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Chapter 04

“I’m really glad you came,” Austin said this as soon as he opened the door.

I said nothing.

He closed it behind me as I moved past him and into his living room. I recognized the chair and the couch. It had been mine, once. The chair had been his and he’d been welcome to it, but I’d paid for that couch.

The couch didn’t matter.

“You want something to drink?”

I turned to look at him, this boy grown into a man. “No. I didn’t come here to drink.”

Austin smiled. “So, what did you come here for?”

I pulled him forward by his belt. Two steps. He didn’t stumble, but he did put his hands on my upper arms. I must have caught him by surprise. I looked up, up into his face. But when he bent to kiss me, I turned my head.

“Let me guess,” he said into my ear. “You didn’t come here for kissing?”

“You can kiss me.” I took his hand off my arm and put it between my legs. “Here.”

I looked at him, then, and his expression gratified me immensely. His fingers curled experimentally against me and pushed at the soft cloth of my skirt.

Austin blinked, slowly. His smile didn’t fade so much as leak away. “Paige?”

“We both know what I came here for.” I curled my fingers around his wrist and moved his hand down to the hem of my skirt, then up again to replace his palm against my panties. “Let’s not pretend anything else.”

I thought, for one brief, strange second, he was going to turn me down. The heat of his hand seeped through my panties, but the flash of ice in his eyes left me cold. Suddenly I had no trouble remembering why I’d left him.

He didn’t let me pull away. “Fine. I’m not pretending.”

“Good.”

“Good,” he said. His fingers slipped inside my panties and found me already wet. Again, his gaze flickered. “Fuck, Paige.”

“Yes, please,” I said.

He’d always been bigger than me, but in the years since we’d broken up he’d gone from a bulky football player’s build to the harder, leaner muscled frame of a man who made his living working with tools. He might have quit the construction job with his dad’s company, but whatever he was doing kept him in tight, hard shape.

At first I thought he might not kiss me. We’d done it before, fucked without kissing each other on the mouth. We’d fucked angry, rough. We’d done it tender-soft, too, and sweet.

So when Austin pulled me closer and brushed his lips across mine, I was already tense and waiting. He kissed me softly and pulled away. He looked into my eyes.

“I was sure you’d bail on me.”

I frowned, not wanting to talk, and when I opened my mouth he took my words away with another kiss and the restless stroking of his hands. I’m not ashamed to admit I stretched under his touch, so familiar no matter how long it had been. We kissed for a long time, all the way up the stairs and down the hall to his bedroom. I kissed him with my eyes closed, trusting him to lead me so I wouldn’t stumble. We kissed the way we always had, but it was different, too. We stopped just inside his bedroom door and pulled apart, both of us breathing fast and hard. I couldn’t remember how long it had been since anyone had seen me the way he did.

I was made of feathers when he lifted me, but I became flesh when he laid me down.

It was a new bed, new sheets. The smell of fabric softener was the same, and my heart seized, going still before it lurched to life again. His mouth ate my gasp. He swallowed my breath.

I’d worn clothes he could ruin without me caring, but Austin didn’t tear or rip anything from me. Kneeling between my legs, staring at me on his pillow, he only put his hand on my belly. The muscles jumped.

When he smiled I almost couldn’t remember what it had been like not to love him, but I forced myself to. This was not going to be anything but what I’d intended it to be. I spread my legs a little as I inched the skirt up over my thighs.

Austin put his hands to the hem of my shirt and lifted it to run his fingers over the swell of my breasts. He looked me over as if he’d never seen me before, like he hadn’t once spent long hours cataloging every inch of my skin.

I liked the way it felt when he looked at me.

When his gaze met mine, we both smiled, which was a relief. There had been a moment at first when I thought this might turn awkward. Either sentimental or angry. We’d fucked a few times after I left him, and it hadn’t always been a good choice.

It probably wasn’t a good choice now, but when he ran his hands up the insides of my thighs, and a finger underneath the elastic of my panties, I stopped worrying about it. I arched into his touch, my eyes closing in anticipation. He slid a finger along my clit, then another down to press gently at my opening. That’s when he stopped.

I looked at him. “Austin?”

He opened his pretty mouth, but all that came out was a hiss of air as he pushed inside me. I groaned as he crooked his finger against my sweet spot. He used his thumb on my clitoris at the same time, the familiar double whammy that had always worked for me.

