Page 27 of Just This Once (Stone Family #2)

Taryn

I haven’t woken up beside someone since Maddie finally transitioned out of needing to sleep next to me. After that whole nightmare of Craig forgetting about her in McDonald’s, she spent almost a full year in my bed.

Now, with a muscled man arm around my middle, I can’t get out of bed fast enough. I’ve been experiencing night sweats for months, random times when I’ll wake up with soaked pajamas. This time, I’m naked, but no less dripping with sweat.

I leap out of bed, snatch a bunch of tissues to dab at the skin of my neck, armpits, and backs of my knees. Behind me, Dante yawns noisily. “What time is it?”

It’s still dark out through the windows, and I blink over to the digital clock in the corner. “Five fifteen.”

“What are you doing? Come back to bed.”

“I can’t.”

Sheets rustle, but I’m too busy to pay attention as I use more tissues to wipe away the sweat. Then his hands are on my waist. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. ”

“What are you doing?”

With all the lights off, we can’t see each other very well, and he feels around for my arms, eventually taking the balled-up tissues from my hand. “What’s this?”

“Tissues. I’m sweating. I?—”

“Come back to bed.”

“I can’t.”

“What are you?—”

I shriek in frustration. “I have night sweats! You had your big man body all over me last night, and I don’t know how you didn’t feel it. I sweat all over the sheets. They’re soaked.”

He turns me to face him, and I can barely make him out in the shadows. “Is that normal? Are you okay?”

“Yes. I’m just old.”

“You’re not old.”

“Old enough to be in perimenopause.”

“Don’t you go through that when you’re, like, sixty?”

“And this is why men should not be legislating women’s bodies,” I grumble with a push of his shoulder to pull the sheets of the bed.

He helps. “I don’t disagree. But in my defense, I’m one of three boys, and I’ve never had experience with a woman in perimenopause.”

“Because you’re thirty, and I’m forty-two.” When he doesn’t respond, I yank the sheets from his hand and throw them to the floor. “You might as well go home.”

“Nah. I’m still tired.” He curls his arm around my waist and pulls me down to the bare mattress. It feels so good on my overheated skin. Dante moves so we’re facing each other on our sides and yawns again. “I wouldn’t care if you were fifty-two or sixty-two. I’m here because I like you.”

“You would definitely care if I were sixty-two. There is such a thing as being in different places in our lives, and sixty-two is hip replacement surgery age.”

“I’d get you one of those scooters so you could zoom around.”

“You’re ridiculous.”

“So are you if you think a little bit of sweat is going to scare me away.”

It’s more than a little. It’s buckets. Gallons. An ocean.

“I can’t have kids anymore,” I tell him because it is too early for my brain to be fully functioning, but it seems important he knows that I am at a different place in my life than he is.

I’ve been married and divorced with two kids.

I’ve buried my mother. I’m solidly in the middle of my life, while his frontal lobe only reached maturity a few years ago.

“Cause of perimenopause? I’m gonna need you to explain all this after I’ve had some coffee because?—”

“I had my tubes tied after Maddie.”

He’s quiet for a moment, his hand sliding under his pillow. And then, “Okay. Again, are you trying to scare me away or…?”

“I’m trying to explain that I’m too old for you. Whatever we’re doing here… Don’t get any ideas. It’s not going to work out. It can’t.”

His hand brushes my hip, like he’s going to settle it on me, but then he must feel how hot I am because he places it back on the mattress between us, shifting his pillow, resettling his head, getting comfortable.

Almost as if he’s ignoring everything I said a moment ago.

It’s infuriating.

And I’m about to tell him so, but then he says, “I think you know, but to be sure you really do know… I can’t read.

I mean, I can, but not very well. School was always hard for me, but I wasn’t diagnosed until third grade.

I have both a visual pr ocessing and reading comprehension disorder, and I hate reading.

Hate it. I’ve never read a book in my life. ”

“Not even as a little kid?”

“No.”

“What about it being read to you?”

“I get bored. I’ve tried audiobooks, but I make it twenty minutes and then find something else to do. I’d rather do literally anything else than read a book.”

“That’s okay. Some people aren’t readers.”

“Yeah, but most people can read.”

“Debatable. I don’t know the statistics off the top of my head, but most people in America read at a seventh-grade level.”

“I’m one of those people.”

“So?”

He puts his hand on my arm, squeezing gently as if he wants to shake me but stops himself.

“ So don’t you get it? You could be with someone smarter than me.

You should be with someone who doesn’t fuck up order forms and doesn’t need the computer to read things to him.

You should be with a guy who’s been to college like you and reads books and has discussions about, like, philosophy and shit.

You should , but I don’t want you to because I want to be here with you.

Fuck that guy who can read six-hundred-page books and explain what actually happened in the First World War because I still don’t know, but fuck that.

I want you, and I want to be in this bed with you whether you’re sweating in it or not, whether you still have your ovaries or not?—”

“I still have my ovaries.”

“See? You’re smart and have shit to teach me, so don’t hold it against me, okay? Whatever you think I should have, fuck it. Because I want you.” He molds his hand to the side of my face, fingers in my hair, thumb stroking my cheek. “Don’t try to scare me away. You can’t.”

Maybe not, but sooner or later, this will come to an end, and I’d rather cut it off before we go too far for us to walk away without one or both of us hurting.

Especially after he’s opened up this wound I know hasn’t healed.

And beyond my own doubt about us, I need him to know he is more than someone who struggles to read.

“I don’t like that you say you’re not smart.”

