He held my eyes and didn’t say anything.

Then I found my mouth telling him, “I lost control.”

He did a slow blink.

Then he asked, “Is this a bad thing?”

“I don’t know,” I began, watching him closely then whispered, “Is it?”

He stared at me, eyes widening in unconcealed disbelief. Then, quick as a flash, both of his arms were super tight around me even as he pressed his head back into the pillows and roared with laughter. About two seconds into his hilarity, he rolled us both, losing our connection as he did but settling with his weight on me, his h*ps between my legs and his laughter sounding against the skin of my neck where he shoved his face.

“Brock,” I wheezed, “I… can’t…” he lifted his head and looked down at me, smiling huge as he planted one forearm in the bed taking his weight off me and curled his other hand around my neck right under my jaw. “Breathe,” I finished.

His thumb stroked my jaw as he kept smiling down at me but he didn’t say a word.

“Um… I think I should get up and –”

“Yeah, babe, you can get up in a second,” he interrupted me. “But first, let’s get somethin’

straight, all right?”

I held his eyes and bit my lip.

He looked at my mouth and pressed his lips together as his eyes danced.

Then he unpressed them to say, “I intend to spend a lot of time doin’ just what we did adding variations, positions, different locations and I’m gonna be creative.”

Oh my.

I felt the walls of my womb contract.

He went on. “You ever,” he dipped his face close, mouth and eyes still smiling, “ever lock onto your control while we’re enjoyin’ each other, I’ll know one thing. And that is, I’m not doin’ it right.”

Oh my.

“Brock –” I whispered but stopped when his face dipped even closer.

“Baby, that was f**kin’ phenomenal. Nothin’ you did, not one thing, I didn’t like and most of it I f**kin’ loved. Mark this, sweetness, I like it wild and you… were… wild and I loved every f**kin’ minute of it. I do not know what the other men you took to your bed taught you but whatever it was, it was f**ked. Lose that ghost in your eyes, Tess, because, baby, you’re a goddamned natural.”

Because his words made that warm gushiness invade my insides, I lifted my hand to his neck then slid it into his hair and then I lifted my head as I pulled his down to me, my head tilted, his slanted and I kissed him, wet and hopefully sweet then he gave me his weight as his arms wrapped back around me, he rolled me again to the top and he took over the kiss and his was also wet, his was deep and his was definitely sweet.

He broke the kiss but not the connection of our mouths so his lips moved against mine when he whispered, “Totally a natural.”

I smiled against his mouth and into his eyes.

Brock smiled back the same way.

Then he muttered, “Shower,” to which I did a full body tremble right on top of him.

He felt it and I watched close up as his smile got lazy.

Then he hauled us both out of bed, out of the room, into the bathroom and then into the shower.

After that, I made him coffee and toast and then later made out with him on my doorstep in full view of a waking neighborhood, my arms around his shoulders, my body pressed deep, our tongues tangled, his arms were tight around me with one hand carrying coffee in a travel mug and the fingers of his other hand holding a half eaten slice of toast.

Then he lifted his head, looked in my eyes and whispered, “I’ll text you the address to my place. Come prepared to spend the night. I’m doin’ dinner.”

“All right,” I whispered back. “But I’m doing dessert.”

His mouth twitched before he agreed, “You got it, sweetness. Now let me go before I do something we’ll both get arrested for like throw you on the lawn and give your neighbors a show.”

I let him go.

He chuckled low, tipped his chin up at me, turned and jogged down to his pickup at the same time taking a bite of toast.

Then I watched him drive away and I didn’t give one shit that I should have played it cool and walked right into my house and shut my door. I stood there and watched until I couldn’t see his truck anymore.

Only then did I go in.

Then I turned on my music and I didn’t turn on Fiona Apple.

I was an equal opportunity music lover and whatever struck my fancy normally didn’t unstrike it. So, considering “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” and “In America” were kickass songs, I owned the Charlie Daniels Super Hits CD.

And that was what I listened to while I got ready to face the day.

I couldn’t say it was all my gig but I sang “The Devil…” and “In America” out loud and one could not say “The South’s Gonna Do It Again” was not the shit.

And dressed and ready to go forth and bake cakes, I got in my car thinking that was the best morning of my whole...

Fucking…

Life.

Chapter Nine

Dinner at Brock’s

I was sitting in my car looking up at the apartment building, scanning the numbers on the doors, looking for number sixteen.

Brock’s apartment.

I was trying really hard not to make a judgment about the state of his apartment complex, if one could call it that.

It was off the one-way section of Lincoln just up from Speer and perpendicular to the road.

There was a small spread of tarmac in front of a very deep, long two-story building, eight apartments on bottom, eight on top. The doors faced an exposed walkway. The stairs leading up to the top level on the ends of either side were iron, rusting and looked more than a little scary. And the two padlocked sheds off the parking lot, one smaller one with the stenciled word, “Laundry” and the other one bigger and maybe not too intelligently having the stenciled word, “Storage” on it did nothing for the feel of the place.

Sometime in the summer, someone clearly made an effort however they also just as clearly got sidetracked. In Denver, if you planted flowers, in the arid climate you needed to tend them and this tending mostly had to do with adding copious amounts of water but it also didn’t hurt to pull weeds. Now it was a still warm mid-October and in the two half barrels that flanked the short entry from Lincoln to the building and the four that “decorated” the top and foot of both stairwells had a riot of a green, healthy weeds, an equal riot of brown dead bits and some straggly, weak petunia blossoms which had obviously struggled valiantly against the odds but clearly should be put out of their misery and not only because autumn had settled on the Rocky Mountains.