Free Listed: Volume V by Noelle Adams

This new treatment
might not work any better than the first.”
    They’d
stayed at Stacie’s apartment the night before, since Emily had been too weak
from the fever to go home the previous evening. This morning they’d gotten a
call from Dr. Franklin about another treatment he wanted to try.
    It
was experimental, of course, but the potential side effects were minimal and
they had nothing to lose at this point.
    Paul
was allowing himself to hope. Things had never worked out perfectly in his
life. Nothing ever came easy. And the people he loved left him. Or they didn’t
love him back.
    But
Emily had said that she did love him, and part of him actually believed
it was true. And now there was hope that she wouldn’t even have to die.
    It
was too much to process, so he had to force the swell of uninhibited hope back
down into the safe, dark corners of his mind. He just didn't believe he'd be
given quite so much—that he'd be allowed to have what he so desperately wanted.
Which might be why he’d been obsessing about the much more inconsequential idea
of Emily’s having her own room instead of sharing with him.
    “Paul?”
Emily prompted, when he hadn’t responded to her last comment. “Are you sure
you’re all right?”
    “Yes,”
he told her. He swallowed and experienced a familiar resistance to speaking the
truth openly to someone, to anyone—even though he knew it was safe with her.
“I’m trying not to get too excited too.”
    Her
face relaxed into a grin. Then she started to pull things out of her bag—the
Riverside Shakespeare, the music box he’d given her for her birthday, the
clothes she’d worn the previous day.
    The
last two days had forced Paul into emotional overload, and he was too drained
to process any feeling with intensity at the moment. It was only ten o’clock in
the morning, but he felt like he could sleep for hours. Despite his mental and
physical exhaustion, however, he was still oddly touched by seeing what Emily
had taken with her when she thought she was leaving him for good.
    It
was another sign—however small—that she’d been telling him the truth when she’d
said she loved him.
     “I
think I need a nap,” Emily said, starting to pull off her sweater with a yawn.
“Do you mind?”
    “Of
course not,” Paul said, trying not to get distracted by the sight of Emily in
her bra. “You can rest all day. I need to catch up on some work anyway.”
    She
took off her bra and pulled on an oversized t-shirt. Then she pushed off her
jeans and pulled on a pair of sweats. She wasn’t at all self-conscious. It was
as if she’d barely processed the fact that she was undressing in front of him.
She was obviously tired and still recovering from being ill, and she just
wanted to get more comfortable to take a nap.
    But
Paul’s body didn’t make that kind of distinction. It just saw her taking off
her clothes, saw her firm breasts and soft ass. He felt a sharp tug of interest
in his groin.
    “You
all right?” Emily asked again as she climbed into bed. She looked a little
concerned, probably wondering why he was standing stiffly and staring at her
like an idiot.
    “Yes,”
Paul assured her, pleased he sounded somewhat natural. “Try to get some rest.”
    He
left her to her nap and walked toward the master bedroom. There, when it was
clear that his body still hadn’t lost interest, he decided to take a shower.
    He
turned the water on hot, and he adjusted the settings so the rain shower head
as well as the sixteen body jets were all spraying out on him.
    For
some reason, it felt like he’d run a marathon. His body was actually sore from
the emotional ups and downs of the last two days. It hadn’t been very long since
he’d had sex—it was Monday morning now, and just Saturday night he and Emily
had had what might have been the best sex of his life—but his body needed yet
another release, some way to channel everything he’d felt since then.
    So,
after he’d let the water beat