“You like that?”

“Yes,” I told him. “I like that.”

He hooked his other hand into my silk panties and eased them down one side at a time as he kept up the in-out stroking. His eyes left my face to watch the motion of his hand, and I was glad. I didn’t want to watch him watching me.

He stopped only for a few seconds, long enough to pull his shirt over his head. I used the time to pull down the side zip of my skirt, and he helped me off with that, too. My shirt went next. We moved together, coordinated, until I lay naked on his bed.

“Take off your pants.”

I returned his hard stare. We’d never spoken much during sex. Now we were practically reciting the Declaration of Independence. I toyed with my nipples, teasing him as he unbuttoned and unzipped. He wasn’t wearing the loose boxer shorts I’d expected, but tight boy shorts cut high on his thigh.

“Nice underwear,” I told him.

The old Austin smirk came back, and he stripped them off quickly before getting back on his knees again. His cock stirred, half-hard but rising, on his thigh. “Thanks.”

“Did you put those on just for me?” I got up on my elbows to look at him.

Austin just raised a brow. “What if I did?”

It wasn’t the smart-ass answer I expected, and consequently, I had no answer.

“Paige.” His hand went stroke, stroke, stroke, and I was hypnotized. “Open your legs.”

I did, because I wanted him there. I thought he’d use his hand, but Austin got on his belly on the bed, instead. He wriggled up between my legs before I knew it, his breath hot on my inner thighs and finally, at last, my cunt.

I cried out when he kissed me there, but stifled it with my fist. When he licked me, I drew in a breath that tasted of my own skin. It had been a long time since a man had gone down on me…since the last time I’d been with him, as a matter of fact.

His lips worked my rigid clit as he pushed a finger, then two, then three, inside me. Rough but not harsh. He found my G-spot and I convulsed around his fingers. Pleasure took my voice away.

I pushed my hips upward in lieu of command, and he fucked me with his mouth and hands until I gasped and trembled. Shaking, I looked down at him, nestled between my legs. Passion had hazed my vision, but everything became crystalline when he paused to look up at me.

“Don’t come yet.” Austin’s voice had grown impossibly deeper over the years. Now it went lower still. His breath drifted over my hot, wet flesh and the motion of his lips tantalized me mercilessly.

He moved up my body and captured my wrists with his hands as he pushed mine over my head. My fingers curled around the wooden spindles as I stared him in the eyes. I wasn’t the same girl he hadn’t taken to the prom, and I wasn’t the same girl he’d married. I was a different woman now. But I held the headboard anyway, watching him as he fumbled in his nightstand for the package of condoms and slid one on.

When he moved back over me, one hand on his cock to guide it inside me, I tensed. My eyes closed as he filled me. When he moved, I moved with him. It was easy to remember how.

He fucked into me slowly, then faster. He pushed up onto his hands to drive his cock deeper, and I took the pain of his thrusts and turned it into pleasure. My hands gripped the wood. His eyes never left mine, not even when he slid a hand between us to stroke my clit in time to his thrusts.

“Now,” he grunted from between clenched teeth, “you can come.”

I hadn’t been waiting for his permission, but my body took it anyway.

“Say my name.” His fingers left me and he pushed his face into the side of my neck. “Say it, Paige.”

I tipped into the swirling oblivion of orgasm, and I gave him what he wanted with his name, if he could decipher it from the moan. But I also let go of the headboard. My nails raked his back as I came again, as hard the second time as the first. Harder, maybe, because I was bringing blood and he cried out as he pumped inside me as he came, too.

Austin shuddered. His arms slid beneath me, clutching me tight. He burrowed his face harder into my skin. And he just held me that way for what seemed like a very long time.

I had to unwrap my legs from around his waist after a few minutes to ease the cramp in my hips, but I didn’t unwind my arms from around his back. His weight on me was more comforting than claustrophobic. When he finally pushed himself off me, he only rolled to the side with one arm and leg thrown over my body.

Now he would sleep, I thought.

But he didn’t. Austin moved to get rid of the rubber in a nearby garbage can, then slipped right back to where he’d been. His hand moved lazily up and down my body in smooth, flat strokes.

“Paige.”

“Yes,” I said after a second.

“I thought you liked it when I was a little rough.” His hand centered over my contented cunt, his fingers dipping into my well.

