Chapter 3: The Morning After
Remington knew the moment Laura woke, feeling the stiffening of her slight frame against him. Intentionally, he nuzzled her head with his chin 'in his sleep,' and felt her draw in a swift breath, although the tension in her body remained. He continued to feign sleep as she carefully extricated herself from his embrace, then sat up and retrieved the shirt he'd abandoned the evening before from the floor. Only after shrugging it on, did she stand, shielding herself from his view, lest he be awake, he knew. A few minutes later, he rolled to his back, after he heard the 'snick' of the bathroom door closing, followed by the pelting of water against the tiled, shower floor.
Their first attempt at making love had been, well, an unmitigated disaster. Never in a million years had he, the connoisseur of women, a man who liked to believe himself a skilled, giving lover, anticipated that he'd be reduced to a quivering, clumsy mass of nerves. But he had been, from their first kiss when their teeth had clashed, to his fumbling attempts to loosen the buttons of her blouse, to his last, awkward thrust as he'd buried himself in her body when he'd found his climax. And she never had.
A fact he found utterly unacceptable.
Worse, as his frustration with himself had grown, so had Laura's tension, whatever it was she'd found within herself to allow the moment to happen, quickly fading away. He'd seen the look of misery in her brown eyes as he'd separated their joined bodies, that she'd tried to cover fast enough, with a smile and a brush of her fingertips down his arm before rolling to her side to sleep. But it had been too late, for he'd already seen.
And he couldn't disagree with the feelings reflected in her eyes. For years he dreamt of any number of ways he'd leave her a quivering mass of feminine flesh, their bodies at last merging as one as they surrendered to the need heating their blood, making their hearts pound. Instead, they'd surrendered to the awkwardness of it all, never finding a compatible rhythm. A rhythm, it could be argued, that was as natural as breathing in other aspects of their relationship.
Hearing the rattle of the bathroom door knob, he rolled over to lay on his stomach. Only when he heard the kitchen faucet come on did he slip out of bed. Silently as a cat, he crossed the room, removing his robe from his overnight bag and pulling it on, before taking a change of clothing and his shaving kit and retiring to the bathroom to shower.
He needed to clear his head. He needed to figure out how to make things right between them, before it was entirely too late.