“You’re so beautiful,” he whispered, trying to make her out in the shadows given off by the light they had left on in the bathroom.
She bent her head and said nothing. He reached for her, slipping his hand under her chin to force her head up, then leaned over to place a very tender, gentle kiss upon her lips. She put her hands on his shoulders for balance and leaned in to kiss him back. His heart swelled as he cradled her face between his hands. This was it. Finally it. He understood what she was feeling. He was thrilled and nervous and vulnerable too, but he wouldn’t have traded this moment for the world.
At last he pulled away from her. He nodded at the condom still in her hand. “Do you want me to put that on myself?” he offered quietly.
She shook her head. “No. No, I want to do this for you.”
“You’re sure?” he asked.
She rested her forehead against his chin and nodded. “Yeah.”
He kept himself very, very still as she reached for him, drawing in a sharp breath as she touched him with her long, cool fingers. He winced a little as the feel of her fingers was replaced by the constricting feel of being surrounded by latex, but if it was the price of being intimate with Denise, then he would pay it, and gladly. “Is that all right?” she whispered, raising her face to his again.
He kissed her forehead. “Perfect. Thank you.” Mindful of her handiwork, he stood up and turned back the blankets. “Come on, lover,” he told her. “Let’s get you warmed up.”
With a smile as old as Eve, Denise climbed between the sheets and waited for her man to join her.
He was as careful a lover as he knew how to be. No touch was wasted and no gesture lost. He kissed her throat, caressed her breasts, and generally worshipped every inch of her that he could reach. Denise was soft and warm and receptive, and Dave was on fire for her. She was ever better than anything he had ever imagined. It was like being a born-again virgin, discovering for the first time just how good making love could really be.
And then, when he had loved her well, he found himself at the brink of heaven, poised just at the moment when the two of them would truly become one. He pulled his head back to look down at her, and she reached up to cradle his face. “Are you ready?” he asked her quietly.
“Yeah.”
“I love you,” he told her.
“I love you too,” she told him, stroking the side of his face.
He drew in a deep breath, bent his head to join his lips with hers, and drove himself home. Because she was taller than he was, he had to drive himself into her extra deeply in order to be able to look down into her face. “Are you all right?” he asked solicitously.
“Uh huh,” she replied. “You?”
“Hell, yes,” he told her, and she laughed. She slid her hands down his body, over his shoulders, along his back, to cup his buttocks. With gentle pressure, she guided him into motion. With a deep moan of pleasure, he let her set the rhythm of their joining. She was everything he’d imagined and more — hot, slick, sweet, and passionate. He could have come then and there, but instead he forced himself to hold back. More than anything else, he wanted to make this good for her. He shuddered and continued to follow her deep, gentle rhythm. “Tell me,” he whispered hoarsely as he kissed her throat. “Tell me how you want it. I want to make this perfect for you.”
“What you’re doing now,” she told him breathlessly, “it’s good, but — ”
“But what?” he panted. “Tell me. God, please — ”
She nipped at his ear. “It’s been a long time for me, Dave, and I love — I love the way you’re tender like this, but, please — could you love me hard tonight?”
He scraped her neck with his teeth. “I don’t know how long I can last if I do,” he admitted. “This feels so good, and I’m so close — ”
She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. Just for a little. I’m close, too. Please?”
He reached back to grab her hands from his butt and he pinned her wrists to the mattress on either side of her head. He kissed her lips once, a bruising, take-no-prisoners kiss, then buried his face against her throat and began to pound his hips against hers, giving her the driving, pulsing, hard loving that she’d asked for. He released one wrist and instead splayed his free hand over her breast, sinking his fingers deeply into her pliant flesh. Denise hissed and then moaned as she slipped her hand onto his back, pulling him as close as she could. He kept on, driving hard into her. It was the best thing he had ever felt, and he was right, it wasn’t long until he reached the point where he no longer thought, only felt. He melted into her, and never felt more peaceful or more alive in his life.
