Page 209 of Just One More Thing
“Because I want to take you somewhere.”
I crack one eye open. He’s already dressed.
Of course he is. Apparently a man who naturally wakes with the sun still wakes with the sun even after a night of very limited sleep and a truly impressive amount of physical exertion.
“Jake. We’ve barely had any sleep and my legs are incapable of moving.”
“You’ll want to see this.”
“What I want to see is the back of my eyelids for another few hours.”
He leans down and kisses me. The kind that makes my body wake up before the rest of me has agreed to it.
He pulls back just enough to look at me.
“That’s cheating,” I whisper.
“Is it working?”
I sigh. “I’m up.”
“So am I now.”
“Then come back to bed.”
“Tempting offer, but we have to be somewhere, and we have to leave now.”
Hank lifts his head from the foot of the bed, takes in the situation with deep bulldog disapproval, and flops back down, indicating he will not be participating in this nonsense.
“Why doesn’t Hank have to get up?”
“I can only deal with one grumpy waker-upper at a time.”
He hands me my bkr, his sweatshirt, and a pair of shorts. I drag them on in the dark, eyes half closed, and follow him into the living room. My shoes are by the door where I kicked them off last night, still beside his. That shouldn’t feel intimate after everything else we’ve done, yet somehow it does.
“Can I at least have coffee first?”
“I have coffee for you.” He opens the door. “But first.”
He reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a folded strip of fabric. A bandana. Light blue. Hank’s, naturally.
“Turn around,” he says.
“Mmm. Sexy time?”
He laughs. “It’s not what you think. Trust me.”
I turn around.
He ties the bandana gently over my eyes, careful with my hair. His fingers brush the back of my neck as he knots it, and a shiver runs through me that has nothing to do with the early morning air.
“Can you see anything?”
“Nothing.”
“Good.”
He takes my hand. I let him lead me out the screen door and down the dock, my free hand sliding along the railing because I am a woman who trusts this man completely but does not trust her own feet in the dark.
