Don’t forget to love yourself.
-Soren Kierkegaard
Thursday night, Karma was cleaning up dinner dishes, still daydreaming about the night before…and the Saturday before that…and all the wonderful moments she’d spent with Mark so far. The way his lips had felt against hers. The way he looked at her. The way his hand had felt on the small of her back. The dusting of dark hair on the backs of his hands.
She wanted to slowly unbutton his shirt and run her hands over his chest and down his stomach…see if he had dark hair everywhere. What if he did? What would that feel like against her fingers? Would it be coarse or soft? Thick or, like on his hands, only a dusting? He probably had a nice stomach, too, ribbed with muscles. She already knew he had a nice chest. His pecs were firm, raised, and sexy. She was into chests. And arms. And hands.
God, she could not get that sexy man out of her mind, and now she was aroused. Again. The way she had been every night since Saturday.
Checking the clock, she saw she had just enough time before the game started to slip in to her bedroom, lie back on her bed, and imagine Mark Strong pulling her against him the way he had when they’d danced. She imagined what might have happened in his hotel room. He would have undressed her, taken off his shirt, slipped his hands up her thighs. Would he have licked her? There. Right between her legs. She had never experienced that before, but she wanted to. Would Mark have given her that?
As she imagined all that Mark could do to her, her arousal grew. She was wet and slick, and she fantasized that her finger was his tongue. Just the thought was enough to send her over, and she gasped and shuddered into the fantasy.
Sex with herself was safe for sure, but she was growing bored with safe sex.
She wanted something dangerous. Something hot. Something purely Mark Strong. On the conference room table. Or in the chair.
Now that was something to think about!
Gathering herself, she straightened her clothes and returned to the kitchen, her body warm and tingly, a smile on her face.
She’d just finished popping a bowl of popcorn and was on her way to the living room when her phone rang.
She dashed to answer it. The caller ID showed her dad’s name.
“Hi, Dad.” She flopped onto the couch and crossed her legs under her, resting the bowl of popcorn in her lap.
“Hi, sweetie. What are you up to?”
“Just sitting down to watch the game.” Telling her dad about her oh-so-naughty thoughts of the dapper Mr. Strong was so not going to happen.
“It should be a good one tonight. Game seven.” Like her, Dad was a huge sports fan, and the Pacers were playing tonight. Daddy-o was over the moon they had made the playoffs.
“Yep.” She grabbed the remote. “I’m turning on the TV now.”
They talked basketball for a few minutes then her dad said, “You up for a fishing trip Saturday?”
“Sure.” Karma was horrible at fishing. She couldn’t even tie a knot in the line. But she enjoyed driving down to Peterman Lake with her dad two to three times a summer. They spent the day on the water, catching mostly nothing and a sunburn. But the real enjoyment wasn’t in hooking fish. It was the time they spent together, not even talking, eating ham and cheese sandwiches on Wonder Bread and sipping iced tea from Ball jars.
“Good. I’ll pull out your rod and tackle box. Looks like it’s going to be a great weekend.”
Despite their differing opinions of the world and of her path in life, she was super close to her dad. He was her hero. Her rock. The most important man in her life, who had taught her how to ride a bicycle without ever putting on training wheels, who had taught her how to plant and tend a garden, fly a kite, change a tire, and gap a spark plug. He had also taught her the principle of work first, play later.
Only, all Karma ever seemed to do was work. She thought of Mark. Maybe it was time to play a little.
“So, how’s everything else?” her dad asked.
“Good. Nothing new.” Aside from Mark and all the excitement he’d brought with him, the rest of her life remained pretty boring.
“When is some nice boy going to snag you up?” Her dad still teased her mercilessly about “boys.”
She laughed. “When are you going to start referring to them as men?” Skirting the question was better than telling him she had met a man. A very virile man she was still uncertain about, but a man nonetheless, who rocked her world without even trying.
“When one grows a pair and asks you out.” Her dad was incorrigible, but that was one of his most endearing qualities.
“You know, most fathers are more worried about keeping their daughters safe from boys,” she said. “If you were normal, you’d think of my singledom as a good thing instead of trying to marry me off.”
“Is that how it works?”
“For most dads, yes.”
“Good thing I’m not normal, huh?”
“That’s true. No one can ever blame you for being normal, but that’s what I love about you.” She and her dad were likethis. Tight. Two fingers crossed. Still, she didn’t tell him everything. In some cases, it was better that way.
Case in point, she would keep Mark to herself for a while.
“Okay, honey,” her dad said, “the game’s getting ready to start, so I’ll let you go. I just wanted to line things up for this weekend.”
“I’ll see you Saturday.”
“I’ll bring the iced tea.”
“And I’ll bring the sandwiches.”
“Love you,” Dad said.
“Love you, too.”
She hung up, increased the volume on the TV, and settled in for the end of the pregame, trying not to remember that tomorrow was the day Mark was taking her to dinner. If she thought about that fact too much, she wouldn’t get any sleep tonight.