She closed her eyes and tried to capture the post-orgasmic warmth that she was counting on coming to the rescue. She felt decidedly less glowy than normal.

She was far too aware of everything. The burn on her cheeks from his whiskers, the blood still throbbing hot through her body, her heart beating unevenly. How cold her breasts felt now that he’d moved away from her.

The shifting of the mattress as he got up and the sound of his feet slapping on the wood floor as he headed back into the bathroom. She shivered, then looked around the room, pushing herself into a sitting position.

He didn’t have pictures on the walls. The wood-paneled walls were broken up by large windows that overlooked the dense trees that backed the house. The sun was sinking outside, golden rays filtering through the green, casting everything in a hazy filtered light.

She suddenly felt completely exhausted, her eyelids ready to sink like the sun. She crawled up to the head of the bed and slipped beneath the covers, lying on her side, watching the tree branches outside wave in the breeze. She heard Eli walking back through the room, felt the mattress sink just across from her.

The covers slipped down and she felt his warmth beneath the covers. Wordlessly, he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close. She relaxed, head resting against the solid wall of his chest.

She would just close her eyes for a second.

Then she would go.

* * *

When Sadie opened her eyes, gray light was bathing the bedroom, and Eli’s arms were still wrapped tightly around her.

She scrubbed her eyes, rolling onto her back, his hands drifting over her breasts as she did. Then she craned her neck to look over him, and at the bedside clock.

It was five-thirty, and she sure as hell knew she hadn’t gone back in time, which meant she’d slept here all night.

She sat up, pulling the covers up to her chest. Eli made a deep noise, then rolled over.

Her heart was hammering, her hands a little sweaty. She’d never done that before. Never slept beside another person like that. There was something so impossibly intimate about it. Something sort of terrifying.

She waited for her muscles to spring into action, for her legs to get her out of bed and her feet to run her out the door.

But it didn’t happen.

She breathed in deep, and the panic started to subside, her breath normalizing. She didn’t want to leave. That was the most startling revelation that came from her subsiding panic. Other startling revelations included that she actually felt happy that he’d let her stay the night. That he’d invited her into his home and his bedroom.

He’d shared something with her last night. Like she’d shared with him after they’d made love in the car. But he’d done it wordlessly, and she had no idea what exactly she was supposed to extrapolate from it, but she still felt it.

She slipped out of bed and hunted for her clothes, tugging them on before she went downstairs and helped herself to Eli’s mugs and his coffeemaker, humming absently as she did.

She remembered that he ordered lattes and pulled some milk out of the fridge, nuking it in the microwave, then whisking it while the coffee brewed. Then she added a generous helping to his coffee, along with some sugar. Leaving her own coffee fairly underdressed with a dollop of warm milk and a little sugar. When she got back upstairs, Eli was out of bed, standing in the center of the room, naked and looking a little lost.

“You’re still here,” he said, when she walked in.

“Yes, I am. And I come bearing caffeine.”

“Well, then, I’m very glad you stayed,” he said.

“Is that the only reason?”

“No.”

“Well, good. A woman hates to be wanted only for her bean-brewing skills. Though mine are legend. And no man has ever benefited from them. But they will at the B and B.”

Eli frowned and set his mug on the nightstand, grabbing his black boxer briefs and T-shirt from the ground, throwing both on, then retrieving his mug. “What do you mean no man has ever benefited from your skills?”

“I’m not into sleepovers,” she said, smiling, trying to keep it a little lighter than things had been between them. She turned away from him, and he caught her arm, turning her back.

“What does that mean?”

Oh, damn Eli. Why did he always want to know what something meant?

“It means that I like to sleep alone, which I’ve told you before. And it means that I’ve always slept alone. Whiz, whir, thank you, sir, if you will.”

“Why, Sadie?”

“Because I don’t do close, okay?” she said, realizing as the words slipped out of her mouth, cranky, curt and very pre-coffee in attitude, that they were true.

It was easy to pretend she was fine. That she had normal relationships and let them go when they weren’t working because she didn’t need conflict, because she wasn’t going to submit to a life of unhappiness and violence under the guise of sick, twisted love, like her mother had done.

But the simple truth was, she didn’t do heavy, because she didn’t want to get close to anyone. She didn’t let her boyfriends spend the night for the same reason she lived in a place for only a couple of years at a time.

She didn’t want to bond with anything. She didn’t want to need anyone.

She blinked, standing there frozen in the middle of Eli’s bedroom having an epiphany. “I don’t like to let people get close to me,” she repeated, the words making the back of her neck prickle.

“Why?” he asked.

“Because people hurt you.” That was true, too. She was filled with truth. She needed to be filled with coffee, so her truth could stay in. In and buried, like it normally was.

He nodded slowly and walked toward the French doors, undoing the latch on one and opening it out, and onto the deck that wrapped around the second floor of the house.

“Care to take your unheard-of morning-after coffee out on the deck?”

“Oh, why not?” she said, lifting a shoulder and following him outside. He set his mug on the railing, and she did the same, resting her elbows on the rough wood and looking out at the view.

She tried to see through the trees, past the closest branches, to see what was beyond, but they were like a dark blot of green ink, bleeding together to cover the blankness.

“I’m sort of mad at you,” she said, looking down into her coffee, listening to the wind rustle through the trees, to the birds that were just starting to wake up.

“Why?”

“I thought I was really well-adjusted before I met you.”

“Did I...maladjust you?”

“No, you just had the balls to point out that I’m a total head case. No man before you has dared.”

“Every man before me got the boot out the door too quickly.”

She waved her hand. “Eh. Granted. All right,” she said. “Why is your house so clean?”