“Do you honestly think anyone knows what the hell they’re doing when they start a relationship? I don’t know what I’m doing either. Do you think I meant to come over here and make you upset? I was just thinking it would be a nice thing to do, and now I’m regretting that I ever met your kids because it’s going to be damn hard to promise you I won’t get involved in their lives. I like them. I like you.” Elec jammed his hands in the pockets of his jeans. “Being here with you . . . it feels so good. But I know we can’t fool around with this, that protecting Pete and Hunter is the most important thing. I swear to you I’ll make that my number one priority.”
“Thank you.” Tamara fiddled with a fork next to her plate. “I think maybe you got more than you were expecting with me. I’m a bit of a mess.”
“No, you’re not. You’re just trying to do the right thing for your kids at the same time you’re trying to respect the fact that you’re a woman with a woman’s needs.”
She gave a slight smile. “I do have a woman’s needs.”
Elec moved closer to Tamara, wanting to taste her lips so bad he ached. “For which I am very grateful. As a matter of fact, I’d like to respect those womanly needs right now if you’ll let me.”
Tamara looked at him suspiciously. “What are we talking about here?”
“Just a kiss. That’s all.”
“Then I’ll let you.”
He already had her in his arms before she even finished speaking. Elec breathed in the scent of her, running his lips over her neck.
“Oh, God, I’ll let you,” she said, her head falling back.
That sensuous capitulation nearly did him in. Elec pulled her closer to him, burying his hands in her hair. Then he kissed her, feverishly, urgently, desperately. He wanted her to understand how much he desired her, how beautiful he thought she was, how much he wanted to bury his body between her soft, wet thighs. How much he wanted to make her come over and over until she was limp from pleasure, begging him to stop.
She kissed him back with the same furiousness, her tongue meeting his, her hands running over his shoulders, and landing low, down on his ass.
“Oh, shit,” he told her, pulling back breathlessly, bumping his c**k into her thighs one last time. “We’ve got to stop.”
Nodding and panting, she whispered, “This is going to be a problem.”
“We can get creative. You get a lunch break, right?”
“Yes.”
“I’m usually free on Mondays. We can meet for lunch, if you know what I mean.”
Tamara looked a little shocked, but she did nod. “I could do that.”
“What time?”
“One thirty would work. I’m actually done for the day at one on Mondays. I guess we could meet . . . here.” Her face had lost some color and her voice had dropped to a whisper, but she was in agreement and making plans.
Good enough for him. Now he figured he should retreat before she changed her mind.
“Perfect, I’ll be here. Now should we eat or what? My stomach is digesting itself.”
“Oh, right, dinner.” Tamara pulled her chair out abruptly and sat down. “Just ignore the fact that I’m eating dinner in my pajamas.”
“I won’t tell if you won’t.”
She gave him an earnest look. “I do appreciate all of this. Please don’t think that I don’t.
I’m really grateful that you’d go to all this trouble for me.”
“I’m not looking for gratitude,” he told her as he took a seat in front of the beer. “Just your friendship.”
“That you have,” she said with a small smile. Then she took a deep breath, like she was digging into her reserves for fortitude. “Now tell me how things are looking for Pocono.”
“I’d love to. If you will then explain to me what courses you teach.”
“Deal.”
They talked as they ate, and Elec was enjoying their easy conversation so much, he lingered way past when he should have left. A glance at the clock on her oven showed it was ten already and he knew Tamara had to be tired. They had cleaned up the dinner dishes together and Elec was itching to touch her again. But he knew if he started, he wouldn’t want to stop.
She looked to be thinking the same thing. The dish towel in her hand, she kept leaning forward, then swaying back on her feet. “Wow, I didn’t realize how late it was.”
“Yeah, I should shove off.”
Neither one of them moved an inch.
There was no telling how long they might have stood there gazing at each other with sexual longing flying between them, but Elec’s cell phone chimed in his pocket. He was going to throw the damn thing off a bridge if it didn’t stop making that noise when he got a text. The minute he was alone, he was going to change the setting to silent.
“Do you need to answer that?” she asked.
“No, it’s just a text.”
“Don’t you want to read it?”
“Not really.” What he wanted was to taste Tamara’s mouth again, and to slide his hand up under her T-shirt and undo the bra she had put on. He wanted to lay her back across her round white table, peel her pink pajama pants off, and flick his tongue over her clit.
Not read his stupid text that he could almost guarantee was from Crystal.
“It’s that girl again, isn’t it?” she asked, her lip curling up.
He shrugged.
“Go ahead and see.”
“I don’t want to. I want to ignore her and hope she’ll go away.”
Tamara laughed. “It doesn’t work that way. Just read it.”
“Fine.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket and pushed the buttons to read the text. Only it was a picture text, the image speaking louder than he imagined any words ever would.
“Oh my God.”
He actually felt himself recoil away from his phone and the picture of Crystal’s naked chest, his car number somehow attached to her ni**les. He wasn’t sure if she’d used tape or what, but her right breast had a large 5 on her nipple, and the left had a 6, creating a 3-D
effect.
“What?”
“Nothing.” Damn, that was disturbing. He wasn’t sure if he was supposed to be flattered or what, but it just left him feeling like he wanted to reach into his phone and snatch his numbers off her ni**les. It felt sacrilegious.
“Oh, come on, you can’t turn white as a sheet and grimace like that and then not tell me. Or show me.”