Exposure by McKenna, Cara (the beach read .TXT) 📕

to one side of the fireplace, half the quilted comforter warm and lit by the fire, the other shadowy and cool. I coax Caroly to lie on the fire-lit side, and she lets me strip her pajama bottoms for a second time. She sheds her top, skin adorned by satin and lace, some pale color burnished bronze in the fire’s glow. I peel away my shirt, muscles tensing in the coolness of the room. The soft cotton of my pants drops away, and hot as the crackling flames may be, they’re nothing compared to the heat in Caroly’s eyes.

I toss my clothes toward the bureau. “I’ll never grow tired of the way you look at me.”

“I’ll never get tired of watching you undress,” she says with a guilty smile.

Naked, I join her on the bed, sitting up against the headboard and urging her to do the same. She tucks herself tight to my side and I kiss her temple. “It’s been a long while since you’ve asked for a story.”

She tenses against me. Since I told her I planned to give up my clients, she’s all but stopped asking about them. Perhaps before, when she assumed I’d never consider leaving my vocation, asking me about my experiences was her way of making peace with the unseen women who shared her lover. She enjoyed those bedtime stories. I hope it’s not guilt that’s made her stiffen this way, guilt from worrying I’ll regret sacrificing my experiences, forsaking all others for her alone.

“Let me tell you about a client I used to know.”

A pause, then a wooden, “Okay.”

I lean close, drawing my fingertips along her arm. “She came to me this spring. A virgin, if you can believe it.”

Realization softens her expression. I palm her breast, thumb stroking slowly until her nipple stiffens and her lips part.

“She told me she wanted to experience sex with a beautiful man. The kind of man she didn’t think she could ever have for keeps.” I was prepared to go on, but suddenly tears shimmer in her eyes. I still my hand. “Have I upset you?”

She laughs weakly. “Of course not. I like that story best of all.”

“I have another, if you’d like to hear it.”

She nods.

“It’s about a man, this one.”

“Is he French?”

“He is. And he was a terrible coward who hid inside, because the bullies in his head told him to. His only real friends were clocks and pigeons.”

“I know this one. The man was very, very handsome. And an excellent cook.”

“He hid in his lonely little tower for years and years, until a leggy blonde American woman—”

Caroly snorts.

“—came to rescue him.”

“Oh yes. By forcing him down the tower steps every morning and down the street to ye olde coffee shop.”

“And they moved to the countryside and lived happily every after.”

She turns to plant a kiss on my shoulder. “That was a very good story. But I think maybe we ought to get busy writing a new chapter tonight.”

I take her cue when she lies down, straddling her hips and dropping to my forearms, kissing her lightly. I’ve been hard on and off for an hour, but now, looming above her, my cock grows stiff as stone. Her smooth, soft palms run along my sides and back and thighs, just as they have a hundred times before, but never quite like this. New space, new light, new texture under my knees and new smells mingling with her familiar vanilla-amber perfume—wood smoke and autumn crispness.

When I shift my legs, she does the same, hugging my thighs with hers, calves tugging at my backside. I know this request well, and for once I grant it without making her wait, lowering my hips and letting my erection brush her mound. She rewards me with a tiny gasp, clasping my shoulders.

Cocking my hips, I angle my shaft between her thighs and give a slow, long stroke against her clothed sex. Her moan makes me lightheaded. I drop to kiss and nip at her throat.

“This answers my question,” she mumbles. “About whether you’d be relaxed enough on this trip to…you know.”

I push up on my arms. “It’s easy, with the way you look at me. We could be in some hotel in the heart of the city, with the din of the Champs-Élyssées coming through the window, and as long as you have that look in your eyes, I’m ready.” We both know it’s a lie, of course. A pretty lie, one we’d both like to believe, but it’s different here, undeniably. Quiet, calm, dark, easy. The peace I’ve worked so hard to create in my little cell in the honeycomb called Paris. An entire countryside’s worth.

“Lie on your side,” Caroly whispers.

I do, tucking my lower arm beneath her head and its pillow, pulling her close with the other. She strokes my chest and kisses my neck, and I feel myself turning helpless, desperate, rabid—a thousand conflicting things at once. No one’s ever made me feel so wanted, so longed for, so treasured as she does. She waited for me, she’s said. Avoided men for ages, then sought me out as a rejection-proof point of entry into the world of sex. Now she loves me, somehow. Wants me just as deeply as she did before those carnal initiations. Wants me as so much more.

It’s as comforting as it is terrifying, because in such a short time I’ve come to care for her in a way I hadn’t known possible. With it comes a fear I’ve blocked since the passing of my mother. I love Caroly so much, if I lost her, a part of me would turn brittle and crumble to dust, leaving a hollowness I’d carry with me for the rest of my life.

I’ve tensed, and she notices. She stops caressing to embrace me, surely thinking some tentacle of my agoraphobia has snaked between us, to turn me so rigid and unsure.

“I’m fine,” I promise, and smooth her curls. “Just feeling so much. All good things.” Good things