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“Why you need all this light in here?”

There was only the one small circle of light from the lamp, since he’d turned off the overhead light when I was in the bathroom. I studied him. “You know, for a guy who spent most of his career naked, you’re charmingly modest.”

“Yeah, naked,” Johnny said. “I was a lot of fucking years younger back then. It was different.”

I was used to being the one who was shy about my body, worried about a little extra baggage here and there. Cellulite. The men I’d gone to bed with had never seemed to care about their back zits, hairy asses, love handles. Johnny’s hesitation charmed me, if it were possible to be further charmed.

“It’s cold.” I patted the covers. “Come to bed.”

With a frown, he shoved his pants down, stepped out of them and took off his socks. He might’ve been worried about time, but he made even that awkward dance graceful. In his dark boxer briefs, he didn’t have the body of a twenty-year-old. Nor a thirty-year-old. It didn’t matter, he was still Johnny. Gorgeous and luscious.

I held out my hand. “Come to bed.”

He did, sliding beneath the blankets and sitting against the headboard. He didn’t look at me. I looked at him, though. His chest rose and fell too fast. A muscle ticked in his cheek.

“Johnny, seriously…”

“It’s those fucking pictures,” he said.

Pitchahs.
God, I loved the way he talked. “What about them?”

He looked at me. The dimmish light hid the crow’s-feet, the silver in his hair. He looked different, yes. Older, yes. But in a lot of ways it could’ve been Johnny-then in front of me. My heart skipped as another wave of surreality washed over me.

“I was so fucking young,” he said in a low voice.

I put my hand on his shoulder and ran my fingertips down his arm to take his hand. “You’re beautiful. You’re one of the most beautiful men on the planet.”

His mouth quirked a little at that. “Yeah, according to the art mags back in 1978.”

“According to a lot of people, even now.” I thought of all the fan sites.

“I don’t care about what they think.”

I circled my fingertip over his wrist and felt the pulse beat there. “According to me.”

We stared at each other in silence for a few moments before I twisted in the sheets to turn out the light. Darkness covered us, and I blinked against it. Slowly, silver moonlight filled the spaces, making shadows. Johnny inched down in the bed and pulled me close to him, on my side. He spooned me, and though it wasn’t at all the way I wanted to end up in bed with him, I wriggled as close as I could and fell asleep.

Or not asleep.

Chapter 20

I
turned in a bed, tangled in sheets that weren’t mine. I heard the sound of a toilet flush, the pad of bare feet, and in moments Johnny slid into bed beside me. Naked. I was naked, too.

“You awake?” Johnny ran a hand down my body.

I rolled toward him. “Yes.”

“You thinking again?”

“Again?” I laughed softly, snuggling in closer. “Always.”

“Whatcha thinking about?”

“You,” I said. “This. Us. Everything.”

His hand rested flat on my belly. “What about us? This and everything?

“Just that…” I sighed and rolled to face him. I slid my thigh between his to press us as close together as possible. “I don’t know how long it will last. That’s all.”

“You can never be sure anything will last.”

“That’s the sort of thing you find easy to say in the dark,” I told him.

Johnny laughed. “It is dark. And it’s true. What, do you want it to end? This, us, everything?”

“I don’t want it to. But it does. It will.”

“Then we’ll just have to make the most of it, won’t we?”

As his cock nudged between us, my laugh turned to a sigh. “Yeah. I guess we will.”

He kissed me, and I blinked. I ran my hands over his body, over broad shoulders, down a smooth chest. Over his ass, which was no longer naked but covered in soft cotton. “Johnny?”

“Yeah, babe.” It was Johnny-now talking to me. I could tell by the rougher timbre of his voice.

“I thought you said…” I didn’t want to cry—I wasn’t sad, but my breath hitched in my chest. “I thought you said you didn’t want to…”

“Oh, Emm.” His hands slid over my body, beneath the hem of my T-shirt, over my bare flesh. “How could you ever think I don’t want this?”

