She heard the creak of the door and the heavy careless plodding of his footsteps on the floor of the living room and instantly felt a little better. A small breath loosened her body, and Pam’s shoulders slumped back against the pillows that propped up her back in bed. He was home. She could finally relax.

Jim haphazardly kicked off his shoes vaguely near the door, and gingerly walked down the hallway towards the bedroom. With every bend of his knee, and flexing of a muscle, he took a sharp short inhale of breath. He didn’t remember feeling this sore or drained after a couple of pick-up games in his early twenties, but on his horizon was thirty, and it was only one of the many changes that had wormed themselves into his life.

“Jim?” she asked tentatively into the shadows cast by her bedside lamp. Her eyes straining eagerly to make out his form amongst the hard angled specters of darkness which washed over the doorway.

He smiled involuntarily as he heard his name. He loved the way that she said it, as if wedged within the simple syllable was anticipation and hope. It was just a simple inflection, but it resonated volumes about her, who she was, and why he loved her. 

“Paaammm?” He echoed back, playfully mocking her tone, just as he swept in the doorway. He squinted against the harshness of the light so that he could better see the softness of her figure next to it.

Now his smile was deliberate as he drank in her form, sitting patiently on the bed, back propped up against the headboard with pillows, and ankles crossed. She was like some sort of Penelopean figure, patient and assured of him returning to her.

And in the time that he had known her, both as a friend and a lover, Jim had seen her in nearly every way imaginable, but it was like this that gave him the greatest comfort and warmth.

It wasn’t that she wasn’t beautiful in a dress, with her hair in careful curls, and her makeup so delicately applied. But as she sat there looking at him, with her hair a frizzy maelstrom of untamed curls, and her pale, makeup-less face betraying every line and wrinkle, she looked like home to him. She looked permanent. She looked like forever.

Pam giggled self-consciously at his mocking tone, but it slowly slipped away as soon as she saw him. He leaned in the doorway, his arm lifted above his head, forearm supporting his weight, while his sweaty t-shirt clung to him tightly.

Almost choking on a large gulp of air, she unconsciously uncrossed her ankles, and re-crossed them again. Sometimes, in simple moments like this, she almost couldn’t believe that he was hers. That Jim came home to her every night. That a man like him, who was not only positively close to igniting the wooden molding of the doorway with his attractiveness, was a man who also listened to her, cared for her, and ultimately loved her unconditionally. What she had ever done to deserve this, and how lucky she was to have it in her life never drifted far from her thoughts. It was an everyday gratitude.

“Why are you staring at me like that?” Jim asked innocently. A small smirk ran into the shadows on his face, and belied the fact that he knew exactly why she was staring at him like that.

Shrouded though it was, Pam still saw it and matched it with one of her own. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of such an obvious reaction. He had caught her gawking at him enough at work to know why she was looking at him, and it gave her a warm thrill to play this teasing dance of innocence with him.

“I can’t see you very well, it’s kind of dark over there.” She shrugged nonchalantly, and squinted comically through the lenses of her glasses.

Jim grinned, and quickly swept his tongue over his bottom lip. He pushed himself off the doorframe, and effortlessly ran his now free hand through his sweat-slicked hair, tussling it into erratic curls and flips.

He knew this game well. A sort of battle of verbal feints and thrusts between them, which used to end in long lingering glances, but now did in long touches and shared shaking intensity.

Of course, now they had added more than that to the electrified war of desire that they silently waged against each other. And fortunately, Jim knew one of her greatest weaknesses.  

Deliberately looking away from him now, Pam tucked back some especially unruly strands of frizz behind her ear, and looked back down in her lap to her book. Her concentration was elsewhere, however, and after only a few seconds she glanced up at him again. What she saw stilled her breath.

Jim casually reached back with one arm, lifting the front of his shirt slightly as he did so, revealing a strip of his gleaming stomach, which danced hard and bright in the lamp’s light. He then hooked his thumb in the back of his collar and in one slow movement, lifted the shirt off.

“Well, I guess I’m going to go take a shower” he sighed, loving that she wasn’t even attempting to make eye-contact with him, or listen to what he was saying. Without another word, he turned, a small self-satisfied smile on his face, and walked out of the room to the bathroom. His knees and muscles didn’t seem so sore anymore.

He had pulled out the big guns, she knew. Not only had he done the pull-over-his-head-sexy-thing, but he had done it slowly. The sweat-soaked shirt had fought him the whole way, slowly peeling away from the skin of his tight stomach and chest, leaving a glistening trail from his collarbone to whatever that muscle was that cut in like a V at the top of his leg. And then he had just walked away, like he didn’t know exactly what he was doing. Like he didn’t always know what he did to her.

Suddenly the book that had taken up her attention prior to his arrival could wait. The anticipation of him coming home, knowing that he was going to be all sweaty and masculine, and finally his little half-striptease, had steadily heated something inside her.

That which contained her bottled-up passion, lust, and desire all day while the cameras followed her every movement, shattered. And now those feelings boiled as they dripped and ran down her body, leaving sizzling trails that made the fine hairs of her stomach, arms, and breasts stand on end. They pooled low in her, a cauldron of want and need, which was in danger of sloshing over it ran so full.

At the sound of the water running, her decision was made without thinking. Her glasses were hastily deposited back on the nightstand, and her pajama pants and tank top became puddles on the floor. Now in only her panties, she crept lightly towards the door, her bare skin gleaming in the dimness.

Jim was beginning to doubt his abilities and feel a little foolish as he stood naked outside of the running shower. It wasn’t as if he understood why the shirt-pull worked on her, but he knew it usually was like igniting the end of a long fused stick of dynamite.

Just as he was about to dejectedly get in, he heard the hinges of the door creak open, and turned to see a flash of pale pink leg and frenzied curls.

“I was wondering when you were going to get here.” He said teasingly. A tone that quickly evaporated under the heat that hummed on the surface of his skin, and the sudden tightness he felt at her near-naked presence.

She didn’t say anything as she slowly slinked towards him, looking like something out of a Botticelli. She was all fluid curves, from her face, to her hips, to her breasts, and Jim couldn’t imagine how it was that she chose to walk towards him. How this woman, who was creative, warm, easy to talk to, kind, and achingly beautiful waited for him at night.

Pam loved the confidence he gave her. The look on his face, and the reaction his body clearly betrayed just in the short time since he’d seen her, made her feel powerful and sexy. She didn’t blush, didn’t stammer, and didn’t apologize. She wanted him, every part of him. She wanted this look from him, she wanted the feel of him inside of her, and she wanted his fingers lazily playing with her curls afterwards as she rested her head on his chest.

Standing on her tiptoes now, she wrapped her arms around his neck, the softness of her breasts just barely grazing the hardness of his chest. His heavily lidded green eyes looked clouded with desire, and his large expert hands came to rest assuredly on her hips.

Pam leaned in, pressing more of herself against him, relishing the shock and tingle that instantly flooded her, and how hard he already was. But it wasn’t a relief, instead it only intensified the need and desire within her to a wild and uncontrollable fever. She held her lips so close to his now that the bottom ones brushed each other, and then in a tone that was so low that it was almost a moan, she spoke.

“Welcome home.”