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“Shallow,” he agreed, and pressed forward by careful degrees, waiting each time I breathed out. When he was only partly inside me, I rocked back to take a little more, and we both made the same helpless sound.
“There,” I said. “That’s lovely. Stay right there and move like this.”
He did. The rhythm was lazy, almost sleepy, a slow roll of his hips with his hand still moving against me and his mouth at my ear. His voice came low and a little rough, pitched for no one but me.
“You feel so good this morning, honey. Soft and warm and so wet, and I could stay inside you for the rest of the day.”
“We have a Heartwood scene to finish,” I managed.
“The tree can wait.”
“That’s heresy,” I said, and then he curled his fingers in exactly the right way, and I forgot what the tree was.
The pleasure didn’t arrive in a rush. It gathered the way weather gathers over a long afternoon, deepening with every lazy stroke until my toes curled against his shin and my whole body drew tight around him. Then it broke, a long, slow release that rolled through me from my stomach to my fingertips while a sound I didn’t recognize left my throat. His arm held me against him, and he whispered my name into my hair through all of it, rocking me gently until the last of it faded.
I was still catching my breath when his hand tightened on my hip.
“Peyton, I’m not going to last much longer.”
“Don’t try,” I said, reaching back to hold his thigh. “I’d like to feel you.”
He groaned into my neck, his hips pressing a little deeper, his breath going ragged. I felt him shudder behind me, heard my name come out of him broken and low, and then he went still with his arms wrapped tightly around me.
For a long time, neither of us said anything. The bird outside seemed to have won its argument. Hudson pulled the quilt back over my shoulder, kissed the nape of my neck, and let out a breath that sounded entirely content.
“Still tender?” he asked eventually.
“Pleasantly. Thoroughly. In an entirely good way.” I turned my head to look at him over my shoulder. “How are you?”
“Ruined for anything that involves getting out of bed.” He smiled, sleepy and unguarded. “But I could be talked into a shower.”
“With me?”
“I was hoping you’d offer.”
“Then it’s settled,” I said, and nestled back against him. “In a minute.”
“A minute,” Hudson agreed, and neither of us moved.
By the time we finally climbed out of bed, I was beginning to understand why people occasionally spent entire weekends neglecting their responsibilities.
Hudson took my hand as we headed for the bathroom, looking pleased with himself when I caught him admiring me in the mirror.
“You know,” I told him, “I’ve read quite a few romances where the couple spends an unreasonable amount of time in bed. I always wondered when they managed to do their laundry.”
He laughed as he reached past me to turn on the shower. “Well, we’ve still got Sunday if the laundry gets desperate. Though I suspect your production manager would have something to say about it.”
“Bridget would be more concerned about the audiobook than my laundry. She’d probably send somebody to retrieve us if we missed tomorrow’s deadline.”
“Then we’d better make sure she doesn’t have to come knocking.”
We shared the shower, which proved considerably more distracting than the ordinary business of washing ought to have been. Hudson adjusted the water to a comfortable temperature before pulling me beneath the spray with him. I liked the way he was attentive without making a production of it, shifting aside so I could rinse my hair and taking my shampoo bottle when I needed both hands free.
The little bathroom smelled of soap and clean towels. Steam gathered along the edges of the mirror, turning our reflections into pale shapes behind the glass. Hudson’s stubble brushed my cheek when he kissed me, and I found another compelling reason not to hurry.
By the time I emerged in my robe, with damp hair and a thoroughly unreasonable desire to kiss him again, I was beginning to suspect breakfast might become a late-afternoon affair.
Unfortunately, neither of us had brought a change of clothing into the bathroom, and Hudson had the added disadvantage of having worn his Friday date clothes to the cottage.
