Intrusion by Charlotte Stein Page B

with just the tips of his fingers. Those eyes are full of kindness, and apparently I find that much sexier than it has any right to be. People are supposed to get turned on by men hurling them around the room or wearing a business suit.
    I get off when someone shows me tenderness over a drowning dream.
    â€œYou’re burning up—want me to get you some ice?” he says, and I get a little spike of excitement. A spike of excitement over an offer to put frozen water somewhere on me.
    I have to say no. If I don’t he might do it, and the stuff he’s currently doing is bad enough. He just barely touches my throat with the back of his hand—just to show me how much perspiration is coating me, or maybe to stroke it off—and that spike becomes a spear. He pulls aside my cardigan, and I breathe funny.
    Though really could anyone blame me?
    It’s almost like taking my clothes off—or maybe a move someone would do if they wanted a better look at my right breast. His eyes even dart down briefly, as if he wants that very thing. The only hint that he doesn’t comes when he straightens my dress.
    Apparently he noticed a wrinkle I made in the middle of my sex wriggles.
    All of which is good in one way. It means he misses my stiff nipples, and what the flush all over my face and chest really means. But in another way, it’s really awful. It pushes me further down into this mess I seem to be creating. It makes him go get me ice even though I shake my head, and then I have to spend half an hour enduring his careful ministrations.
    It’s like being teased to death. I end up biting the pillow—a thing I’ve often seen done in sexy movies but never thought was a real thing. By the time he’s done I’m a shivering mess, and seriously contemplating going to the bathroom to ease the tension. The only thing that stops me is the thought of the noise, but even then, it’s a close thing. I teeter on the brink of saying it, and just about manage to tell him I should go instead.
    Not that this helps me in any way whatsoever.
    â€œYou can stay if you want,” he says, and I freeze in the middle of the turn I’m attempting. One of my feet is almost off the bed, but it falls at the final hurdle. He wants me to stay, to sleep in the same bed as him, to be with him.
    How can I say no?
    I don’t even want to say no. It’s been a long time since I slept with anyone.
    And by a long time, I mean that has never actually happened . You know that thing where people spoon and wake up sprawled all over each other and say morning sleepily?
    Yeah, I don’t know what that is. I’ve never experienced it.
    And the thought of experiencing it makes me ache.
    â€œAre you sure that’s okay?” I ask, without even turning around. I keep my face carefully away, so he can’t see all the millions of emotions warring all over it.
    He’ll see desire in there, not problems. Desire and pain and loneliness and longing—and I don’t want him to. I want him to make the choice on his own.
    â€œI think it would be more than okay,” he says.
    God, I wish I hadn’t let him make the choice on his own.

Chapter Six
    W E SLEEP TOGETHER almost every day, after that. Sometimes, I come home at four in the morning and follow him up the stairs to collapse in a heap on his bed. Sometimes we watch a movie, and I fall asleep against his arm. Sometimes, I wake with one of his arms over me or his face pressed between my shoulder blades, sleep making him more peaceful and careless than he ever is when conscious.
    And all of it is unbearable and brilliant in equal measures.
    Mainly because of him and his smell swamping me and his sheets with the tiny daisies on them and suddenly waking to find my face is in the maze of his hair. But also because I still dream, and each one is worse than the last. One of them just seems to start with him fucking me, and in another he pushes me facedown