Afterwards...

Deliriously spent, they reluctantly slid away from each other. Lying side by side…just barely not touching…in the steamy, musky air of the moonlit bedroom, they closed their eyes and waited for their breathing to return to something more akin to normal and for their humid bodies to cool and stop tingling so intensely.

“Damn,” Nathan said after a short eternity.

“Yeah,” Della said knowing exactly what he was he was feeling because she was feeling it too. The man had a number of annoying traits, she thought, but Jesus did he know how to rock her world.

Nathan turned on his side his eyes lighting on the voluptuous curves of her breasts glistening with sweat in the golden moonlight languidly dancing in through the window. “Are you okay?” he asked solicitously. He always asked her the same question every time they made love.

Della smiled patiently. The earnestness of his question…the same question he asked every time they had sex…was both enormously endearing and utterly ludicrous to her. She nodded. “I’m fine, baby,” she said in a creamy purr. “I’m better than fine.”

Nathan allowed himself a moment of pride and relief and then he rested back on his pillow. Nathan was a thick bear-like young man whose powerful frame masked his fleeting but undeniable waves of insecurity and his sometimes aching need to please. He had never known a woman like Della and he couldn’t imagine that he ever would know her like again.

Della turned and snuggled into Nathan the way she loved to do. She was a woman of independent spirit but sometimes…just sometimes…she loved to cuddle into the warm comfort of Nathan’s encompassing embrace. Della was a woman of full, feminine curves…rounded breasts and rounded hips…but she felt delicate and safe in Nathan’s arms and sometimes…just sometimes…she really wanted and needed to feel delicate and safe.

Nathan stroked Della’s soft raven tresses and held her tenderly. He knew that he was more emotionally invested in her than he should have been…Della had asked him not to go there…but he didn’t care. He could hear her breathing slowing as she willingly surrendered to sleep. “I love you,” he whispered though he knew that she did not want to hear that.

Della, transitioning swiftly from the waking world to the dreaming world, smiled…patiently and ruefully at once…and snuggled against Nathan’s broad chest. “I know you do, baby,” she said without acrimony. “I know you do.”

Nathan felt her slip into sleep and, holding her securely, he closed his eyes and followed her into the realm of dreams.