. . . . . . .
Carlos was just driving out of the grocery store parking lot a week and a half later when Drew called. It had been a brutal day at work, so he’d decided to cook something elaborate for dinner to help himself relax.
“Hey, man, what’s up?”
“Hey!” Drew’s voice boomed through the speakers in his car. “How’s the assistant director doing on this fine Wednesday?”
Drew had been the whole reason he’d even applied for the job in the first place. He hadn’t actually seen the opening, but Drew—all the way up in Berkeley now—had and had emailed it to him immediately. Carlos had jumped at the opportunity to move back to the Eastside, but he hadn’t been sure if they were looking for someone with his background for the job. When he got it, Drew maintained that he’d known he would all along.
“I’m still alive; that’s the best thing I can say after today at work.”
“Ahh, one of those days, huh?”
Carlos sighed.
“One of the worst kinds of days. You know the kind.”
“Well, maybe this will make it better: you around this weekend to hang out with your best friend and his fiancée?”
Carlos downshifted as the light changed.
“Oh, you mean Jake and Melissa? Yeah, I’m probably going to see them this weekend, why do you ask?”
“I ask because you can go fuck yourself, that’s why I ask,” Drew said, and both of them cracked up.
“Okay, but seriously, you and Alexa are coming to town? You need a place to stay? You know I live on the Eastside now, right? I don’t know if you know how to get to this side of town.”
“You are such an asshole. Yes, I know you live on the Eastside now. But we don’t need a place to stay. Alexa’s got to go down there with her boss for a conference, so I’m tagging along.”
“Awesome. Everything was so crazy at the engagement party I barely got to talk to you.” He hadn’t seen Drew since Christmas-time and Alexa since before that. “I’ll get to congratulate you two in person.”
“And we’ll get to see the new house, I hope?” Drew asked.
“Of course, but I haven’t put in the basketball hoop yet.”
“And meet whatshername?”
He never should have told Drew he was sleeping with Nik; he knew he’d get the wrong idea. But Drew had texted him the day after they’d first slept together and had asked if he’d seen her again, and it was impossible to not say he’d seen a hell of a lot of her the night before.
“Her name is Nik. I can check to see if she’s free, but I told you, this thing with her is very casual.”
It was a frequent casual thing—they’d only started sleeping together three weeks ago, and they’d already seen each other six times. But after Nik had been the one to bring up that she didn’t want a relationship, he wasn’t worried about how often they saw each other anymore.
How had he gotten so lucky? It was so rare for him to find women who didn’t want a relationship, especially women who were interesting and funny. Not to mention hot. Thank God Nik had dropped into his life.
“Yeah, yeah, you told me. But, you know, check to see if she’s free Saturday night. We’ll even come to your precious Eastside.”
He thought Drew and Alexa would both like her a lot, though. Alexa had always laughed at his jokes, so she’d like Nik’s sense of humor.
“All it takes to get you to the Eastside is for you to move to the other end of the state.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ll text you our flight info and details, okay?”
Carlos pulled into his driveway and grabbed the groceries from the back seat.
“Sounds good.”
“Hey, how’s Jessie?”
Carlos had just checked in with her before leaving work. He knew she was getting sick of him checking in on her every day, but that didn’t mean he was going to stop doing it.
“Going stir-crazy, but otherwise hanging in there.”
“Okay, I gotta go. Go make your risotto or enchiladas or whatever.”
Carlos laughed as he set his groceries down in the kitchen and took the risotto rice out of the bag. It was good to have friends who knew you better than you knew yourself.
He turned on the basketball game to keep him company while he cooked. One of the only things he’d made the time and effort for after moving into this house was to put his TV on a pivot, so he could watch it in the kitchen while he cooked, and then turn it so he could watch it from the couch while he ate. The ideal set up, really.
He chopped an onion, sliced the fresh mushrooms and soaked the dried ones, and peeled the asparagus. The rote movements gave him the feeling of zen that this kind of cooking always did for him. He couldn’t think about the stuff that had happened at work that day or worry about what would happen tomorrow when he was busy carefully dicing an onion so that all of the pieces were the exact same size. Just as he turned the heat on underneath his big sauté pan, he heard his phone buzz and grabbed it out of his pocket. Nik.
I just finished a huge story and I’m starving, want to get dinner?
He texted her back without stopping to think.
I’m in the middle of making dinner. Want to come over? How do you feel about mushrooms?