“I’m not.”

“Maybe not book smart, but you are in so many other ways. Intelligence comes in many forms.”

“Tell that to my dad,” he jokes, except there is that underlying pain in his voice I’ve heard before.

“I will. Is he the one who said you aren’t smart?”

“Mostly.”

“He’s wrong.” I place my hand on his face, mimicking his position. “You’re incredibly smart, the most competent person I’ve ever met when it comes to construction and labor. You’re also really good with people, and that takes a special emotional intelligence not many people have.”

“Doesn’t make the company any money, though.”

“Doesn’t it?” I trace his cheekbone with my thumb. “You think people want to work with assholes?”

“People work with Craig.”

“Because he’s a two-faced snake who will charm a client and then come home and take off his mask.”

“Like my dad.”

“I’m sorry,” I whisper, laying my hand over his on my cheek to move it to my mouth, kissing his palm then placing it on the bed between us, lacing our fingers together.

“My ex-husband being an asshole to me is one thing, but a parent being one to their child is something completely different—and worse, in my opinion. Children are born innately loving their parents, and for it not to be returned is devastating.”

“Sounds like you know,” he says, twining his legs with mine. Now that I’ve cooled off, I don’t mind.

“My dad was an alcoholic and left when I was five.”

“Oh shit, Tar, that’s awful.”

“On the one hand, I’m glad because I’m sure our lives would have been worse if he’d stayed.

But it still wasn’t easy. It was really hard.

My mom worked herself to the bone to provide for us, and my brother Ian never had a life.

If he wasn’t taking care of my younger brother Roman, he was doing oil changes for extra cash for us.

I knew that if I wanted to go to college, I was on my own. I needed a scholarship to pay for it.”

“So you got one?”

“Partial for athletics, partial for academics, and I worked in the library all four years to help with the rest of it.”

“I wish you didn’t have to,” he murmurs, speaking the things I tell myself.

Money isn’t everything, but it sure makes a lot of things easier.

I was always so jealous of the kids who didn’t have to work or keep their grades up to maintain their scholarship.

They got to fool around and do whatever they wanted.

Growing up was the same. Kids with new clothes, backpacks, and shoes.

Girls with makeup and perfume. I wore a lot of Griffin’s hand-me-downs when I could get away with it, which was often because I played sports, and thrifted my clothes or bought strictly from clearance sections.

Which is why Dante’s thoughtfulness is so unexpected and difficult for me to accept without feeling like I need to work for it.

I shift closer to him. “I wish your father didn’t make you feel like you’re anything less than brilliant at what you do.”

He makes a noncommittal sound. “Maybe we can agree that we’re a couple of kids trying to outrun the shadows of our fathers.”

True. And I could be better about showing my gratitude. “Maybe I can learn to say thank you more often when you’re sweet to me.”

He lifts his hand to my mouth, dragging the tip of his finger over my lips. “Sucking on my dick would be fine.”

I slap his shoulder. “There you go, ruining the moment again.”

He pulls me into him, pressing my naked chest against his, and I don’t fight him when he kisses me, rolling me to my back.

Instinctually, I wrap my arms and legs around him as he roams his hands up and down my sides.

He grows hard against me, but there’s no urgency in his touch.

It’s lazy, both of us caught somewhere between awake and sleep.

I let out a soft sigh, pressing back against him, inviting more.

He cups my breast, his thumb brushing my nipple until it hardens, as his tongue finds mine in a deep kiss that lulls me into a stupor. So much so that I tell him, “You don’t need to pull out. I told you I can’t get pregnant, and I trust you aren’t sleeping with anyone else.”

“Never,” he swears into the skin of my chin. “Are you sure?”

I snake my hand between us, wrapping my fingers around his shaft, notching the head at my opening. “Positive.”

He freezes, gazing down at me in the dark. “Wait, you didn’t even come yet. Are you wet enough?”

“Make me.”

I hear more than see him spit on his fingers before he swipes them up and down the length of my pussy, pressing and rubbing my clit, making sure I’m ready to take him.

Then he slides in slowly, inch by inch. He’s right, of course, I am not as wet as I need to be, but he doesn’t stop getting me there, kissing my neck, licking my nipple.

Eventually, my body gives way, allowing him to seat himself completely, and we both moan into a kiss.

His pace is languid, each thrust deliberate and controlled.

It’s a different kind of pleasure, a slow burn rather than a raging inferno.

His tongue slides against mine in time with the glide of his cock, this slow and sweet sex more intimate than anything we’ve done before with only our breaths as our soundtrack and the wounds of our past hovering over us.

But each one of our shared heartbeats closes them.

Each soft sigh is a promise to be tender. Each kiss takes away the sting.

My orgasm is a steady climb, and soon, I’m gone, dissolving under the pleasure like sinking into a warm bath. There are no stars in my vision, but my heart is not where it used to be. Instead, it’s floating above me, straight up to Dante’s chest as he rocks his hips one last time.

“Taryn,” he whispers, voice hoarse with emotion. It’s not a question, not a demand. It’s a statement, a declaration. My name on his lips is a secret of devotion in the early morning.

“Yes,” I reply, my voice barely audible. It’s all I can manage, all I need to say.

Yes, I’m here.

Yes, I’m with you.

Yes, I feel this too.

He rests his weight on top of me, our bodies still connected, pressed together, entwined.

I let him hold me. I let myself feel this, whatever it is. I let myself be in this moment, in this place, with this man. And for now, that’s enough.

For now, that’s everything.