I wasn’t squeamish about post-fucking cuddles or anything leading up to a potential round two, but when Austin stroked my pussy, I put a hand over his to stop the motion. “Is that why you did it?”

He didn’t look at me. His breath puffed hot on my shoulder and he kissed me. His lips pressed my skin. His fingertip settled on my clit and circled lightly. I’d had two orgasms and my body wasn’t ready for another, or so I thought. As his hand moved, tension stirred inside me.

“Is it?” I drew in a breath but kept my voice even. “Austin?”

“Well, shit, Paige. Yeah. Of course.” He sounded insulted.

I put my hand over his again, though what he was doing was starting to work. “Look at me.”

He did. I hadn’t noticed the shadows under his eyes before. Faintly blue, they made him look older. Well, he was. We both were.

“I thought you liked it rough, that’s all.”

“Did it look like I wasn’t enjoying myself?” I didn’t want to defend my orgasms to him. I didn’t want to think he’d done something for my sake that he hadn’t wanted to do for his own.

Pushing him off me, I got out of bed and gathered my clothes. I dialed the cab company and arranged for a ride home. Austin watched me without pulling up the sheets or making a move toward his own clothes. When I looked at him, his expression had gone inscrutable. That was as familiar as everything else had been, and I figured whatever glitch in his operating system had made him ask me those questions had been fixed.

“Why did you come over here?” he asked, loud in the quiet. “Really?”

I stepped into my panties and pulled them up, then zipped my skirt, too. “I came over here to do just what we just did.”

“Just to fuck me?”

“Yes, Austin,” I told him. “What else did you think I wanted?”

“Nothing.” He rolled to grab the remote from the nightstand and I discreetly ogled his ass and the sweet backs of his thighs—places I’d bite, if I had more time. “Forget I asked.”

“Are you getting pissy with me?” I straightened my shirt and ran my fingers through my hair to shake it into some semblance of order. “No, you are not. Are you? Seriously?”

“No.” Austin, his jaw set, kept his gaze on the television. He punched the buttons of the remote so fast I knew he couldn’t possibly be able to see more than a second or two of each program before moving on.

“Because I’ll tell you what, if you’re going to give me an attitude every time I come over here to fuck you, I’m not going to bother anymore.” I stepped into my shoes. “That cake is baked.”

Now he looked at me. “Huh?”

“That cake,” I said carefully, “is baked. Done. Over. Finished.”

“Iced?” One corner of his lips turned up, but only a little.

He was maybe the only person who’d ever really “gotten” me. It was why we fought so hard and fucked so good. He knew every button to push.

“Yeah. Iced.”

He shrugged, looking back at the television, but his mouth still quirked. “If you say so.”

“Austin.” I waited until he looked at me. “Don’t make me regret this, okay? You know what this is.”

He shrugged again, the brief glint of a smile fading. His finger stabbed the remote as he cycled through all bazillion cable stations. I thought about kissing him before I left. I even took a few steps toward the bed, but when he turned to look right at me, I stopped.

“I’ll let myself out. No, no, don’t bother getting out of bed,” I said, though he hadn’t done so much as shift. “I’ll do it.”

I was already out the door and into the hall and at the head of the stairs when he called after me.

“That’s not all it is!”

I stopped, my hand on the newel post of his stairs. There were half a dozen retorts, but none of them made it past my tongue. At the bottom, the smooth banister shoved a splinter into my palm and I muttered a curse as I plucked it free. That would teach me, I thought as I let myself out of his house and onto the street, where the cab was already waiting.

Chapter 05

Daylight teased the sky by the time I made it home. I paid the cabdriver and ignored the way he ogled my thighs when I stepped onto the curb. I didn’t want to be sorry I’d gone to bed with Austin even though I’d said I wouldn’t. The sex had been too good, as good as it can be only with someone who already knows you, but I’d started a new life, with a new job and a new apartment, in a new city. I wanted new habits, too, and Austin was definitely not one of those.

I wanted a man who’d gone to college. Who had a career, not a job. One who owned a car and paid bills on time and wore clothes that matched. A professional man, not one who smoked and drank and cheated, or one who’d run up the credit card and skipped out into the night without leaving a note. Not one who wrecked my car because he didn’t have one of his own.

I wanted a man, not a boy in a man-suit.