Holy shit, what was he thinking? He never invited women over to his place; it was kind of a thing of his. After a few way too fast relationships in his mid-twenties, he’d learned to keep the women he was dating away from his space. If women came to your place, they always wanted to change things to how they liked them, probably in preparation to move in all too soon.
I feel great about mushrooms. What’s your address? I’ll leave here in about fifteen minutes. Does that work?
Okay, but wait. This was Nik. She’d made it very clear to him that this was a rebound for her, just quite not in those words. And unlike a few of the conversations he’d instigated with women about keeping a relationship casual where they’d said that was fine with them but had made it clear shortly afterward that that was absolutely not fine with them, he knew that Nik hadn’t been bullshitting him.
4242 Sequoia Street. See you soon.
Plus, Nik was fun to cook for. She’d gone crazy over those pancakes he’d made her. And it seemed like they’d both had busy days. Some stress release with her in his big bed sounded like an excellent way to end this day.
As Nik walked up the front steps of Carlos’s little gray cottage, she suddenly felt shy about basically inviting herself over to his house. Had he really wanted her to come over, or did he just ask because she’d texted him out of the blue and he didn’t know what else to do? She wished she’d called him instead, even though the two of them never talked on the phone—it was always easier to tell from a voice how someone really felt than from a text message. Well, it was too late now. He opened the bright red front door before she reached it.
“Hey.” Okay, he looked normal. “Come on in.”
The house was as masculine and put together as Carlos always was. The living room had a big fat leather couch, a huge TV on one wall, and a fireplace against the other. She dropped her stuff by the door and followed him into the big open kitchen that looked like something out of the Williams Sonoma catalog.
He moved back to the pan on the stove and started stirring. He was wearing a soft blue cotton T-shirt, the gray pants that he’d clearly worn to work, and patterned socks that made her hold back a smile.
“This kitchen is incredible. You told me you were a good cook, but I didn’t know you were, like, copper-pots-hanging-from-the-ceiling good.”
He glanced up at the pots and shrugged. Was that a blush she saw? He wouldn’t meet her eyes.
“The copper pots were definitely an extravagance. To be fair, the first one was a housewarming gift from Angie. But when I bought a house with a beautiful rack to hang pots, what was I supposed to do?”
She thought about her collection of high heels that she almost never wore but kept buying because of the built-in shoe shelves in her walk-in closet that displayed them so beautifully. She nodded.
“Obviously you had to buy pots to fill it; I get it.”
He handed her a glass of wine.
She took a sip of the wine as she looked around the kitchen and big open living room. She liked it. Even without anything but the TV on the wall, it felt like a home.
“I didn’t even ask what you wanted to drink. Sorry, I didn’t have any rosé,” he winked at her, “but that should go well with dinner.”
Wait. This seemed way too cozy, didn’t it? His nice little house, his big warm kitchen, Carlos at the stove, stirring together things that smelled delicious . . . maybe Courtney had a point after all.
No. They’d talked about this, remember? Carlos had looked very relieved when she’d said she wasn’t in the place for a relationship. This wasn’t that, this was just one friend making dinner for another friend. She and her friends did this all the time. This time, she and her friend would just happen to have sex afterward, that’s all.
“I wouldn’t dare to question you on wine. You told me to always trust you with food and drink recommendations, and I took that to heart.”
She took another sip of wine and tried to let herself relax. She’d spent days wrestling with a big story that she still didn’t know if she was good enough to write. While she’d had moments of thinking she’d nailed it, the rest of the time she worried it was a complete failure.
“Everything okay?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Yeah. I’ve just been holed up in my apartment for the past three days finishing that story, and now that it’s done, I feel like I’m coming out of a coma.” She took her sweater off and tossed it on a stool. “It’s great to relax here with some wine and have you cooking a delicious-smelling dinner for me.” He looked back down at the food with a smile. Was he blushing? Maybe.
“Thanks for inviting me to share your dinner, by the way. What are we having?”
He looked back up at her.
“Risotto. I hope you like it.”
Wow, he wasn’t kidding about being able to cook.
“I don’t know anyone who knows how to make risotto. I’m pretty sure I’ve only had it in a restaurant.”
He laughed as his big wooden spoon made rhythmic circles in the pan.
“Oh, I love making it.” He poured some liquid from the smaller pot on the stove into the big one and stirred some more. “It’s funny; I don’t even really like eating it that much. I mean, I like it, but I would never choose to order it in a restaurant. But I love to make it.”
