She didn’t expect him to join her and he didn’t. He was still eating, and laying on the grass didn’t really seem like his style. But it was comfortable being together, just hanging out. “What do you think is up there?” she asked, gazing at the inky sky.
“Nothing. Everything. Whatever you want.”
“What do you think happens to us when we die?” she asked, her hand lifting his T-shirt to idly scratch her stomach. “Where do we go? And why are there so many of us in such a collective vastness?”
“Big questions.” Diesel put down his fork and glanced up at the night. “I don’t know where we go but I know we don’t just stop existing altogether. When you blow out a candle the flame disappears but the smoke still dissipates . . . maybe that’s what we’re like.”
“How did your mom die?” she asked him quietly, knowing that of all her friends, Diesel was probably the most likely to understand how she felt.
“She had breast cancer. She died six months after her diagnosis.”
“I’m sorry. That’s terrible.”
“Thanks. It’s not fair, as you well know.”
She hesitated, but then asked it anyway. Diesel didn’t seem like the type to get annoyed with her questions. “And your brother?”
“He died of an asthma attack on spring break in Florida with his friends. They were young, didn’t understand how serious it was, didn’t call for help until it was too late.”
“Oh, my God.” She rolled on her side, trying to see his expression in the dark. “Diesel, I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah, me, too. It was a waste of a wonderful life. Josh was a really good kid. My mom died nine months later. I always wondered if Josh hadn’t died if she would have fought harder to survive.”
“I wish I could do something,” she said. She meant it. She wished she had the power to ease his pain, to bring back his family, her father. Where was that time machine when you needed it?
“You know what you could do?”
“What?” Tuesday scratched behind Wilma’s ears, enjoying the comfort of the warm doggie body next to her.
“You could call me Daniel from time to time. I miss that.”
That touched her. Tremendously. “I could do that.” He was the kind of man who, here in the dark, the warm summer breeze drifting over her, she knew she could really fall for. And it didn’t even feel particularly scary. “How did you get your nickname anyway?”
“I’m not telling you that, Toot.”
Tuesday groaned. “God, don’t call me that.”
“Then you shouldn’t have told me.” Diesel stood up, gathering the remnants of their meal. “Come on, Toot, let’s go to bed.”
She liked the sound of that, even with the dumb childhood nickname tacked onto it.
CHAPTER EIGHT
DIESEL could have let her just fall asleep. They could have cuddled and left it at that.
But the minute he saw her crawling across his bed on all fours toward the pillow he decided he wasn’t quite ready to let her sleep. He hadn’t been expecting a week earlier that he would have Tuesday in his bed and he wasn’t sure that he ever would again, so he figured he might as well enjoy every second of it.
“Ah, I can’t wait to go to sleep.” Tuesday pulled back the covers.
Diesel grabbed her thighs to hold her in place before she scooted under and disappeared from his view. His basketball shorts were hanging loosely on her and he liked that she was wearing his clothes. It made him feel territorial, something he had no business feeling, but there it was. And he was going to pull those down and thrust into her from behind, where he could see the curve of her tight ass surrounding him.
“What?” she asked. “Is something wrong?”
His response was to yank those shorts down to her thighs. “I’m not ready to sleep yet.”
“No?” Her tone had changed from curious to intrigued.
“No.” The minute he saw her bare skin in front of him as she was on all fours he had an idea. “Stay just like that. Don’t move.”
“Yes, sir,” she said, her tone so filled with arousal Diesel almost changed his mind and plunged into her.
But instead he stuck to his original thought and went over to the dresser and retrieved the riding hat she’d been wearing earlier and the crop. Bending over, he grabbed her boots off the floor and brought it all to the bed. Amazingly, she was still exactly as he’d left her, up on all fours, facing front.
He lifted each of her knees and pulled the shorts off of her completely. She sucked in a breath with his first touch, and he enjoyed the sound of it. She didn’t know what he was going to do or where he was going to touch, yet she was completely letting him take control. He found that hot as hell.
“Sit up and take your shirt off.”
She did, without hesitation, her long arms lifting in the air, her back a smooth expanse of pale skin, her waist dipping in. Diesel slid his hands along her curves, his body tight with anticipation.
He put the hat on her head. “Now back on all fours.”
As he pulled his jeans off, she paused, her eyebrows raised as she glanced at him over her shoulder.
“What am I, a horse?” she asked with a sniff of disdain.
“No, not at all.” Diesel took the crop and ran the handle across the bare flesh of her backside, watching the goose bumps raise on her skin. “But if you were, you’d be a wild horse. That needs to be broken.”
He meant it as playful, as sexy bedroom talk, and he hoped she would take it that way. When he moved the crop between her legs, letting the handle rub against her clitoris as he drew it back and forth, back and forth between her thighs, he felt her tense.
Unsure of what that meant, he paused, giving her the opportunity to yell at him or protest or give him the affirmative that she was willing to play the game.
She tossed her hair over her shoulder as she turned to look at him, her eyes glassy and her lips apart. “Then I guess you’d better put me through my paces.”
Tuesday had always liked men who took charge in the bedroom and she had always attributed it to laziness on her part. It was easy to let them steer the ship of sex.
But with Diesel it was totally difference. When he moved that crop between her legs, and gave her commands with a smoldering look, his tone suggesting he expected her obedience, she found it incredibly arousing. Her ni**les were tight, her inner thighs humming in anticipation, her shoulders tense. She wasn’t always easy to get along with, she knew that, but here, she could forget her natural need to spar and to get in the last word. She could do whatever he wanted and the last word would be an orgasm.