You’re unfair to me, Austin had accused me more than once. I’m not like those guys.

Those guys. The men my mother dated. No, he wasn’t like those guys. At least not mostly. But I’d always been waiting for him to turn into one. Maybe he was right and I’d been unfair, but he’d done his share of shitty things even when he knew they’d hurt me. Hell. I’d done the same.

My heels sounded very loud on the marble tile as I passed the front desk, empty at this hour. I’d occupied the elevator alone, dressed to kill, more times than I could count on both hands. Tonight, because I knew I looked ridden hard and put away wet, a hand shoved its way through the doors just before they closed, and I had to share it.

“Thanks,” said that man I’d seen before. “I’m too tired for the stairs.”

He slouched, eyes half lidded, in the corner opposite and just behind mine. His shoulders lifted with a sigh that became a yawn, prompting one from me I hid behind my hand. He looked at me with a half smile. Conscious of the fact I was sure my lipstick was smeared and my eyeliner smudged, I smiled back. We both turned to face the front, but I felt the weight of his gaze on me, could see him looking from the corner of my eye. Unlike before, this time he wasn’t too distracted to notice me. When I turned my face, just slightly, he was studiously watching the blinking white numbers showing the elevator’s progress.

I had to bite my lower lip against a smile. He was seriously eye-fucking me. Who doesn’t get off on being noticed?

It took a very long time, it seemed, to reach the first floor. He moved past me without touching me, but my skin prickled as though he had. He stepped out of the elevator and I let out the breath I’d been holding. I’d seen him twice now. Three times? It must have been the charm, because unlike all the others, this time he was the one who looked back.

“I missed you.”

I’m already diving into Austin’s arms when he says it. A week was too long to be away from him. His parents had taken him from me, stolen him to go to visit family for a funeral. At nineteen, he’s plenty old enough to stay by himself, but they’d insisted he go along to pay his respects. I think it’s more like they don’t want us fucking our way through every room in the house while they’re away, but I can’t blame them. They’d have been right. I wouldn’t have felt comfortable going along, even if they had invited me, but a week is an eternity in the summer when the only thing I have to look forward to is long hours with Austin’s mouth on mine.

His arms slip around me, hold me tight, and his hands run down my back to grip my ass. Nobody’s watching, and would I care if they were? I’m just so frigging glad he’s home, it’s worth the risk of parental discovery to have him squeezing me. His cock nudges my belly.

He really did miss me.

“I brought you something.”

“What?” I already have my hands out, expecting a snow globe, a T-shirt. A magnet, maybe. Something he picked up in the Pennsylvania Turnpike gift shop.

Austin hands me a small box with a lid. Inside it is a package of paper, not note cards but stationery. I lift a page and hold it to the light. It’s soft on my fingertips and has a faint design of flowers pressed into the paper. I give him a look.

How did he know?

“It reminded me of you.” Austin gives an awkward shrug, as if his admission embarrasses him. “You like that sort of thing.”

I do. Tablets and note cards and pretty papers. I always have, but this is the first time someone’s ever noticed or given me something as pretty as this. “I love it.”

“When’s your mom getting home?”

My mom’s been working weird shifts at the Hershey plant since she got pregnant. Because it’s summer, her brother Lane is home from college and taking over the shop, and I’ve been putting in more than my share of hours there, too. I haven’t seen her much. I’m not sure if she’s avoiding me, but I know I’m trying not to hang around her too much. She’s only got another month or so before she pops, and I can’t even begin to imagine what’s going to happen then.

“Late.” I snuggle closer, my knee going between his and my cheek fitting just right into the place over his heart.

Austin pushes me so he can grin down into my face. “Good.”

The apartment isn’t big enough to make the chase much of an effort, but we manage to work up a sweat as I dodge his grip and duck behind the big wooden rocking chair to keep out of his grasping hands. Not that I don’t want to be caught. Just that it’s fun to make him catch me.

When he does, his mouth slants over mine, his tongue probing deep inside. He’s got me so hot already. Hot for him. His hand goes straight between my legs, no fooling around now, and he cups my pussy through my thin cotton shorts.

The rocking chair, set in motion by our mock struggle, bumps my ass as we kiss. I grab the back of it to still it, then push Austin from my mouth and shuck out of my shorts. I’m wearing the tiny bikini panties he likes, but those go, too.