She took another sip of her wine and looked around at his kitchen. He had four bowls lined up next to him, two with mushrooms in them, one with bacon, one with cheese. And then there were the two pots on the stove. But most amazingly, other than a cutting board with a knife sitting on top of it, there were no dirty dishes anywhere. The rest of the kitchen looked spotless.
“It seems like a lot of work for a Wednesday night,” she said.
He nodded.
“It is—that’s why I love it. When I’ve had a really long or difficult day, it relaxes me to cook. It gives me a break in the day to concentrate on something else. And risotto is especially great, because after you do a whole bunch of chopping, then you just have to stand there, preferably with a glass of wine, and slowly stir the rice until it’s just right. Every so often, you add some liquid, and you stir some more. You can’t rush it; you can’t turn up the heat or add the liquid all at once to make it go faster. It’s ready when it’s ready. And so you just stand there and keep stirring, and everything settles down by the time the food is ready.”
She’d never heard anyone be so eloquent about risotto before.
“Wow. I feel more relaxed just hearing you talk about making it.”
He looked up and met her eyes, and she could feel his smile all the way down to her toes.
“What a nice compliment from the person who wrote that heartbreaking story about foster children in the Times Sunday magazine.”
Now it was her turn to blush and look away. She didn’t expect him to have read that story. She couldn’t remember the last guy she’d dated who had read any of her work. Well, Justin had, but only ever to tell her how bad it was.
“Oh, you read that? I didn’t . . .” She looked up at him and smiled back. “Thank you. I was proud of that story.”
He poured more liquid in the risotto and kept stirring.
“Good. You should be. It was excellent. It’s such a hard topic—I know from dealing with it with my patients who are foster kids—and you handled it so thoughtfully.”
She sipped her wine so he wouldn’t be able to see the sudden tears in her eyes. She cleared her throat.
“Thanks for saying that. It means a lot. I was feeling pretty down about my work today, so it was really good timing to hear that.”
He reached out and touched her shoulder.
“I can’t believe that someone as good as you ever feels down about your writing, but I’m happy I could help you realize how amazing you are.”
She laughed. If he only knew.
“I think all writers feel down about their work sometimes . . . or most of the time. At least, I hope they do and I’m not the weird one here.” She swallowed and looked down into her glass. “But also, I had an ex who was pretty insulting about my writing, and despite everything I’ve accomplished since then, sometimes it’s still hard to get him out of my head.”
Good Lord, a few sips of wine on a hard day and she started spilling everything.
Carlos touched her hair, then her cheek.
“Well, he was obviously an asshole who doesn’t know anything about good writing or good people, and I’m glad for more than one reason that he’s an ex.”
She smiled at him.
“Me too.” God, was she ever glad. “It feels stupid to still dwell on something a jerk said years ago, but for some reason I remember some of the negative stuff people have said about my writing like it’s imprinted on the inside of my eyelids, and it’s much harder to remember—or believe—the compliments.”
He poured more wine into her glass.
“Well, now that you’ve told me that, I’ll just have to repeat my compliments a few times, maybe in different words so they’ll stick. Hey, Nik, I really loved that piece you wrote, especially how you managed to make it hopeful while acknowledging the pain.”
Oh shit, now he really was going to make her cry.
“I wasn’t fishing for a compliment there, but thank you.”
Why was she so emotional tonight?
It was probably just because she was about to get her period and was feeling sensitive about everything. Plus, even though she couldn’t remember the last time a guy she dated had given her a compliment on her writing, her friends did all the time.
See? She and Carlos were friends. They had actually been friends first, pretty much from the moment he’d pushed that cameraman out of the way at the stadium. They’d gotten to know each other pretty well before they started sleeping together and had had some pretty deep conversations about their lives long before they’d even thought about getting naked.
How refreshing, to actually be friends with a guy you were sleeping with.
“Um, can I help with anything?” she asked.
He shook his head and poured more liquid into the pan.
“Nope. But it’s going to be about twenty more minutes until dinner is ready; do you want a snack?”
Oh thank God. After his wonderful speech about how you couldn’t rush risotto, she’d felt like she couldn’t mention that she could eat a horse right now. Maybe two.
“Sure,” she said. “What do you have?”
He handed her his wooden spoon.
“Here, stir this.”