He moved over me, pressing me into the mattress. He took my hands, moved them over my head, our fingers linked, to hold me still. I wasn’t trying to move, but I liked when he did that, anyway.

We kissed for a long time. Soft and slow. The kisses got deeper and more desperate, but never sloppy. Johnny wasn’t a sloppy kisser. He moved his mouth over my face, my throat. He let go of my hands to push up my shirt over my head. He kissed my breasts, sucking gently at my nipples until I couldn’t breathe. Then down over my belly, the rough hint of his stubble scratching at my thighs.

When he kissed between my legs, I gasped and put my hand on top of his head. He paused. The bed shifted.

“This is how you like it,” Johnny murmured against my skin.

He was right.

He made love to me with his mouth, tongue and lips moving over all the secret parts of me. His fingers slipped inside, stroking. I tilted my hips, giving him access.

My first orgasm rolled over me in slow, shuddering waves. When he kissed me, I tasted myself on him. I pulled him down close, feeling his cock thick and hard through his briefs. My mind mushy with passion, I whispered in his ear, “Condoms in the drawer.”

He paused and pushed himself up on his hands to look down into my face. I had a sudden worry he’d protest the use of a rubber—and how disappointed I’d be if we couldn’t make love because he refused. But Johnny only shook his head a little and reached into the nightstand for the box of condoms I couldn’t even be sure hadn’t expired.

We wriggled together, moving, taking off his briefs. Putting on the condom. He got on his knees, getting ready to push inside me, but I put a hand on his chest.

“Are you sure?” I asked.

Johnny kissed me. “I’m sure.”

Then he slid inside me, all the way, and we moved together until I came again, this time with a gasp and a cry. He followed me, saying my name over and over again.

This time, when I closed my eyes, I didn’t open them until morning.

“Morning,” Johnny said from my doorway. He was already showered and dressed. His hair looked good slicked back from his face. He hadn’t shaved, but he still looked good. He wore different clothes. “What time do you have to leave for work?”

I scrubbed at my face, sitting. “I have to be there by nine. Leave by eight-thirty. What’d you do, go home and come back?”

“Time for breakfast, then.”

I looked at him and laughed. “You did the walk of shame.”

“How else was I supposed to get something else to wear?”

“You woke up early, though. Got up in the dark?” I laughed again and got out of bed. He didn’t pull away when I stood on my toes to kiss him. “You were embarrassed.”

“I always get up that early.”

“You didn’t used to,” I said, not sure where that came from.

“I used to go to bed a lot later.” His hands settled on my hips. “Don’t you think you should get dressed?”

“Are you going to make me breakfast?”

“Do you want me to?” He laughed. “No. I’m a fucking bad cook.”

“Then you’d better take me to the Mocha,” I said.

It was a test. I half thought he’d fail it. But Johnny only nodded and looked me up and down.

“You’d better hurry it up, then. So you’re not late for work.”

I showered and dressed and put on my makeup, but when I thought to twist up my hair and secure it with the leather clip I’d bought, I couldn’t find it, though I searched through my jumbled drawer of hair ties and bobby pins.

“Emm! C’mon!”

“Coming!” I left it, putting my hair in a braid instead and skipping out to follow him.

When we walked into the Mocha together, it was a little like being the prom king and queen entering the gym. Everyone looked. Everyone stared. And Johnny took my hand, our fingers shielded by gloves but still linking tight.

“Hey,” he said to Carlos, who hadn’t yet set up his laptop. “How’s it going?”

“Morning, Carlos.” I beamed. It sort of felt triumphant, maybe a little catty, but I didn’t care.

Carlos nodded at both of us. “They got pumpkin spice lattes on the board today. They’re good.”

“I know what I’m getting,” I said.

Johnny squeezed me next to him. “Yeah. Me, too.”

He drove me to work and it felt a little strange, but not too much. He kissed me in the parking lot and told me to call him half an hour before I needed to leave work.

And that was how it started.

That. Us. Everything.

