His eyes were intense, maybe even curious, almost as if he was searching for something in hers. Maybe he found whatever he’d been looking for, or maybe not – he didn’t say, just wrapped an arm around her and pulled her close.
Quiet moments passed by, warmed by the heat of their bare bodies. Karen let herself sink into the feeling of intense satisfaction that lingered inside her, her gaze sweeping idly over Jed’s perfect body. Even after what they’d just done, the sight of him naked still made her spine tingle. She traced swirling lines of ink with her gaze, and one pattern – one word – in particular captured her attention.
Alice, the scrolling, loopy script that had been inked up his right side read. It was a simple tattoo, pretty and perplexing. Who was Alice? She wondered for a few brief moments before dismissing the thought.
There was a story behind every tattoo – Jed had told her that once – and the story behind a woman’s name obviously wasn’t one she was going to request as she lay naked in his arms. Instead, she brushed a fingertip lightly over the first word of the phrase that curved around his left ribcage, from front to back. “This is Latin, right?”
He nodded.
“What does it say?”
He swept a stray lock of hair out of her eyes, letting his fingers linger behind her ear. “Sic transit gloria mundi. Thus passes the glory of the world.”
CHAPTER 5
The whisper of Karen’s bare feet against the hallway carpet might as well have been gunfire. It captured Jed’s attention that effectively, reminding him that he wasn’t alone. He was so used to having the apartment to himself that any foreign sound rushed through the rooms and bounced off the walls, echoing inside his head.
“Morning,” he said, pulling an electric skillet out of the cupboard beside the fridge. He’d been up for maybe five minutes – long enough to pull on a pair of jeans and brush his teeth. She’d been sound asleep when he’d left her curled in his bed, tangled in the sheets.
“Morning.” She swept through the living area and into the kitchen, her thighs bare beneath the hem of one of his t-shirts.
“Thought I’d make breakfast.” He glanced at her over his shoulder as he reached blindly into a cupboard and pulled out a box of baking mix. He didn’t need sight to find it – no one but him touched anything in the kitchen; he always knew where everything was. “You like pancakes?”
“Love them.” She approached the table with a little twirl, faltering slightly on the slick tile and steadying herself with a hand on the back of one chair. “Need any help cooking?” she asked, half laughing.
“Morning person, are we?” he asked, taking in the bright shine of her green eyes and the straightness of her spine as she stood poised beside the table, her hair cascading over her shoulders in rumpled auburn waves. He teased, but she looked more alive than anyone else he’d ever seen less than a minute out of bed.
She awoke something in him, too – namely, his cock, which stiffened a little at the sight of his t-shirt clinging to her breasts and her mile-long legs bared beneath.
“I like mornings.” She let her hand slip from the chair and approached the counter, where he stood. “It’s the most peaceful part of the day, if you ask me. Not tired peaceful, though – exciting peaceful. When I get up, a part of me sort of feels like anything could happen.”
“Wish I could say the same.” Exciting wasn’t exactly how he’d describe his feelings while brushing his teeth, shuffling around the normally quiet kitchen and finding something to eat while blinking the grit and heaviness of sleep out of his eyes.
“Want me to put some water on for tea?”
Her words went through him cold and fast, like a mouthful of ice water. Gripping the box of baking mix in one hand and a bowl in the other, he turned to see her holding the red teapot aloft, her slender fingers curled around the handle as she eyed him and then the nearby faucet.
“Actually, I drink coffee.” He set the bowl down on the counter, and the sound seemed absurdly loud.
“Oh.” She lowered the teapot back onto the rear left stove burner, the one he never used.
“I’ll put some coffee on. Do you drink it?”
“Yeah. I just saw the teapot and figured you didn’t.”
“It was my wife’s.” He poured too much baking mix into the bowl, then turned away to fetch eggs anyway, leaning into the fridge as the chill crept over his skin. He knew damn well that Karen probably didn’t know about Alice, and that sticking his head in the refrigerator was an idiotic thing to do. Still, he didn’t want to watch her face transform when he dropped the bomb on her.