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Nathan’s face went blank, and a flush raced up Helen’s neck. What have I done?
He blinked. “Do I what?”
She swallowed. “I haven’t had sex since Aaron died. I think it’s time.” It was the first excuse that came to mind. She couldn’t tell Nathan her secret—that she needed to wring every last ounce of enjoyment out of life while she could. That would put unfair pressure on him, and unlike her mother, Helen refused to resort to emotional blackmail.
Nathan lost his stunned expression and his intense blue eyes focused on hers. “I thought that was what you said. But I wanted to make sure.”
His light grip on her forearm strengthened. She wondered if he could feel the frantic pulse beating in her wrist. She lifted her chin. “So? Do you?”
He tilted his head and his palm swept up to her shoulder and down again. Goosebumps rippled in the wake of his caress. The urge to celebrate every moment of life, the same urge that had initiated her invitation, heated into something deeper. It had been a long time since she’d felt the power of her sexuality, and it flooded her senses like rain on dry land.
“Why now?” Nathan stepped closer. The warmth of his body enveloped her, unimpeded by his short-sleeved shirt and dress shorts. “Does it have something to do with what’s been bothering you tonight?”
“No,” she lied. “It’s just...time. And I thought...sometimes you seem...” She stuttered to a stop. What if she was wrong? What if Nathan hadn’t been giving her admiring glances, sending off faint signals of attraction? She couldn’t pinpoint when she’d started to notice those tiny hints a man gives a woman, but it had been a while now.
Hadn’t it?
She stepped backward, pulling her arm from his gentle clasp. “Never mind. Forget I said anything.”
He paced forward and she took another involuntary step back, coming up against the floor-to-ceiling cabinets that lined one wall of her kitchen. He followed again, standing so close he left barely a breath of air between them.
She was suddenly, overwhelmingly aware of every inch of her bare skin. And his.
“Helen.”
His voice was whisper soft but held a note of command she couldn’t ignore. She lifted her gaze from her contemplation of the stitching on his breast pocket.
“I very much want to have sex with you,” he said. “I have for a long time. But I didn’t think you felt the same way about me.”
She hadn’t thought so, either. Nathan had been a friend for so long she’d stopped seeing him. They were more than neighbours—watching him lose Wanda, having him at her side during Aaron’s illness—had forged a different, undefinable relationship between them. But she certainly hadn’t regarded him sexually.
Yet, since Dr. Chesley’s unsettling news this afternoon, she’d been under a growing compulsion to prove she was still alive, that she still had a place in this world. Sex—even sex after menopause—was an affirmation of life, and the more she’d thought about it, the more she’d thought about Nathan. Watching him this evening had made her edgy and uncomfortable in a way she hadn’t been since her twenties.
He was waiting for her reply, with the patient look she was accustomed to seeing back on his face. Gathering her courage, she placed one palm flat against his chest. “I do feel that way.”
Nathan braced his hands flat on the cupboards on either side of her head. The muscles under her palm bunched and shifted and she placed her other hand beside the first to savour the sensation even more. Slowly, oh, so slowly, he leaned in and pressed his lips to hers, holding his body away so their mouths and her hands were their only points of contact.
If they’d ever kissed before in their long friendship, Helen couldn’t remember when. There had been casual hugs and consoling embraces, but had their lips ever touched? His were smooth and cool, motionless, undemanding, and she felt a pang of disappointment. Where was the zing, the sizzle, the passion she so wanted and needed?
Downcast, her shoulders relaxed. As if he’d been waiting for such a signal of surrender, Nathan’s kiss changed.
He increased the pressure and his tongue traced the seam of her closed lips. Instinctively she opened her mouth and he delved inside with small, tantalizing touches. He tasted faintly of the beer he’d had earlier.
He gave a small grunt and raised his head, an amused gleam in his eyes. “You’re pulling hairs.”
