Free Martine The Beginning (Cruising to Love, The Prequel) by Edwina J White

“Well…”
      “Well?”
      “He’s very attractive and sexy, isn’t he? Lucas.”
      “Yes, Martine, he’s very attractive and sexy.  And nice.  He seems to be a very nice man.”
      “And intelligent, so intelligent.  And he thinks he’s falling in love with me.  He thinks it’s too fast, but he’s half in love with me.  He keeps slowing us down, but the attraction between us is…it’s electric, Penny.  We can’t seem to keep our hands off each other.”
      “Are you lovers?  You must be now, if you spent Saturday night in his bed.”
      “Almost, but not quite…”Martine blushed.  “He says one day soon, he’ll take my innocence away, but not yet.  But what he does to me, Penny, what he does to me…with his lips and his touches…he drives me to distraction.  I didn’t know it could be like this, so thrilling…so wonderful.”
      Penny sighed.  “World class seducer.  Enjoying the prospect of being your first lover.  Driving you to the point of no return…”
      Martine sighed as well.  “I hope you’re wrong, Penny.  I hope he really is falling in love with me.  I know I’ve fallen in love with him already.  The more I get to know him, the more I care.”
      “You’ve known him for less than a week, Martine.”
      “But we’ve spent every night together, and all night Saturday night.  That’s more time than Belinda spends with a boy before she beds him, I think…”
      “You are no doubt 100% correct.  But don’t judge the speed you fall into bed by Belinda’s standards.  She’s quite shallow.  Talented, but full of herself, her gratification.  You’re not like that, Martine.”
      “How long did it take Howard to get you in his bed, Penny?”  Howard was Penny’s last boyfriend, recently transferred by his firm to Australia.
      “About three weeks, I think,” Penny smiled.  “And before you say anything else, no, I hadn’t dated him more than five times.  So I guess your Lucas is about on schedule, except it’s been compressed rather than spread out over a few weeks.”
      “And that lasted nearly a year, didn’t it?”
      “Yes, but I think we’d both realized it wasn’t going to work forever.  Howard is very career focused. He didn’t like a lot of my friends.  He liked you fine, but he didn’t like the boys in the band very much.  I think he had a jealous streak, did Howard.
      “Anyway, Martine.  He didn’t ask me to go to Australia with him, so that says it all.  And if he had asked, I would have said no.”
      It was nearly nine o’clock.  Penny left and Martine got ready for bed.  She brushed her teeth and washed her face, and looked at Lucas’s pajamas hanging on the hook on the bathroom door.  On impulse, she undressed, and instead of her nightie, she slipped into his pajama jacket.  She could smell him, and she felt safe, wrapped in that pajama top.  She rolled the sleeves back up, and buttoned it up, and climbed into his bed.  He had put clean linen on the bed for her.  She was touched by his thoughtfulness, but sad that she wasn’t sleeping in the sheets he had slept on last night…the sheets they had slept on together the night before.
      Martine slept, and dreamed of Lucas.  Dreamed he was beside her, dreamed he was kissing her and touching her, driving her wild…
      Wednesday, she collected the photos she’d taken Sunday.  She picked one out that was particularly good of Lucas.  She had planned to give it to Belinda, and ask her to paint his portrait from it, but changed her mind.  Instead, she asked the photo shop to crop it, and blow it up, in black and white.  She’d take it to the framer and have it professionally framed.  It would be his Christmas present from her.
      Thursday evening she cleaned his flat from top to bottom, leaving not a hair out of place.
    Friday, on her way from the bakery to the Gallery, she stopped and bought him fresh milk and added it to the loaf she