Sweetly Isolated (The Swallow Barn Cottage Series, Book 1)

Something New

Day 11

"Morning," he purred and wrapped around her.

Help! Help! Oxygen deprivation! That's not a bear, that's a boa constrictor!

"No," Tina muttered and buried her head deeper in the pillows.

Alright, she's OK with this level of air intake, as long as she can feel the delicious chest hair rubbing to her shoulder blades.

"No?" he asked, and she felt his lips on her neck. "No to what?"

"To everything," Tina grumbled. "No to morning. No to getting up. No to everything."

He laughed softly and rubbed his nose to her shoulder.

"Why? I'll make us a nice brekkie," he murmured.

"No. I refuse." Tina shook her head, as much as having her head covered with a duvet allowed. "If I can't write, there's no reason to get up."

"Maybe you can write," he offered.

"No. Trust the noggin." She stuck her right arm from under the duvet and pointed at her head with her index finger. "Empty. No point in even trying."

"C'mon, love, I'll make us coffee and something brain stimulating. Avocado toastie? And blueberries. They're supposed to help you focus," he song-songed alluringly.

Tina shook her head again.

"We can go skate afterwards. Physical activity promotes alertness," he continued coaxing, while his hand softly patted her backside.

Tina snorted, "You're ruining my bad mood."

"Good," he deadpanned and kissed her neck on the hairline. "You have flour in your hair," he said with a chuckle.

"You interrupted my biscuit baking and then somehow couldn't wait for twenty seconds that it would take us to get upstairs," she reminded him.

"And jam behind your ear," he purred, and she felt his lips on her mastoid. She was well-versed in the human skull anatomy, mostly for the sake of discussing blunt instrument traumas.

"We ended up on the table and then the floor. I'm not surprised," Tina muttered. "I don't want to get up. I don't want coffee and a nice brekkie. I don't deserve a brekkie. I'm a failure of a writer."

"You'll be a failure if you don't get up. Giving up is the failure," he said and dove under the duvet.

"Just leave me here to–" she started and then squealed and floundered. "You bit my arse!" she yelled and heard his laughter from under the duvet.

His disheveled head reappeared.

"I fancy the arse," he said grinning. "Clementine, I'll leave you alone and go downstairs, because I have work to do," he said in a much more sober voice. "But you and I know that there's only one way to write. You sit down and write."

"Oh please, don't give me the whole Seinfeld's Method spiel, and all the puffed-up Stephen King's preachings about the Craft."

"Alright, I won't," he said and kissed her cheek.

He got off the bed and started getting dressed. Tina groaned. Before she could've at least pretended she was having a lush lie-in with a fit naked man. Now lying here and feeling for herself was simply pathetic.

"Come down when you want coffee," he said.

"And an avocado toastie?" she asked in a small voice.

He laughed and patted her backside over the duvet again.

"Anything for you, love."

***