Page 155 of By A Thread

She pouted. “Isn’t it a million o’clock right now?”

It was after three in the morning.

“We can sleep later. First, I’m taking you home.”

Her face fell, and the bastard I was preened like a rooster when I realized she misunderstood what I was saying and was disappointed at the prospect of not spending the night with me.

“To get your things. You’re staying here tonight.”

“Dom, my things are in New Jersey. By the time we get them and get back, it’ll be time for work.”

“We’re both working from home tomorrow. My home.”

“Is my face really that bad?” she joked.

I leaned in. The picture of seriousness. “It is.”

She whacked me in the head with the pillow again, and I grinned. “And speaking of faces, there’s no way on this planet that we could go into that office without what we just did written all over ours.”

“You think another day will erase the orgasm scoreboard etched on your pretty face?” she teased, squeezing my cheeks in her hand until my mouth did that ridiculous duck lip thing.

“We may have to take off the rest of the year,” I muttered through her fingers.

Her laugh untied knots in my chest that I didn’t know I had.

And I knew I wasn’t going back to before.

Before tonight.

Before I saw the bruises on her face.

Before I knew what Ally felt like from the inside out.

Before she could laugh naked under me.

I wasn’t physically capable of it.

With extreme male reluctance, I crawled off her, hooking her ankles and dragging her toward the edge of the bed. “Come on, Maleficent. Let’s find you some pants.”

* * *

A middleof the night road trip with Ally bundled into another pair of my sweatpants and Brownie wedged onto her lap seemed otherworldly. She unabashedly sat on a bag of frozen lima beans I’d found in my freezer while I guzzled my second sports drink.

“Sex in our forties is supposed to be even better,” she mused, stroking Brownie’s head and staring out the window. “But I’m not sure I’ll survive to see the end of thirty-nine.”

“When is your birthday?” I asked, already knowing the answer thanks to the HR file I’d memorized. Maybe it was a test to see if the unveiling of Ally Morales began and ended with sex.

“May.”

“How does Maleficent plan to celebrate forty?” I wanted to know everything there was to know about this woman.

She wrinkled her nose. “All celebrations are on hold until Dad’s situation is settled.”

I brought her fingers to my mouth and kissed her knuckles. “Then what?”

“So far, the only thing I’ve come up with is a mango margarita on a beach that requires a passport. I want to sit in the sun and stare out at an ocean so blue it doesn’t seem real. And I don’t want to have to worry about if I can afford to tip the bartender.”

I approved of the plan. Especially if it involved Ally in a bikini and me in the lounge chair next to her.