I lift my T-shirt up over my breasts, no bra covering them, and settle into the chair. I spread my legs. He’s watching, jaw slack and eyes gleaming. He doesn’t move.

He’s eaten me out before, though I’ve never asked him to. It’s always just…happened. But it’s all I’ve been thinking about for the past week, his mouth and tongue and fingers fucking me until I come. Every night while he was gone I’d lie in bed, eyes wide open to the dark, and imagine him there with me. I’d pretend my fingers were his tongue, flicking my clit or sliding inside me, but it was never the same.

My friend Kira says her boyfriend won’t go down on her. Not ever. He’s all about the blow jobs but refuses to dine at the Y. He’s a pussy about eating pussy. I’d break up with a guy who expected me to suck cock but wouldn’t return the favor, but Kira says she’s in love. I think she just doesn’t know what love is.

Austin’s friends, the guys from the football team and the men he works with at his dad’s construction company, would probably say they don’t go down on their girlfriends, either. I wonder how many are telling the truth? I wonder if Austin tells them about me, if men talk about their sex lives in the same detail I do with my friends. I wonder if he’d admit he makes me come with his face between my legs, or if he’d deny it.

“Austin.” My voice is low and slow, almost not mine. His gaze jerks up. I put my hands on my inner thighs and open myself wider to his sight. “Use your mouth on me.”

He’s already on his knees before I finish. I gasp when his hot, wet mouth finds my skin. When his tongue strokes over my clit, I grip the arms of the chair and toss back my head, my back arching. It feels so good it almost hurts. The chair rocks me into his mouth again and again as he licks and kisses and sucks. When he puts a finger inside me, then two, I come hard with a strangled shout.

I look down at him. He’s smiling, full of himself. I touch his hair and want to tell him how much I love him, but something about the way he’s looking at me makes me suddenly shy. I want to close my legs, but his head is resting on my thigh and I can’t without pushing him away.

“What?” I sound nervous, because I am. “What are you looking at?”

“You.” Austin kisses my thigh.

I push him onto his back on the floor and straddle his legs until I can get his belt open and his pants down. His cock springs free, nice and thick. I take it in my hand and stroke. He’s already got a little pre-come dripping, and I lean forward to taste him.

“Fuck!” His hips jerk and his hand tangles in my hair. “Paige, God.”

“What?” I want to put him inside me, but we don’t have any condoms handy and there’s no way I’ll go bareback.

“Nobody…”

I frown and sit back on my heels, my grip tightening on his prick. “Nobody what?”

What the hell did he get up to while he was away?

“Nobody does this like you,” Austin says.

He thinks he’s giving me a compliment, but I let him go and grab up my shorts. I make sure to grab my panties, too. Don’t want to leave them on the floor for my mom to find. “Nobody, who?”

“Huh?” He lifts his head to stare, then sits when he sees my expression. “What’s the matter?”

I stab the air with my finger. My throat is tight when I swallow, and I blink away the burn of tears. “Nobody does what like me? Suck cock? Nobody, who? Who else is sucking your dick, Austin?”

“Nobody,” he says and must realize how it sounds, because he scrambles to his feet to come after me when I stalk down the hall to my tiny bedroom at the back of the apartment. “That’s not what I meant, baby.”

“Don’t you ‘baby’ me.” I grab my robe from the hook on the door so I don’t have to try to get into my clothes while we fight.

His hands come down on my shoulders and turn me, reluctantly, to face him. “I just meant that the other guys, they tell me their girls don’t do the stuff you do.”

I guess that answers my question about if they talk about sex. I don’t smile, don’t lift a brow, just keep my face stony. Austin pushes my hair off my shoulders.

“That’s all I meant. That nobody…that you’re so great.”

“Great at sucking cock?” I frown, even though I’m glad to know he thinks so.

“And other things.” He teases me back toward the bed and I let him until we’re both lying on top of the quilt my grandma made me.

Austin strokes down my body and kisses me. When his hand finds my pussy again, I know I’m wet from earlier. His fingers slide against me. His breath is hot on my neck as he pants. His thumb presses my clit and his fingers move inside, then out. Against my thigh, his cock presses hot and hard. He moves his mouth to my nipple and sucks gently, and though I came just a little while ago, desire gathers in my belly again.

“I missed you,” he says again.

