He gazes into my eyes with a longing smile. “I just want to do things differently with you, Bree.”
I breathe in his scent and let my heart steep in it. “Okay. We’ll wait.” I grin up at him and poke him in the cheek. “You’re such a big softie.”
“With you, yes.”
He kisses me again, this time softly, sweetly, gratefully. He rises up onto one muscled arm to lean over me and turn off the light. That powerful image of muscles and tendons and masculine flesh is the last one I’ll see tonight, and it does nothing to cool me off.
Nathan drops down beside me and pulls me onto his chest. I kiss it. “Just don’t spread it around that I’m a marshmallow,” he says in a teasing tone. “It’ll kill my image.”
“Which image? The one of you secretly sneaking hundred-dollar bills into my widowed neighbor’s mailbox? Or you buying an entire building so little ballerinas can continue to afford their training?”
He kisses the top of my head, and I don’t miss the moment he breathes in the scent of my hair. We’re home in each other’s arms. I nuzzle into his strong chest like a little cat. It is a done deal. I’d marry him in five minutes if that were an option.
“It’s all for you, Bree.”
Saturday, Bree and I sleep in until ten o’clock. I can’t remember the last time I did that. High school, maybe? I wake up a few times and never once feel the urge to get up and get my day going. Everything I want is right here in my arms. Drooling.
Eventually, I’m going to have to leave Bree for a few meetings and then get to the airport for my flight to Houston where we’ll play our last playoff game.
Saturdays are the closest thing I have to an off day during the season because I don’t step foot in the weight room on these days, so it usually gets packed full of meetings. Which…now that I think about it, makes it not an off day. This morning, though, I blew off an early meeting in favor of staring creepily at Bree while she sleeps. I’ll have to deal with Nicole’s wrath, but it’s worth it. I think that’s considered progress.
One of Bree’s hairs gets sucked into her mouth, and when I try to carefully extract it, she jolts awake. Like a jack-in-the-box, she bolts upright in bed, hair eight sizes larger than normal. She whips around to me with wide eyes looking like she just woke from a cryogenic sleep.
“I TEACH A CLASS AT TEN THIRTY!”
A bit yell-y in the mornings. It’s okay, I’ll still keep her.
Throwing the covers off, she sprints from the bed and out of the room. I stare at the empty doorway until two seconds later I hear footsteps racing back. A flash of octopus hair and limbs is all I see before she tackles me on the bed. Hovering over me, her dimples pop and she kisses me with a punctuated POP. “Good morning. I love you.”
I smile and lean up to kiss her more fully, but she tucks her chin.
“UH, no. Neither of us brushed our teeth last night, and morning breath is rank. You get a closed-mouth pucker and NATHANSTOPITRIGHTNOW!” She’s scream-laughing because I’m tickling her ruthlessly.
“You’re saying my breath is bad?! You’ll pay.”
“Let me go! I have class!” She can barely talk, she’s laughing so hard.
“You shouldn’t have come back. That was your first mistake, and now you’re caught.” I stop tickling her long enough to reach into my bedside table, grab my Listerine spray, and take a hit. Her jaw drops at my audacity to keep something like that at my bedside, but what can I say, I’m no amateur here. With her mouth open like a fish, I’m able to give her a spritz.
She cackles laughing, and then I kiss her like I want to. I take my time.
Bree texts me later that she’s late for class and it’s all my fault. I’ll gladly take that fall.