He lay panting on top of her. He wanted to lift his head, to ask her if she was all right, to tell her again that he loved her, but it was all he could do just to lie there, listening to her heart pounding and wishing that he didn’t ever have to move again. Denise’s arms came up around his back, and her fingers toyed idly with his hair. “Wow,” she said softly.
“Yeah,” he agreed without moving. “Wow.”
“You okay?”
He smiled against her skin. “Funny thing about that,” he told her. “This may well be the best I’ve ever felt in my entire life, and yet I can’t even manage to raise my head at the moment. Does that make any sense?”
“Yeah,” she said heavily. “It does.”
He sighed and then kissed her shoulder before gathering her up in his arms and rolling off of her, pulling her so that she rested under the crook of his arm, her head on his shoulder. “Thank you,” he told her softly.
“Thank you,” she replied, snuggling into him. She ran her hand from his shoulder to his chest to his belly, rubbing it with a faint circular motion. Dave stiffened slightly under her hand.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I wish that I could be better for you. Not fat, I mean.”
She raised her head to peer down at him. “Shhh. It’s who you are that makes this special, not your body.”
“Yeah, but … ” He trailed off helplessly.
“Am I complaining?” she asked.
“No, but you could have anyone, easy. Someone who was tall and buff — ”
She was already shaking her head, even before she cut him off. “First off, you’re not fat, you’re lush. Secondly, I like the way it feels to be lying naked against this body. Hard bodies aren’t always comfortable to lie against. But you … ” She drew in a long, sensual breath. “I love you, Dave. And I love the way your body feels against mine.”
His eyes searched hers questioningly. “I know I’m not the best looking guy, either … ”
She reached up to place her fingers over his lips. “Stop putting yourself down. Dave, you’re the one I want to be with.”
“But you could have any man.”
She nodded. “Yes. I could. And I chose you.”
He drew in a long, ragged breath and blinked into her eyes. “Really?”
“Really,” she promised, sliding her body up along his to place a kiss on his lips.
And then she proved it to him once again.
• • •
Walking back to the station was a much different trip than going to the hotel had been. The snow had stopped and the winds had died down. Everything was clean and sparkling and new. Dave made a snowball and fired it at a No Parking sign, catching it on the corner. He challenged Denise to take the same shot, but hers flew well low of the sign. He laughed and kissed her, and told her that she needed to practice before the next season’s station softball games. She asked him if he’d help her and he promised that he would. Then he took her hand and they walked back to the station. It would be another day and a half before the roads were cleared and the WMTR staff was able to return to work, but for Dave and Denise “normal” would never be the same again.
Winter gave way to spring, and for Dave and Denise, life was very good, indeed.
Although Dave never really believed that he would ever be in a real relationship with Denise, now that it had happened, he found that it was even better than he’d dreamed. She was smart, sassy, sexy, and beautiful as hell, and she wanted to spend her time with him. What could possibly be better that that?
They fell into a comfortable routine. Denise would greet Dave in his office when she came in for her shift, then he’d run out to bring her back a take-out dinner and they’d eat together. Most days he’d leave before her shift was over. Most of the weekends were spent together. Sometimes he’d go with her to a station promotion, if she had one scheduled, but other days they’d go to an art museum or a Red Sox game, take in a show or take Dave’s niece and nephew to the zoo or the aquarium.
Dave taught Denise how to cook Italian, inviting her over to his place to show her how to make chicken piccata or pizzellas or some other family specialty. And they went shopping together for a new, queen-sized mattress to replace the full-sized one in his room. Together, they shopped for new bedding, settling on a multicolored quilt and a set of plain red sheets. Then, of course, they had to try the new bedding out. And, Lord, she did look good on red sheets.
Denise’s favorite times with Dave were the quiet times together, just holding hands or talking. Sometimes she’d be recognized when they were out together and he’d step back and let her hold court, signing autographs and making small talk, but all she’d have to do would be to look his way and he would be back at her side, his hand of the small of her back possessively, ready to extricate her if she was ready to move along. He was funny and sweet and made her feel like the most special woman in the world. Some days she felt like she had it all — success, independence, and a relationship with a man whom she really loved.