“Did you?”

Austin nods against my neck. It seems stupid to be angry with him now, or to worry about if he cheated on me while he was gone. I know he did, once or twice, when we were in high school. Hell. I cheated on him, too, if you want to count the times he thought we were on and I thought we were off and vice versa. But not since graduating, not since we both got full-time jobs and a full-time relationship.

He fumbles for the rubbers I keep in the box in my nightstand and puts one on. I could help him, but I’d rather watch just now. He rolls it on over his cock, his teeth clamped onto his lower lip in concentration. Then he moves up my body and centers himself before pushing inside me.

I groan; I can’t help it. I fucking love this, the sex. His weight. His prick so hard and thick and long inside me, so long it hurts sometimes when he fucks me, but I like that, too. He’s got muscles in his arms from all the heavy lifting and I grab one as he thrusts inside me.

I lift my hips to meet him and his belly presses my clit every time we move together. Orgasm doesn’t build, it tears me down. I’m coming again when he starts to move harder and faster, and I know Austin’s coming, too.

It doesn’t always happen that way, that we finish together, so it’s sort of magical and leaves me sleepy and contented and cuddly, after. He loops an arm around me when he’s thrown away the condom. We lay on my bed, spooning, and his breath ruffles my hair.

“Paige,”Austin says. “I want to ask you something important.”

And then we’re on the ocean, in a boat that’s going down.

As the cold, dark sea closed over my head, the sound of the alarm bells ripped into my ears. I took a deep breath, even though I was underwater. I kicked, the tight clutch of the waves around my ankles becoming the tangled grasp of sheets around my feet as I opened my eyes and fumbled, without seeing, for the phone.

“What?” At this hour I couldn’t be expected to be polite, could I?

“Paige?”

I blinked, not wanting to look at my bedside clock’s numbers. It was way too fucking early to be up. “Arty. What’s the matter? Where’s Mama?”

“Mama’s still sleeping. And Leo’s at work,” he added, though I hadn’t asked. “I’m hungry.”

“Make yourself some cereal.” I stifled a yawn and pondered giving in to a hangover that wouldn’t have bothered me with just a few more hours’ sleep.

“There isn’t any.”

“No Cheerios? No Raisin Bran?”

My little brother, the only other sibling I’d ever actually lived with, made a familiar noise of disgust. “I don’t like those kind.”

“Then I guess you must not be that hungry.” I was hungry, but didn’t feel like getting out of bed at the butt-crack of dawn to fix toast. “Arty, it’s too early to call me. What did I tell you about that?”

“Can’t you come over and make me some pancakes?” His little-boy voice sounded very far away. I pictured him in his Spider-Man pajamas, bare feet swinging because his legs weren’t long enough to reach the floor. “Please?”

Maybe if I kept my eyes closed I’d fall back to sleep. I snuggled deeper under my soft blankets. “Buddy, I don’t live there anymore. I told you that. I told you I couldn’t just come over whenever you called.”

Silence.

“But I miss you,” Arthur said in a tiny voice.

I sighed. “I miss you, too, buddy. How about I come down and take you to the movies sometime soon?”

“When?” At nearly seven, the kid had been reading since he was four and could tell time on an analogue clock, a skill that sometimes stumped me. There wasn’t much that slipped past him. “Today?”

“Not today, no. Maybe later this week.”

“When? When?”

I couldn’t think straight and just tossed out a day. “Wednesday?”

“Saturday. Sunday. Monday. Tuesday. Wednesday. That’s a week!”

He sounded so dismayed I hated to laugh. Laughing, in fact, hurt my head. “Not quite. Five days.”

“That’s too long!” Arthur’s voice pitched high enough to drill my tender ears.

“You’ve got gymnastics on Tuesday, and Monday I’ve got an appointment in the evening. Sorry, buddy. You have to wait until Wednesday. Besides,” I said, offering an incentive against despair, “the new Power Heroes movie comes out on Wednesday. How about that?”

“Okay.” He didn’t sound convinced, only resigned. “But I’m hungry now, Paige.”

“Cereal. Or have a snack from the drawer.”

“Mama says no snacks from the drawer until after breakfast.”

“Aren’t there any cereal bars in the drawer?” I bit back another yawn. If I didn’t get back to sleep in the next ten minutes I was not going to be a happy camper.