Love, Lust 'n Geology (1ST DRAFT)

Chapter 25: Round ... 3?

This chapter is dedicated to bizarress for her interest in, encouraging (& at times wide-eyed ;-) comments on, & support of this novel :-)! Thx so much, Candy! I really appreciate it!

She is an author as well & has a novel on WP. Please check it out!

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Chapter 25: Round ... 3?

Had Samina had any inkling, any at all, that Tom's thoughts had been centred on another woman, well, not just any woman but his former girlfriend, and not simply on her but on an intimate act with her, it's doubtful that she would have cast the loving look at him she did as she pushed herself up and shifted closer to him. Smiling, she lay her head on his chest, umm, to be precise, on his pec, his right pec. And then she brought her hand up and gingerly placed it on his left one. Her smile took on dreamy proportions. She couldn't help it! That was another thing she was never gonna get over - Tom's chest! Tom responded, albeit in a somewhat vacant manner, by slipping his arm under her and holding her by the waist.

And then he resumed doing what he'd been doing, namely pondering the current state of affairs, or lack thereof. It triggered a sigh. He couldn't help it! "Are you tired?" she asked, glancing questioningly at him.

Smiling faintly at her, he shook his head. "No, I'm not tired." Frustrated? Yes! Disappointed? Yes! Tired? No. Well, maybe just a little, although he was fairly certain that it was psychological rather than physical. She, meanwhile, was thinking how she loved to hear the rumble of his deep voice through his chest, not to mention the powerful drumbeat of his heart!

It occurred to Tom, as he lay with Samina snuggled against him, that when one was faced with a problem, it never hurt to do background research. He couldn't think of a single problem that he'd been more interested in solving than this one! No, that wasn't true. There had been others, but they'd been of a fundamentally different, umm, darker nature. For example, he'd tried to figure out how to bring Devin back from the dead ... and cure his Dad's cancer. And then, there was his Mom's Parkinson's ... and dementia. Hopefully, he'd fare better with this one than he had with those!

"How old are you?" he asked, the question seeming to come out of the blue. He had calculated, based on the fact that Samina was just starting her Ph.D., that she was two years younger than him. But it was altogether possible that she might have been one of those child prodigies one hears about who enter university at some obscenely young age. In which case, she might be .... Yikes, he didn't like to think about just how old she might be! But now that he had thought about it, she did look awfully young! Which could mean that it was a good thing that they hadn't ...?

"Twenty."

Whew! Twenty! Twenty! Thank God you're twenty! And then with feigned calmness, "Twenty? Oh, you're younger than I thought."

Well, young to be doing her Ph.D., but not too young to have had, or want to have, sex, for goodness sake! Heck, he couldn't recall a single woman he'd been with who'd still been a virgin at that age! Di had been nineteen when they'd met up, and she'd been making out for a couple of years already. And he, he'd been even younger his first time!

"When did you start your Master's?"

"I didn't. I went straight into the Ph.D. program from my Bachelor's."

"Oh, that explains it."

"And how old are you?" she inquired archly in return.

"Twenty-five."

"Oh, you're younger than I thought," she mimicked teasingly.

Tom chuckled. "How old did you think I was?"