Page 68 of Lance

“Did it not seem like I was having fun?” Oh, he’s definitely teasingme.

“Um,” I say, thinking back to the look on his face as he hovered over me, of the noises he made, deep in his throat. Of the way that he had kissed me until neither of us could breathe. “Yes?” I whisper, and he laughs, pulling me up to face him on thepillow.

“You’re really cute when you blush, did you know that?” I press my hands into my cheeks, feeling the heat from my flush. “And to answer your question—yes, I enjoyed that. A hell of a lot. And if you’d let me rest a little and regain my strength, I plan to show you exactly how much with an encorepresentation.”

“You want to do thatagain?”

His eyes meet mine, for the first time looking a little uncertain. “Yeah. Don’tyou?”

“Hell yeah,” I say, pressing my lips against his. I can feel him grinning against my mouth and it makes me smile too and then we’re both laughing, lying there in his bed with our arms around each other, and I’m so happy I definitely can’t believe this isreal.

“I was so worried I wouldn’t be good at it,” I say, once my giggles have subsided alittle.

“You wereverygood at it.” I feel the raspiness of his voice all the way down to mytoes.

“The last time I did this I was, uh, pretty awkward. It wasn’t very fun,actually.”

“Sure,” he mutters, slipping his hands behind his head and looking up at the ceiling. “I’d love to talk about your previous sexual encounters while I’m naked in bed withyou.”

I laugh, tapping his chest with my fingertips. “I’m just saying, from my limited experience, it seems as though being with the right person makes a whole lot of difference in thesematters.”

He looks down at me, his face soft. “Yeah. It reallydoes.”

I’m dying to ask him what this means. To ask him what will happen next. The concerns he listed before—did we just negate them? Or are they still there below the surface, waiting for the lust or the madness or whatever that just was toabate.

Before I can figure out a way to broach any of this, a little voice suddenly cries out from down the hall. “Mama!”

The muscles in Lance’s chest go rigid. “Shit,” he mutters. “Simon.”

I’m already sitting up, reaching for my shirt. I have no idea where my skirt is, and my hurried search across the floor is interrupted by another yell from down the hall. Lance pulls on a pair of boxers. “I’ll go,” hesays.

“I’ll grab some PJs from the guest room,” I tell him as he heads for the door. “In case he needsme.”

I wrap the sheet around me so I’m not completely naked and peek out into the hallway, just in case Simon has come in search of help. Lance is already halfway down the hallway to his room. “Hey,” I hear him say, and then the light flips on. “You okay, Simon? Was it anightmare?”

“Where’s mymom?”

My stomach knots and I slip into the hallway, dashing down toward the guest room. I manage to find my pajama pants and a t-shirt and then head back down the hall. I pause in the doorway to Simon’s room. Lance is sitting on the edge of the bed and Simon is curled up in a ball under his covers, not looking at him. “I want mymom.”

“It’s okay, buddy,” Lance says, his voice strained. “Everything isfine.”

“There was amonster!”

Lance lifts a hand toward him but drops it on the covers next to the little boy, as if he changed his mind halfway. “You wanna tell me aboutit?”

“It had three heads,” Simon cries, his words punctuated by sobs. “And a big tail with spikes. And it was going to eatme!”

“That sounds pretty scary,” Lance says. This time his hand makes it to Simon’s back and I watch as he rubs it once and then again. “Was it reallybig?”

“Bigger than thehouse!”

“Well, if a monster bigger than the house was really here, I think I would have seen it too,right?”

Simon’s sniffles pause. “Yeah. Iguess.”

“It was just a dream, buddy. There’s no monster. Ipromise.”

Simon is quiet for a moment. “I couldn’t remember where I was when I woke up,” he finallywhispers.