Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 73013 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 365(@200wpm)___ 292(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73013 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 365(@200wpm)___ 292(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
So she had finally communicated, a little, this evening. She had asked me to be patient, since at least the topic had finally come up in what could pass as a serious way. It seemed like progress to me, and Mandy had also behaved at dinner like the loving girl I knew, rather than the distressingly distant one who had emerged after the conversation on the porch. The past two days of “Not right now, babe?” seemed to have resolved into the more solid “Can you be patient with me, Ricky?” I tried the new understanding out as soon as we got back to the room.
“Let’s go to bed and cuddle, Dee,” I said, remembering how Scott had spoken to April with decision in his tone. I didn’t consciously try to imitate the older man, but I realized that part of me had absorbed a little of his manner. It felt right for me—more suited to my inner self than the tentative way I usually spoke to Mandy.
Mandy
I had stepped into the room ahead of Rick. When he said, “Let’s cuddle, Dee,” I turned my face back over my shoulder to look, surprised at his not having made the suggestion as a question, the way he always did—You want to cuddle, Dee?
He hadn’t spoken sharply or severely in any way, but on his face I saw something that surprised me as much as his words had. Resolve. I had seen that emotion on Rick’s face many times when he spoke to other people—my parents, say, or his employees. I couldn’t remember ever seeing him demonstrate that kind of resolution with me.
It took a moment, as I looked at my husband with a slight frown on my brow, but then I realized where some of the responsibility for my surprise lay. Rick had just sounded like Scott from the porch. Had he meant to? Whether or not, that tone… it felt…
Well, it felt a lot of things, but the one I focused on, so that I could ignore the way his words had seemed to affect my body, was the danger involved. I couldn’t let that tone continue, could I?
But… Rick had just said before dinner that yes, he could be patient. And dinner had seemed to go so well, and all he was asking for now was cuddling, which I had always loved during our courtship.
We could talk about his tone later. After all, he hadn’t ordered me into bed for cuddling—he had said “Let’s.”
Still, I needed to push back a little, didn’t I? I said, putting a sort of mock-resentful face on, “I’ll allow it.”
Rick smiled, making me feel petty for my reaction to his invitation to cuddle and filling my chest with love for him. Why would I ever not want to snuggle up to him? And what was wrong with me that I didn’t want more than that?
I don’t want more than that. Do I? I turned back toward the bed so that he couldn’t see my face as I felt emotions roil inside me—all over, it seemed, from the blush in my cheeks to the trembling in my legs as I thought about the meaning of more than that. An unwelcome little thrill—the kind of sensation I knew good girls refused to yield to—seemed to travel upward from my shaky knees and downward from my fluttering stomach. No, I told myself firmly, I don’t want more than that.
I grabbed my nightgown and went into the bathroom. I hoped maybe it would be like our wedding night, when I had spent enough time in there that when I had emerged Rick had fallen asleep. I took fifteen minutes more or less just to brush my teeth and put on my nightgown—without taking my panties off, since he had said we would just cuddle, and he had said he could be patient.
I knew with a sinking feeling that Rick wouldn’t be asleep, because the thing where the husband falls asleep—the little book had a section called After Love that described the process—didn’t happen until he had ‘found his release inside your body.’ Sure enough, when I came out I found him sitting on the side of the bed in his red briefs, waiting for his turn.
I bit my lip at the sight of Rick’s muscular body, completely revealed except for the part that sent a shiver down my spine even though I refused to look directly at it.
It’s okay, I told myself. He left his underwear on. You don’t have to look at it and you definitely don’t have to touch it. Just cuddling.
He opened his arms, still sitting on the bed. I tried to conceal my moment of hesitation with a quick rush forward as soon as I decided that I couldn’t refuse to let him hug me, as nearly naked as he was. When we had cuddled peacefully in his bedroom in the shared apartment, we had kept our clothes on, though I had let Rick put his hand inside my shirt and even up my skirt once or twice.