her, things I was dying to know about what she’d been doing, and what she’d told me she was doing, but I managed to hold my tongue.

So she had a gambling problem, and decent luck at the tables, at least on this night.

I thought to myself that I could afford a vice like that.  At least she hadn’t been out walking the streets, or humping a stripper pole, as I’d had myself half convinced she would.

She went into my closet quietly, only turning on the light of it after she’d shut the door.  She was being thoughtful not to wake me.  She was only in there for a minute before she turned off the light again and opened the door back up.

I was lying on my side, stripped down to my boxers, and she slipped into bed on the empty side, at my back.

The minute her completely na**d body made contact with my bare back, I gasped loudly, tensing.

“Shh,” she uttered quietly, her soft hand sliding along my side to my abs, and then down to my rigid cock.  Then it was her turn to gasp, her soft touch switching to a hard grip.

I turned and started kissing her.

I pushed her onto her back, my hands running over her hungrily, like I hadn’t had her in days.  Weeks.

I f**ked her, quick and rough, and drifted straight to sleep right on top of her, still buried to the hilt.

I never did work up the nerve to ask her even one of my dozen questions.

CHAPTER NINE

Waking up, the bright morning sun streaming over us, with her still wrapped in my arms, was an experience I’d not soon forget.

And, as though my body had profoundly forgotten that I wasn’t twenty, I found my spent c**k stiffening between one contented breath and the next.

Sometime in the night, I’d rolled off her, or she’d pushed me off so I wasn’t crushing her, and now I was on my back, her silky head with one soft cheek down on my chest, one thin arm curled over my side, her heavy br**sts crushed, warm and delicious, against my ribs.

If I had an ounce self-control, I would have lain there and savored the moment, but I was chock out of it, had used up my lifetime’s worth before I met this gorgeous creature.

So I had her on her back in a flash, sucking at her still soft ni**les, my hard-on jerking into the satin of her inner thigh, ready to take her, sleeping or not.

When she still wasn’t waking, but I was more than ready, I moved down her body and started eating her out like a man starved.

That was when she woke, but not how I expected.  She started, and then gently pushed my head away.  I loomed over her, using one elbow to balance, the other moving to her pu**y, my eyes curious on her face.

I had my hand buried two fingers deep in her when she pushed that away, too.

Her expression was still soft with sleep, but just a touch troubled.  “Could you just…hold me?” she asked in the most vulnerable tone I’d ever heard from her.

I was putty, brought completely low with a few quiet words.  I felt like a bastard, only thinking of one thing since the moment she’d approached me.  What kind of a jerk didn’t know just to hold a girl, instead of going for a quick f**k, when she was sleeping so softly, so trustingly, against him?

Me, apparently.

“Of course,” I told her stiffly, when what I wanted to portray was my utter repentance.  I didn’t only want to use her for that, though she couldn’t have seen it that way.

I lay rigidly on my back, and pulled her over me, just how we’d been when she’d been sleeping so peacefully.

One awkward arm went over her.  Is this what she meant by holding?  I was suddenly out of my depth.

I was not quite sure how to be casually affectionate.  I was not a demonstrative man.

I considered how I’d gotten that way, how it had gotten to the point where a very beautiful woman just wanted me to hold her, to touch me, and have me touch her, not necessarily sexually, but often, and how I had no clue what to do with that.  My first and last instinct (unless we were talking about sex) was to keep my hands to myself.

I thought of my childhood, and how I could count on one hand the times I’d been hugged.  My parents had been scholarly and wise and perhaps even good, but never anything approaching affectionate.

And of course, I thought of my ex-wife, and what she would have done if I’d just wanted to have her sit in my lap, or say, put my arm around her.  The only picture that came up in my mind was one of her being annoyed.  What was wrong with me that I’d stayed with a woman like that for so long?  Why had that been so normal for me?

For whatever reason, I’d just never had the option, the simple pleasure of keeping company with someone that enjoyed being touched, and doing the touching.

Iris snuggled into my chest, one of her velvet hands tracing gentle patterns on my collarbone, touching just to touch.