And it was good. Really good. Johnny was a man, not a boy, just like I’d told my mother.

He did what he said he was going to do. If Johnny told me he’d be there to pick me up from work, he wasn’t late. If he promised to pick up something for dinner, he did that, too. Because he worked his own hours, he had more flexibility than I did, which worked out well in my favor, since he insisted I either go to the doctor or voluntarily give up my driving privileges. I accepted his offer to be my chauffeur.

We didn’t talk about the fugues, and I was glad for that. If sometimes I caught him looking at me with a curious expression, I ignored it. What we had was good, and real, and it worked.

Johnny’s daughter, Kimmy, was a different story. As he’d warned me, she wasn’t exactly welcoming. She was, I thought, her mother’s daughter, even if I only had my imagination to tell me what her mother was like.

It was Johnny’s day to take his grandson, Charlie, who ran through the front door and into Johnny’s arms in a whirlwind of small boy, then ran off again just as fast into the TV room to play with the Wii on the big screen. Kimmy stayed in the doorway like she needed to be invited in, something I knew wasn’t true.

“Emm, I want you to meet my daughter, Kimmy. Kimmy, this is Emm. I told you about her.”

Kimmy looked me up and down with a sniff, then said to her father, right in front of me, “They keep getting younger, Dad.”

“Maybe you’re just getting older.” It probably wasn’t the best response I could’ve made, but instead of hauling off and punching me in the teeth, Kimmy actually smiled.

“She speaks. Imagine that.”

“Kimmy,” Johnny said with a sigh, but made no apologies for her. “Christ, lay off, will ya?”

I liked that he wasn’t trying to make us into best friends. Not that I’d have minded being friendly with Johnny’s daughter, who my mind insisted on remembering clad in a dirty onesie and stinking diaper. Just that I didn’t need to kiss her ass to feel important.

“My father,” Kimmy said, “has a history of dating dumb blondes. I mean really dumb. Like dirt-dumb.”

“I’m not blonde,” I said, not pointing out that she, in fact, was.

“Not dumb, either,” Kimmy said grudgingly with another sweep of her gaze up and down over me. “Any kids?”

“Kimmy, Jesus,” Johnny said.

“Not yet,” I told her. “You worried about losing your place in Daddy’s affections?”

“No.” She smiled grudgingly. “I guess he didn’t tell you he’s been fixed.”

Johnny slapped a hand over his eyes with a groan. “For fuck’s sake.”

We hadn’t ever discussed anything remotely like marriage or children, but that didn’t mean I hadn’t thought about it. “I didn’t know he was broken.”

Kimmy laughed. “Dad, God, you should’ve warned her you’ve had all the kids you need. Right? Isn’t that what you said? You do know he has other kids, right? There’s me, I’m the oldest. Then there’s Mitchell and what’s the other one’s name?”

“Logan,” Johnny said.

“At least that one’s younger than you are,” Kimmy offered, like that was a prize.

“I know about Johnny’s kids.” The internet, of course.

He looked at me, faintly surprised but only for a second. “Give it a rest, Kimmy. Seriously.”

“Grampa!” Charlie appeared in the hall, waving a Wii remote. “This one doesn’t work. It needs new batteries.”

Johnny looked back and forth between us and put up his hands. “I gotta take care of the kid. Emm, toss her out on her ass if she gets mouthy.”

My brows rose as he went after Charlie and they both disappeared into the living room. I faced Kimmy. “You know, he’s not a bone we have to fight over. I’m not interested in getting in between you or anything. And I have my own daddy, so really, this isn’t about that. You should chill out and back off.”

To my surprise, she backed down. She actually laughed. “I’m just warning you what you’re getting into. You’re young, Emm. He’s old, that’s all.”

“I guess that’s my business. Are you as kind to warn off all his other girlfriends?”

Kimmy shook her head. “Seeing as how none of them ever lasted more than a couple of months, I didn’t have to.”

“Huh.” I studied her. “We’ve only been seeing each other for a couple of weeks. Yet I get the special treatment.”