We would be art. We would be paint and chords blended together. But not yet. Not when her little girl was upstairs, and we’d barely agreed to find out what this even was. I hadn’t even taken her to dinner. I hadn’t shown her she was more than kisses caught between stanzas.
She deserved all of it. She deservedmore.
I eased away from her, elbows on either side of her, looking down into her face, and I just stared until her eyes fluttered open. A smile curved her full pink lips upward.
“Well, dang. The Brady O’Neil Experience is quite something.”
I laughed, and it came from deep inside me. Guttural. The desire still littered across the sounds.
“That wasn’t even close to a Brady O’Neil Experience. That wasn’t even a half a Brady Experience.” I grinned at her.
Her soft laughter joined my own.
I sat up, bringing her with me so she ended up in my lap, head on my shoulder with my arms wrapped around her chest. Peace settled over me. The notes resting. My brain stilling so I was only aware of the heat and scent of her.
She pulled away slightly and picked up our T-shirts from where they had fallen. She pulled hers on, and I barely resisted the urge to tear it back off so I could stare at the perfect skin longer. Pale but with a hint of warmth I was sure made her tan with barely a glance of sunshine.
Bare in the sunshine was a place I couldn’t let my imagination go, not when my jeans were already straining to keep my male body parts inside. Not when I wanted to continue the concert we’d started performing.
“Thank you,” she said quietly when she’d settled back against me once more.
“For what?”
“For knowing we needed to stop. I got lost there for a second,” she said.
I nodded. “Me too. I just don’t want it to be like this—on the couch with Hannah upstairs and you regretting it.”
“I wouldn’t have regretted it,” she insisted.
I wasn’t sure about that. I thought maybe she would have if we’d found ourselves naked and merged together on the first night we’d agreed to start whatever this was.
“I’m not going anywhere. There isn’t a need for us to rush.”
“Speak for yourself. I haven’t had sex in almost five years,” she laughed.
I chuckled. “Well, it’s been over a year for me, but I’m still not willing to go full-speed ahead.”
She pulled away from my chest to meet my eyes. “Over a year? Really?”
I rested my head on the back of the couch, closing my eyes. “Yes. Why does everyone seem to think that’s so impossible?”
“Because you're famous. You're hot. And you have women and men drooling all over you, calling your name.”
I opened my eyes, looking into her golden ones. “That’s just it. They’re calling my name, but it’s not really me they’re calling. I learned that pretty fast. I’m not saying I haven’t had my fill of experiences—I began those way back at Juilliard—but what Iamsaying is I know the difference between sex and making love.”
Her fingers on my chest stopped moving.
“Yeah?”
“Sex is about bodies and desire. Speed and force and tearing each other’s clothes off. It fills the ache. It’s satisfying. It can be damn beautiful. But making love is finding a part of the other person that will forever belong only to you, whether your relationship last ten minutes or twenty years. It’s a raw connection that can’t be replaced or forgotten.”
“Which was ours?” she asked carefully.
“You already know the answer to that,” I told her, my hand soothing her arm. “But just so you know, I’m all for sex at times too. I just want the times of making love to be more.”
There was that word again. Haunting me. Following me.
More.
