Page 148 of A Matter of Time

“Right now, yeah.”

“Then it’s what I want.”

“Good. Then we’ll talk.”

“Great,” he said sarcastically.

When I laughed, he groaned and put his head down on the table. It was nice. If he could be supportive and have a sense of humor, we could be friends.

It was after seven when Sam came into his apartment and closed and locked the door behind him.

“Hi,” I called over to him from where I was reading on the couch.

He pulled off his trench coat and threw it on the chair. His keys were dropped on the coffee table as he crossed the room to me.

“Are you okay?”

“No,” he said as he reached me. “It smells great in here.”

I put the magazine down and looked up at him. “How was work, honey?”

“It was shit,” he muttered, grabbing my right thigh and yanking me around, forcing me onto my back so he could lie down on top of me, between my legs.

“I’m sorry,” I told him as he bent and kissed me. It was possessive and hot and devouring. What it lacked was the urgency that was usual with us. He was taking his time, kissing me slowly, deeply, like he had all the time in the world. When I whimpered, he smiled against my mouth.

“I’m so glad to see you.”

I wrapped my legs around his waist, and he pressed against me as he kissed me long and hard. I was getting dizzy, it felt so good.

“Why don’t you go take a shower or a hot bath and relax?”

“The shower I’ll do,” he said, pulling back from me. “But I wanna talk to you, so I’ll make it fast.”

“You can talk to me in the tub,” I assured him, panting, trying to catch my breath. “I’ll run the bath and you can sit in it.”

“No, thanks.” He shook his head before he put his fingers under my chin and tilted my head up. “I just wanna sit and eat with you.”

“Okay.”

“Can we have drinks with dinner?”

“Yessir.” My mouth was dry, and I was barely breathing.

He nodded, leaned in and kissed me again. His tongue tangled with mine as a hand slipped under my shirt to slowly rub my stomach. “I bet you taste better than the food.”

I couldn’t speak. He annihilated me. His fingers stroking, petting me, made my brain shut down.

“I’m gonna take a shower. I’ll be right back.”

“Okay,” I said before he kissed my forehead and rose off me. I sat up and watched him walk out of the room, down the hall to his bedroom.

After I calmed a minute, I got up to get his dinner. When he came back into the kitchen a little while later, he looked better. He had on a long-sleeve T-shirt under a short-sleeve one, jeans, and thick socks. His hair was still wet and sticking up in places. He could not have been any more adorable.

I fed him lobster bisque, linguine and clams, fresh French bread, spinach salad with vinegar-and-oil dressing, and poured him many glasses of the chardonnay the guy at the wine store had said was good. I told him all about breakfast with Nick, walking around the bookstore afterward, the Christmas shopping I had started for Dane’s friends, and the million places I had gone to get dinner.

“You had breakfast with the doctor?”

“Yes.”