So with nothing else for it, he bent in and touched his mouth to hers before he touched it to her nose, and then he rested his forehead against hers and looked from close into her gorgeous eyes.
Only then did he speak.
“No matter what, baby, know down to your soul you’re the straight up best woman I’ve ever met and know I know that in a way you’ll be that woman forever.”
Throughout him speaking, her hold on him got tighter and tighter.
But when he stopped, she immediately stated, “Then we have nothing to worry about.”
He could tell she believed that completely.
And it scared the hell out of him that she was wrong.
“I . . . cannot . . . believe this,” Luci huffed out, lying flat on top of him, Hap on his back in his bed, her naked body shaking with laughter, which he could feel even though his equally naked body was shaking with the same.
“Not shittin’ you, baby. It was straight outta Footloose, and I won.”
She threw her head back and he felt her hair glide over his arms wrapped around her as she busted out laughing even harder.
He kept it up with her, quietly so he could take in hers while she did it, and when she got some control over it, she asked, “Wh-what happened then?”
“His tractor rolled after he jumped from it so he had to tell his pops who got shit-pissed, hauled his ass to our farm, got in my gramps’s face and demanded both of us be punished for playing chicken on expensive farm equipment.”
She was still smiling, but she couldn’t quite hide the warm concern in her eyes when he brought up his grandfather. She added to that sweetness by stroking his throat with her fingers.
“What did your grandfather do?”
“He assured the guy he’d find a fitting punishment for me, walked him to his truck, watched him drive away, walked up to the house and found me waiting for him in the hall, seein’ as I’d been in the kitchen with Gram listening to all this going down.”
“And then?” she pushed when he didn’t go on.
He smiled up at her. “Then he congratulated me for not bein’ a wuss and jumpin’ off first and asked me if I got the girl.”
Her body started shaking as her face lit up again. “Did you?”
He did.
He also got her virginity.
When you lived in a Podunk town in Iowa, playing chicken on expensive farm equipment for a date with a cheerleader was a sure bet to win the heart of said cheerleader.
As well as other things.
He did not inform Luci of the fullness of that.
“We dated awhile.”
“I’m sure,” she murmured, eyes dancing. “Did he punish you?”
Hap shook his head. “I honored the Cunningham name by keeping my seat and my wits even if it was doin’ somethin’ stupid. Gramps was like that. I figure he learned a lot from the mess that became my dad. That being there were a variety of lessons to teach a kid in any given situation, so he focused on priorities. Winning the girl or holding on to your honor by doing something daring, and keeping your shit even if it was also while doing somethin’ fool and dangerous was more important than any tractor. Even though, if I did something to that tractor being stupid and playing fuckin’ chicken on it, we’d have been fucked.”
“I would agree with him,” she declared.
“Obviously I did too. Especially then.”
She gave him a big smile.
He rolled her off and rolled onto her, liking the feel of her under him just as much as he liked the feel of her on him, he was just ready for the change.
He took some weight into his arm but left the other one free so he could stroke the skin at her side.
In turn she stroked the skin of his back.
And just like he couldn’t believe he didn’t want bacon that morning, because getting it meant he didn’t have Luci in his bed, he couldn’t believe right then he liked the feel of them there, the way they were, more than he liked what they’d finished doing twenty minutes ago.
If this was something that could work, they could always have this. No matter how much time passed, no matter how old they got, no matter if something ugly happened that took away his ability to make love to her, or her ability to give that in return, they could always be skin against skin, laughing in bed, finding some way to hold each other, touch each other.
It seemed like nothing.
And yet it felt like everything.
That noted, apparently, even though he didn’t have lunch and she shared she’d not had much of an appetite after what had happened that morning, they were hungrier for each other than they were for food.
That was why they were naked in his bed and the remains of dinner were still all over his kitchen.
He didn’t even put the skillet in to soak.
Now here they were, in his bed in his nothing-special house, no turn of the head and there would be a wide-open view of the ocean.
And he wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.
“What are you thinking?” she whispered.
He focused on her, head on his pillow, hair everywhere.
“I like you here.”
Her fingers stopped roaming and her arms crossed his back, holding him close. “I like me here too.”
She did. She didn’t hide it. Even if he couldn’t believe it, it was right there all over her face.
He slid his hand up and stroked her cheek with his knuckles.
“They might not like you . . . at first,” he started. “But I’d have been proud to introduce you to my grandparents.”
She tipped her head on the pillow and he knew she was teasing when she asked, “Because I’m a supermodel?”
He wasn’t teasing when he replied, “Yeah. Because you’re a supermodel. But mostly because you’re Luci and they’d get you were that, but eventually they’d get you’d be happy living the rest of your days on a farm if the people you loved were there.”
The playfulness left her gaze and she held on tighter, not only with her arms but shifting a long leg from under his and wrapping it around his thigh, saying only, “Hap.”
“When I wasn’t thinking today about what an asshole I’d been this morning, I was thinking what you said about Gram last night. About the banana bread. About the high life. And how, back then, I’d get pissed when they’d sit in that little kitchen in that little apartment after dinner, Gramps havin’ his last cheap, crappy beer of the night, Gram drinking one of her cups of tea, and they’d laugh about nothin’. I didn’t think there was anything to laugh about so that shit pissed me off. I knew they felt the loss of the farm. It was bad before it happened. It was bad when it happened. It was bad after it happened. But now I know, eventually they realized there was nothing they could do about it, so they moved on and they had everything they needed right in that little kitchen. No doubt about it, all that sucked. But in the end, they were good.”
“I’m glad you’ve come to realize that, bello,” she said.
“Yeah,” he offered his understatement.
“Do you have other pictures of them?” she asked.
He nodded.
“Will you show them to me tomorrow night?” she requested.
“Maybe, if you don’t hightail your ass out of bed first thing in the morning and instead suck me off or fuck me off so I don’t feel the need to drag you upstairs and drill you even before you’ve swallowed your last bite of hamburger.”
She burst out laughing again, digging her head in the pillow with her hilarity, her limbs tensing around him tight, her body shaking under the weight of his.