Chapter 2
Rick rolled over onto his back when he felt Kate come in from her shower and perch herself at his side. He was awake, had been since she'd abandoned the cocoon of their hotel bed for the grind of the gym downstairs and returned short of an hour later, rousing him in her penance with the wicked talents of her mouth, her tongue, a surprise attack on his body's every nerve that even in its mere suggestion would've assured forgiveness.
"Good morning. Again," he said, his voice still sprinkled with morning gravel of the sexiest kind.
Despite the sun of the hour, the curtains pulled across the window continued to work their job admirably. The room was bathed in blackness, its only hint of light peeking out around the bathroom door Kate had left open a crack, and Rick was thankful. By it, he could see she'd wrapped herself only in a towel, which had his face plastered with a grin over an eruption of indecent thoughts.
"Morning." Kate's tone carried a grin all its own. "Do you feel like ordering up some breakfast? Checkout isn't for a little while."
"Come 'ere first." He curled his fingers around her bare arm and encouraged her close, tickled her neck with the tip of his nose as he inhaled the clean of her. "God, I could live on that forever." His lips stole a souvenir then he nestled back into the pillow. "I love the way you smell, the way you taste."
"I guess that seals it then," she said. "I was on the fence about it, but now I'm definitely going to swipe the soap and the shampoo from the bathroom before we go." She gifted them both a soft, open kiss. "You know, with words like those, maybe you should've been a writer instead of a lawyer," she told him, a rib but not one entirely without sentiment. "Fewer highway billboards, sure, but just imagine all the bedrooms you could be in."
With a fingertip he trailed a path along her clavicle down to the cinch in the towel at her breast, tugged it loose until it fell away. "The only bedroom I care about is one with you in it." He took a breath. "Tell me you decided. Tell me you'll come."
Kate shifted aside the covers, slid in beside him with her wet hair and naked body and heartbeat racing like her legs on the treadmill she'd had her way with. He'd asked her before he'd gone out of town, and despite the thousand other balls she'd had in the air, the invitation and everything it could lead her and them to had consumed her mind.
"Thanks to you I have, multiple times." Rick nudged her playfully for the retort he himself probably would've given. "It wasn't a small thing, Rick, what you asked," she said on the other side of a thoughtful moment. "Living together is… there's a lot to consider."
"I know there is, and I'm sorry. I'm not trying to pressure you. I'm a selfish man when it comes to you, Kate. I proudly admit that. I want as much of you in my life as I can get. I want all of you. Then I want more." When she quieted again, he did what he did best. "Hard to believe, right, that I could be so in love with a woman who squeezes the toothpaste tube wrong?"
Galled, Kate snapped her tongue. "What? I do not. And, besides, there is no wrong way. It comes out, doesn't it? At least I don't slurp when I eat my soup," she fired back.
"Hey, sometimes it's really hot and I'm too hungry to wait, and don't you even try to pick a fight right now to distract me, Counselor. You're naked and warm and it's already hard enough to focus."
She drew her hand across his chest and let it settle at his hip beneath the sheets. "Yeah, well, you're naked, too," she replied and quickly realized her observation led to absolutely no point whatsoever.
"Fun, isn't it? Imagine all the fun naked time we could have together there, now that my mother's finally gone."
Kate scrunched her face in the dark.
"You say that like you bumped her off and buried her in the backyard or something. She moved down a floor, in your building, with a man worth millions. She still has a key to your place, and clearly no qualms about using it. You remember last week when we-"
"Don't say it. Please don't say it." He remembered all too well being walked in on in the kitchen, and there'd been absolutely no cooking going on that evening-not in the literal sense, anyway. "Okay, I told you there was no pressure, so I'll just say one last thing. Then I promise I'll leave it."
Curling his body over, Rick pushed up onto his elbow, skimmed a gentle thumb across her cheek.
"Look, you're already home for me, Kate, no matter where I close my eyes at night or open them in the morning. That's truth. That's forever. I just-I'm a man who's had a lot of good in his life, but none of it has ever filled me with the joy you have, and when I think about all the minutes in all the hours I have left on this earth, you being with me to share them is all that matters and it's all I want. They can take everything else." He drove his fingers through his mussed hair. "There, now I'm done. French toast?"
Silence fell and it fell hard, and the ball was in Kate's court to break it.
"How about you bring your lips down here first?" When he obliged, she murmured into a kiss, "I love you more than anything," and what began sweet and lazy swiftly escalated to a mutual ravenous greed, a song of promises chorused by hands and mouths screaming toward crescendo.
"Does this mean no to the French toast?" Rick asked around a smile when she clenched his hips between her thighs and skimmed the warm fruits of his fingers' achievement along his length.
Kate arched over, her wet hair tumbling onto his chest. "What would you say if I told you I wanted to fuck you for breakfast instead?" She already knew the answer, because it wasn't really a question, and she swallowed up the curve of his lips with her own.
"Well, I guess I'd say go hang the Do Not Disturb sign on the door, Counselor, because that's precisely the kind of service this room deserves." He promptly locked his fingers around her wrist. "Only, don't even think about going anywhere, because I want to…"
Absent resistance, he inched her nearer so he could tease her nipple with his tongue. "Sweeter than syrup," he cooed when she inhaled an audible breath of pleasure.
