After the Storm (All I've Ever Needed)(10)

He had never touched her silky skin before, except for a brief handshake on her first day of work and he had marveled at the texture, neither had he ever been close enough to smell her subtle perfume. It had gone to his head like wine, laying waste to all his plans.

He knew most women liked to wined and dined, before having sex with a man. He hoped that Natalie didn’t feel cheap because he had done neither. Even though they knew each other pretty well as work colleagues, she was more reserved than any woman he’d ever dated. He’d prepared himself for the months of waiting before she slept with him, never anticipating the fire under her cool exterior.

He was still stunned that he hadn’t used protection. He no longer walked around with condoms in his back pockets as he had done as a teenager, but he ensured that he prepared if there was a likelihood that he would engage in sexual activity. But lust had hit him like a fist that Friday and at no point, from kissing Natalie’s wrist to coming harder than he had done in years, had he thought about protection.

Despite what she said, he knew that she’d wanted him as much as he wanted her. The proof had been there in her rapid response to his touch.

It would be tough, but he would back off a little and allow her some space, a chance to miss him a little. A week, no more than two, and then he was going in for the kill.

***

Natalie reached over, turned the radio on and grabbed the topmost of the pile of brand-new romance novels on her bedside table. She snuggled deeper under her vanilla-scented duvet, just leaving her face and her hand outside. It was cold and she needed her morning coffee, but she was too lazy to get up. The central heating would come automatically on in an hour at eight, and she needed to reduce her caffeine intake, anyway.

She re-read the blurb of the interracial romance novel before she turned it over and admired the picture of the couple on the cover. She had always loved the subgenre, but never in a million years had she imagined that she would contemplate one of her own. Sometimes the couples in the novels had to go through a lot for the sake of their love and she often wondered if she would be strong enough to make whatever sacrifice was needed for the sake of love. Things worked out in the end in romance novels, but it wouldn’t be that easy in real life. Not that what she and Stephano had shared could be termed a romance—it had been a shameful one-night fling that hadn’t even lasted the night.

It had felt like she was ripping her own heart out telling him that she wanted them to be ‘just friends’, but he had taken her decision well, embarrassingly so. They had been coolly polite with each other for the rest of the week. She had joined him and their usual group of colleagues for lunch when meetings hadn’t taken her out of the office, only because not doing so would have seemed odd and raised suspicions that were already heightened by her and Stephano’s less-warm-than-usual camaraderie.

Forget Stephano, she rebuked herself and focused on the book again. She hoped that the description of the characters matched the cover. It was a silly peeve of hers, but she got annoyed when the picture on the cover looked nothing like the characters inside the book. She knew it must be difficult to find stock art that matched the characters writers dreamed up in their heads, but sometimes publishers didn’t seem to even make an effort. She had even read books with sketched or painted covers that didn’t match the characters—that she found totally unacceptable! It probably meant that she needed a life, she acknowledged. After all, what did it matter if the characters looked nothing like the cover?

She opened the book carefully, trying not to crease the cover. The charity she donated the books to after reading were able to charge a little extra if the books were in good condition. Buying four new books each weekend, six if there was a bank holiday on the Monday was a guilty pleasure, but knowing the charity benefited and other readers were able to buy the books at a reduced price made her feel less guilty.

Yesterday she had done her household chores accompanied by music in an attempt not to think about Stephano. But later in the sauna, after a hectic and very enjoyable Zumba class, he was all she could think of. Slipping between crisp, clean bed sheets was usually the highlight of her Saturday, but all she thought of as she’d done it yesterday was how much better it would be having a hard body to snuggle up to instead of soft sheets.

She had awoken feeling refreshed and rested. With nowhere to go and all the time to get there, she decided to spend the morning in bed reading with the radio softly in the background, providing companionship of sorts.

Whitney Houston dead at 48…

It took several moments for the words to register in Natalie’s subconscious mind.