I shook my head. I had to stop all this fantasizing about having a future with her. Or it was going to break my heart when she inevitably left me and went back to her normal life.
I steeled my nerves and opened the front door. “Mia?”
I listened. Nothing. Maybe she was asleep.
A bottle of Bordeaux sat out on the kitchen counter. 2022. I had a 2018 somewhere, and it was supposed to be better, according to Chuck down at Greenwich Wines. I thought to run and look for it, but I was too excited to show her the new SUV. This bottle would do, and anyway, she’d picked it. It had been our little ritual since she’d started feeling better. She’d leave a bottle of wine out while I ran errands, I’d come home and uncork it, and we’d have a glass and rate it. Pretend to be fancy folks, even though neither of us knew a dang thing about wines.
“Did you see the wine?” She called from the bedroom.
A little thrill leapt through my body. The sound of her voice never failed to get me going.
I uncorked it, grabbed a couple of glasses, and headed in to see her.
Mia lay in the center of the bed, face down. She’d wrapped the blanket around her midsection, but her back was exposed. I winced at the sight of those awful bruises from the accident.
I set our glasses on the wooden chair next to the bed and poured us each a half glass.
“How were the errands?” She pushed up to her elbows and took the glass from my hand. I kept my eyes on hers, but I couldn’t keep my face from flushing. I’d brought her a pajama set that I’d picked up in town, but she hadn’t taken to wearing them much yet. She was still partial to my flannel shirts. Or nothing.
I’d seen every part of Mia there was by now, and the sight of her bare skin still sped up my heart.
“Oh, pretty good. You’ll have to come see what I brought.”
“Cheers,” she said, holding up the glass. I lifted mine off the chair to clink hers, and then I took a seat.
“Cheers.” I had a swallow and flinched. “I’ve been forcing myself to drink wines for months now, and they all taste like sour grapes to me.”
She swirled hers around in the glass. “This one has great legs,” she said.
“You’ve got great legs,” I said, and she smiled.
“I’m baring myself to you in the hopes that you’ll put the cream on me again?” She kicked her legs free of the blanket.
Even this movement was progress. She’d gone from barely being able to stand to winning back a good amount of motion in a week.
I took a deep breath and picked up the arnica lotion. It helped a lot with her pain. Putting it on her? That causedmepain. Bad. Yesterday it didn’t take more than a few moments of rubbing it on Mia’s beautiful body before my cock had swelled. She pretended not to notice. I fled the room as soon as I could. It was embarrassing. I felt like an adolescent boy who’d never touched a woman before.
She threw off the blankets. I blew the air out of my lungs quick, like it’d gone bad.
“Sorry,” she said. “You’re not too tired, are you?”
“No ma’am,” I said, my eyes on the ceiling. I’d been sleeping out on the couch and leaving the bed to Mia. I hadn’t slept more than four hours at a time since the army, but with Mia around I was waking up every fifteen minutes, especially after the night the fever started.
And still, even with the sleep deprivation, I was excited every day she was near. She was like a great cup of coffee, energizing, invigorating. And, exactly like a great cup of coffee, from the second sip on I was dreading the loss of her.
I unscrewed the cap and scooped out a good-sized handful of the lotion, and I rubbed it between my hands to warm it up. I putone knee on the bed to steady myself, and then smoothed it on her back, working it in delicately where the bruises were.
“They look like they’re getting better,” I said. “Your bruises.”
“Mmmm. That feels good,” she said, and there I went, stirring to attention for her. “Could you go lower?”
I pulled another scoop of the cream out, warmed it up again, and rubbed it into her lower back, dragging some of it up to the ribs we’d had to pop back into place. “How’re those ribs?”
“They’re okay,” she said. “Hurt a little when I cough, that’s all.”
“Yeah. It’s a good idea to take it easy. For a month, maybe longer. I still want to take you to a doctor, if you’ll let me.”
“Could you go lower?”