"Fuck," spilled out of Kate in a sigh. "I love when you do that."
"Oh, I know you do," Rick replied before another deliberate stroke. "Want more?"
Kate dipped for his mouth and sampled. "So much more," she whispered with a peep at the clock as her forehead dropped to his chest. "But, dammit, this has to be quick. I actually have to go soon. I have to meet Lanie at noon to try on dresses for the wedding."
"Why, Katherine, this is all so sudden. I wasn't expecting this," he teased.
"Ha ha."
Rick detected something more than frustration over a necessarily hastened romp and he pressed. "Why are we huffing? Trying on dresses with your best friend sounds like fun. And you look incredible in dresses. You're not excited?"
She pressed her lips against his skin, let her open mouth linger there as she spoke. "It's not that. I just haven't done any of this wedding stuff since I was planning mine. I guess it feels a little-I don't know. I'm being stupid."
"You're not," he assured her, because he understood. He'd been in a marriage, and one that, for many reasons, should never have been. "Of course it'd bring stuff up for you, Kate. Of course you'd be thinking about it, and I'm sorry… that you had to go through what you did, not that I benefitted, obviously." Kate half giggled. "I haven't pushed and I won't, but if it's something you ever want to talk more about, I hope you know you can talk to me."
"I do, thank you. Besides all that, I wish I could just spend the whole day with you. I know it was only a few days, but I missed you," she confessed for not the first time.
"Yeah, I sorta got that," Rick crowed. She knew he would. "You'll still be over at the house tonight, yes?"
Kate's parents had gone out of town for a few days and asked that she drop by to look in, collect the mail. She'd decided to stay there for the duration, instead. It wasn't often she got to enjoy the old house without having to endure the meddling of the two buttinskies. Love them dearly, though she did.
"Yeah, my parents won't be back until sometime tomorrow afternoon."
He pushed the hair back from her face. "Okay, so here's my thought: You go do your thing with Lanie. I head to the office for a bit and get caught up, I stop home for a nap and a shower, then I come over with some groceries and we make ourselves some dinner… and some dessert, if you know what I mean." Kate said nothing. "You got quiet. Is that a no?"
"Sorry, I was trying to remember a time when I didn't know what you meant, when you were ever actually subtle. None came to mind." She planted a playful peck against his mouthful of objection. "I did like your thought, especially the part about the nap. You're definitely going to need it."
"I enjoy you missing me so much," Rick said with an appreciable flash of teeth. "So, Counselor, all this talk about dinner and dessert has me pretty hungry for breakfast. What exactly is on the menu this morning?"
Kate flattened her palms against his chest and angled her body up, reached around behind her and took him in her hand. "Oh, it's a specialty of the house," she answered and then cranked the heat up to high.
xxxx
Kate flung the dressing room curtain closed behind her and prepared to step into her third purple-hued number of the afternoon. In an oversize chair on the other side, Lanie sat cross-legged in wait, an audience of one with a flute of champagne in one hand and a loaded pistol of snark already emptied of two rounds in the other. Kate knew going in it wasn't going to be a quick affair.
"So, what's the deal? Are you going to move in with him or what?" Lanie called from beyond the wall of white linen that separated them. Everything in the place was white, floor to ceiling. Hell, even Marcy, the shop's keeper, looked like a walking, talking marshmallow, the two had decided. "Or is he going to have to show you a ring first?"
Kate slid the satin straps of the next frock up over the curves her shoulders, the expression on her face reflected in the mirror befitting both the dress's cut-or troubling lack thereof-and her finicky friend's remark.
"Because ultimatums seem like the next logical step in our relationship?"
"Girl, no, you do not want to play smart ass with me right now. I have got nothing but time today, and no problem at all asking that cotton ball out there to point me in the direction of all the ruffles and puffy sleeves in this place for you to try on, and she will listen because I am the bride here. I just don't know what the hell it is you're waiting for. I never thought you'd be trying on dresses for my wedding before I was trying them on for yours. You and Mr. Billboard practically wrote the damn book on fate."
Kate emerged again, her lip still cocked in displeasure.
"It's not about a ring, Lanie. I don't need Rick to propose." She glanced down at her lean body swimming in lavender fabric. "This is such a no, by the way. I look like I'm wearing a shower curtain."
Lanie sipped amusedly.
"I was just about to say. And not that it would help that thing out, but it wouldn't kill you to enjoy a candy bar every once in a while. Live a little-indulge. You deserve it. You deserve a lot of things," she tacked on with all the nuance of a sledgehammer.
Kate settled her hands on her hips, all but necessary to keep the dress from sliding off her frame to the floor. "You know, I'm not sure who's less subtle, you or Rick. And I'm not waiting for anything. I'm not like you, Lanie. I don't just leap. I like to look over the edge of a cliff first to make sure there's a net."
Lanie set down her glass and stood up, walked over to the rack lined with potentials and lifted another hanger.
"I think you know love's one cliff that never has a net, Kate. Look, I am an engaged woman, about to get herself hitched forever, but I can still stand here and say to you that you and Rick are more in love than any two people I have ever seen." She handed over the dress. "I rest my case. Now please go take that awful thing off your body."
Kate smiled softly. She knew Lanie wasn't wrong.