POST YOUR NOVEL EXCERPT HERE!!!!

[jynxgirl.livejournal.com]

POST YOUR NOVEL EXCERPT HERE!!!!

Please keep it relatively short, and only in this thread. Thanks!

No more than 4000 words, and please no multiple posts!

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[imaginepageant.livejournal.com]

She heard the subtle sounds she knew, from sleeping next to him for years, meant that he was waking up. Turning towards him, she slipped her hand beneath the blanket and slid it across his chest, the sprinkling of coarse hair tickling her sensitive palm. There was no effort in molding her body to his; it knew, on instinct, exactly how to fit its curves to his.

“Morning,” Katherine whispered, moving her lips to his neck, feeling his pulse beating beneath the warm skin.

He made a deep sound in the back of his throat in response.

She knew that if her hand trailed down to his center, she would find him hard and alert, as he was most mornings. Making love in the morning is a privilege for couples who don’t have children and careers that pull them out of bed almost before the sun rises; they hadn’t had such freedom in a long time. Katherine’s keen ears had not heard a single sound from outside their bedroom; privacy, so hard to come by, was theirs, at least for a little while. Just the thought of it made a fierce warmth run through her, and she pressed herself more invitingly against him.

“Isn’t it nice to have a morning off together,” she purred as her hand began its descent, “when we can lay in bed for an hour without worrying about getting up and facing the world?”

At her last word, the alarm on Malcolm’s bedside table went off, as if punctuating her sentence. Katherine glanced at the clock: 8:57.

After shutting the alarm off, Malcolm tossed back the blanket and swung his legs off the side of the bed. “Didn’t I tell you?” he said absently, pulling his robe on. “There’s a meeting in my department this afternoon that I have to attend, so my first lecture was moved up.”

Katherine sat up, the blanket falling off of her shoulders and leaving her vulnerable to the cold air. “No,” she replied, her voice as quiet as someone who was afraid to speak up. “I thought we’d be able to spend the morning together.”

“I’m sorry,” Malcolm said briskly, already halfway out the door. “There was nothing I could do about the change of schedule.”

Katherine watched him disappear into the hallway; she listened to the water rush through the pipes and rain down into the bathtub. She felt a prickling heat behind her eyelids, and shook herself out of the trance of disappointment she had fallen into. Don’t cry, she told herself. Don’t cry over a couple of lost hours. It’s not that important.

But as she left the bed and started towards the kitchen to put on a pot of coffee, she wondered if it was those lost hours that had broken her heart, or if it was the way Malcolm had barely looked at her, and spoken to her as if she were a stranger… or, if it was the realization that this wasn’t the first time he’d done so.