Her hands had fisted in his shirt and she snatched them away. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be. I’ll take that as a good sign.” He returned to her mouth, nipping and sucking and licking and suddenly all the sizzle she’d wanted was right there, burning through her nerve endings, sparking between her legs, swelling her breasts.
She wound her arms around his neck and arched her back. His thigh wedged between hers and she wriggled against him, hooking one bare leg around his calf, the dusting of wiry hairs erotic against her smoother skin.
His hands were still planted on the cupboard doors. “Touch me,” she muttered against his mouth. “I need you to touch me.”
He gripped her hips and pulled her closer. She purred with approval, her fingers danced on the nape of his neck, and then cupped his skull and swept her palm to the crown of his head. He kept his hair short and the change from bristles to smoothness came as a tiny shock. She’d known he was balding, of course, but feeling the difference was a different sort of knowing.
She liked the sleekness of his scalp.
The slide and rustle of fabric tickled her thighs as he bunched her dress at her waist. With a practiced movement he swept his hands under the skirt and gripped her ass, lifting her onto her toes. Her thin satin panties were no barrier to the heat emanating from his palms. With joy she felt a rush of dampness between her legs and rubbed herself against his thigh. He stepped in, squashing her delightfully between his body and the wood behind her.
Speaking of wood. With dazed bawdiness, she revelled in the heated length of his erection hard against her belly. Was there anything more satisfying for a woman than this incontrovertible proof of a man’s desire? The power made her dizzy.
All the while, their mouths had been searching, exploring, tasting. She dragged her lips far enough away to speak. “Bedroom?”
“God, yes.”
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IN A HAZE OF SEXUAL longing and rampant desire, Nathan followed Helen down the hall and up the stairs, their hands entwined. He didn’t want to lose contact, afraid severing their link would cause her to change her mind.
She tugged him into the large master bedroom overlooking the front yard. When Aaron had been ill, Nathan had spent many afternoons in this room keeping his friend company in order to give Helen much-needed respite. But since his death, there’d been no reason for Nathan to come to the second floor.
“You painted.” The dark burgundy walls had been replaced with a pale lemon tint. The furniture was the same heavy wood, but instead of the forest green bedding and striped curtains he’d expected, the duvet cover was a natural-looking linen with pale blue accents and the window hidden by light sheers. It was altogether a brighter, more feminine space, and it suited Helen perfectly.
“Can we discuss decor later?” Her grin took any possible sting from her words. Reaching behind her back in that double-jointed way women had, she fiddled with something then rolled her shoulders. The straps slipped down her arms and the dress swept over her hips to the floor.
His cock hardened further and his breath caught.
She waved her hand in his direction. “Your turn.” She began tossing the many pillows mounded at the head of the bed onto the floor with abandon.
The satiny white panties and bra she wore offset her tanned legs, shoulders, and arms. But what stunned him into immobility was—
“Tattoos? I didn’t know you had tattoos!”
She threw him a saucy look as she folded the duvet neatly back to the foot of the mattress. “I work at a tattoo parlor, Nathan. Is it so surprising?”
Helen had been a high school art teacher for thirty years, but had retired when Aaron got sick. A couple of years ago she had taken a part-time job at a tattoo parlor “for something to do.”
“How many do you have?” As if drawn by a magnet, he drifted toward her. Above the edge of her panties, on her right hip, was a red rose on a thin green stem, about an inch long all together.
“Two.” She straightened from the bed and faced him. Loosening the strap of her bra by slipping it down her bicep, she folded the cup back far enough to reveal a heart. “For my mom,” she said.
He knew she’d lost her mother to breast cancer well before she’d married Aaron, and her father to a heart attack about fifteen years ago. While she talked freely about her dad, she rarely mentioned her mother. It made the fact she’d had a permanent reminder inked onto her skin especially poignant.
“You must miss her.” His parents were both hale and hearty, and he gave silent thanks.
“She’s been gone a long time.” Before he could wonder about the emotions hidden behind that cool acceptance, she cocked a hand on her hip and waggled her finger at him. “Why are you still dressed?”