In July, the annual station outing came and went — a harbor cruise this time. Because Denise was no longer the new-man-on-the-team, she was able to pass her shift to one of the newer people, and so she didn’t have to leave early. Todd O’Connor, Dave wasn’t sorry to hear, couldn’t get out of his daily work obligation and so couldn’t join them on the cruise, so Dave only had to contend with Presley as a distraction as they sat in lounge chairs and drank fruity drinks with umbrellas in them. And Presley had started to grow on him, even if she did sometimes act like she was personally responsible for their getting together. At least, he supposed, she seemed to be on his side. Presley and Kirk had, as predicted, eventually lost interest in each other, but as near as Dave could tell, it was an amicable parting. There was no animosity. Thank God.
In spite of Dave’s coaching, Denise went 0-for-4 at the next match up of the ’MTR staff against the visiting Soap Opera Stars the following July. But she went down with laughter and grace, willing to poke fun at her own lack of ability — which was a good thing, considering the morning crew made repeated references to her lack of ball-playing skills on the morning show. No one ever said that being a celebrity was easy.
As the summer days wore on, their days were full of long walks, porch swings and lemonade, and Dave began to think that he might actually begin to believe in happily ever after.
It was too early for the bar to be very crowded, and so Dave and Kirk were able to grab seats in a booth while they waited for the takeout pizza they’d ordered to finish cooking. Denise and her mother were picking up Julie, Denise’s younger sister, whose cruise ship had put into Boston Harbor for two days in order to restock and to pick up passengers for a cruise to Bermuda. Dave hadn’t met Julie yet, but he was invited to a cook out at Judy’s house the next day to meet her. Ghoulie’s Shelby was home as well, and so it was just Dave and Kirk tonight, sharing pizza and a baseball game that was only viewable with Kirk’s satellite TV subscription.
“I learned a new expression,” Dave told Kirk as he took a sip of his light beer. He never seemed to actually lose any weight, but for Denise’s sake, he was cutting calories where he could.
“Oh?”
“Yeah, ‘too stupid to live.’ I picked it up from Denise’s Mom.”
“Not describing you, I hope?”
Dave flashed his friend a playful scowl. “No. I guess it’s a term romance writers use when there’s a book where the heroine does something really, really stupid.”
Kirk smiled. “You mean the people who write those kind of characters know how stupid they are?”
“Maybe not the author herself, no, but Judy says that one of the things romance writers hate is when they read a book where the author has the characters do something that makes no sense, just to move the plot along.”
“You talked to Judy about romance novels?” Kirk asked. “Aren’t you afraid you’ll out yourself?”
Dave shrugged. “I told her I’d read one or two of hers.” He’d actually read them all. “Since I’m dating her daughter, I don’t think that sounded too weird. It’s kind of normal for her to talk about romance books, since she writes them. I’ll say, ‘How’s the book going?’ and she’ll start talking.”
“So have you learned anything useful?”
“That it’s a lot more complicated than I thought. Once you get Judy going on the topic, she’s kind of hard to stop.”
“For example?”
“Well, in the beginning, romances had to be really formulaic. There was a weak, passive heroine who had to be saved from danger by a big, honking hunk. The chapters had to be a certain length — there was even a set rule that they had to have sex between pages, say, seventy and a hundred and ten.”
Kirk snorted. “So you really only had to read between pages seventy and one ten?”
“Very funny, Kirk. As women became more liberated, the heroines became stronger. Now it’s not that weird to have the heroine save herself
and
the hero. And the lines between different kinds of books has blurred. A book can be a romance
and
a mystery, or a romance
and
a paranormal, or a romance
and
a comedy … ”
“So were Shelby’s bottom shelfers all older books?”
Dave turned his palms up to show that he didn’t know the answer. “Maybe. I didn’t check the dates. But get this, romances are the most popular books in the country. More than half of all books published in the U.S. are romance novels.”
Kirk looked stunned. “Do you suppose that means we’re not the only men reading them?”