“What’s a seven?” she asked him, turning her body ninety degrees to the right and stretching her legs onto the bench. She lay back, carefully nestling her head into the valley of Seth’s legs.
He stared down at her, blank-faced for a moment, then slowly, reverently, rearranged her hair so it fanned over his left thigh rather than being tightly pinned under her neck.
“I don’t know who I got my red hair from,” he mused, winding a stretch of her hair around his index finger. “My parents were pretty much phantoms by the time I was old enough to ask about them, though I imagine it must be someone on my father’s side. And a seven is the resort’s steamer platter. Had it last night between beers four and five.”
“We have a lot of red in our family.” Meg overturned her novel and laid the open pages atop her chest, tipping her head back a bit to meet Seth’s gaze. “Me and Stephen, I mean. We get it from my mom’s side. Mutation must be on the X chromosome somewhere. Toby was born with black hair, and it fell out and made way for the flame.”
“Suits him.”
“I agree. I just hope he’s always so comfortable with it. His father used to tease him about it.”
Seth stopped twirling hair, and the muscles of his thighs tightened. Sore spot, maybe?
“Tease him? Why?”
“Who knows why?” She shrugged the best she could from her supine position, and picked up her book. “He’s a peculiar sort of man.”
“But you married him.”
“Let’s not go there, okay? Just keep twirling my hair and I’ll read my book and we’ll be copasetic.”
He mumbled something indecipherable under his breath and fanned his paperback open in one large hand.
Meg had just gotten her eyes focused on the header Chapter One when her bouncing head made her eyes cross and her book page blurred.
“Stop bobbing your knee!” she hissed.
“I’m bobbing my knee and that’s distracting to you, yet I have a half-naked woman with very prominent spotlights occupying my lap with her head right over my balls, and I’m supposed to be calm?”
Her cheeks twitched from the laugh she tried and failed to stifle. “Headlights, I think you mean.”
He mumbled, “I like my way better,” and lifted his book higher. He stopped bobbing his knee, though.
Poor guy. Meg couldn’t leave well enough alone. Agitating him in this way was kind of fun. “Sorry about the, uh, spotlights. They’re pretty much always on.”
Something beneath her head twitched, and she didn’t think it was Seth’s leg that time. She grinned even thinking of his body’s response. That was the way nature intended—no song and dance necessary. See a healthy, eligible person of the opposite sex—signal your attention.
“I can’t help it,” he said, obviously keen on the source of her amusement.
“I would imagine that by your age, most men would be desensitized to the occasional nipple.”
“Believe it or not, there are some men out there who don’t spend every evening with a woman in their bed.”
“Are you implying that you’re inexperienced?” She held her book in front of her face and stared at the opening line.
“You don’t tiptoe around words, do you?”
“I believe in cutting to the quick. Save time that way.”
“If you’re asking if I was a virgin before last night, the answer is no.”
She snapped the book shut and tossed it onto the table beside Seth’s feet. Once she’d rolled over and scooted down a bit on the bench, she propped herself up on her arms and tilted her face toward his. “I didn’t insinuate that.”
“What do you want, a number?” He turned the page of his book, and his forehead scrunched. Weren’t women supposed to be the multitaskers? She didn’t see how he could manage reading, given the nature of their conversation.
Annoyed, she grabbed in the general vicinity of his cock and squeezed.
He wheezed, back straightening and eyes widening, and finally closed his book, too.
“Would you give me one if I asked for it?” she asked, turning her hand and making him squirm just that much more.
He swallowed, and her hand did to his cheeks what the sun could not. “Why would you want to know?”
“Burning curiosity.”
“I’ll tell you if you let go of my fucking junk.”
“I don’t believe you.” She squeezed a bit harder, this time pressing the heel of her palm up his hardening shaft.
“Photographer at twelve o’clock. Near the water.”
“Don’t care,” she said. And she meant it. Private as she was, she had enough ego to want to show off for once, and hell, this was fun.