She stood barefoot on the warm tile floor of the kitchen and tried to mimic the way she’d seen him stir the risotto. She heard him behind her open a door, then she heard plastic crinkle. After a minute or so, he came up behind her and took the spoon from her. She leaned back against his body and felt his warmth surround her.
“Here. I only gave us enough to stave off hunger, but not enough to spoil our dinners.” He set a bowl down on the counter next to the stove. When she looked in the bowl, she started laughing.
“Are those Flamin’ Hot Cheetos?”
He grinned.
“They are indeed. The best snack food ever invented, and I will hear no argument.”
“No argument here. I love that a pediatrician had Flamin’ Hot Cheetos tucked in the back of his pantry. Makes me feel a lot less guilty about my secret snack drawer.”
They demolished the Cheetos in about three minutes flat and spent the rest of the risotto cooking time talking about their favorite snack foods.
“Okay, I think we’re ready.” He took bowls down from the cabinet and nodded over to the living room. “Sorry, I don’t have a dinner table yet. I got rid of my old one when I moved because it didn’t work in this space, but I haven’t had time to get a new one yet. I just mostly eat at the coffee table.”
“Oh no.” She set her wineglass down and shook her head sadly. “I wish you’d told me that before I came over. I can’t eat a meal at a coffee table! Don’t you know who I am?”
He grated cheese on top of a bowl of risotto and handed it to her.
“Oh, I’m sorry, your royal highness, please forgive me?”
She took the bowl and picked up her wineglass.
“I’ll make an exception in this case, but I don’t want you to think this is going to be a common occurrence.”
He waved toward the living room.
“Go sit down, and I’ll bring everything else over.”
She padded into the living room and sank down into the couch.
“What is in this couch?” she asked him, when he came back into the living room, his bowl in one hand and forks for both of them in the other. “Angel wings? Unicorn feathers? Actual clouds from heaven?”
He set the food down onto the coffee table and handed her a fork before he went back into the kitchen.
“That couch is super comfortable, right? I got it at a furniture store’s going-out-of-business sale—I always think those sales are fake because, I swear, some of those furniture companies go out of business like twice a year—but I don’t even care if this one was fake because I love this couch and will defend it against all enemies.”
He came back to the couch with his wineglass, the wine bottle, and a pile of napkins.
She topped off both of their wineglasses.
“Does . . . does your couch have a lot of enemies? Forgive me, I don’t have a leather couch made of pillows sewn by a goddess, so I don’t know these things.”
He picked up his glass, his face serious.
“Oh yes. It’s one of the hardest things about owning a couch like this. People try to storm your home all the time to destroy it because they think anything this magical must be a sin. They warn you about this at the furniture store before you buy it. They had to put a guard on it in the showroom. It was crazy.” He looked at her with a straight face until her laughter finally made him crack a smile.
She stuck her fork into the risotto and took a bite.
“Oh my God.”
He looked up, his fork halfway to his mouth.
“What? ‘Oh my God’ what?”
She was too busy eating to answer at first.
“Oh my God, this risotto, that’s what ‘Oh my God!’ I had no idea it was going to be this good!”
His most smug smile spread over his face, but she didn’t even care.
“Tell me more. What’s so ‘Oh my God’ about it? I want details, please.”
She waved her finger in his face and retreated to the far corner of the couch.
“Stop talking to me. I need to concentrate when I eat this.”
When she was almost done with her bowl, one of the things he’d said about why he liked making risotto came back into her head.
“So what happened at work today that made you need to make risotto?” she asked.
He sighed and put his own fork down.
“It was just a really shitty day, with some of my least favorite parts of this job.”
She took a sip of her wine and looked at him. He seemed like he wanted to talk, but she wanted to tread lightly. She still didn’t know him that well.
“Least favorite as a doctor, or least favorite as a person? Not to say that doctors aren’t people, but . . . you know what I mean.”
He took her bowl without asking and went over to the kitchen to get them both seconds.
“Yeah, I know what you mean,” he said when he came back. “No wonder you’re such a good writer. You ask good questions. Least favorite as a person. Or rather, least favorite as a person who is also a doctor, and therefore has to be professional when I really just wanted to punch that man in the face. Calling CPS isn’t nearly as satisfying.”
Child Protective Services.
“Abuse?” she asked.
He nodded.
“Yeah. Stepdad. The girl was getting the cast off of her broken arm; I wasn’t there when she came in for the arm, so I don’t know what happened then, but a few things she said when I was taking it off worried me, so I managed to get him out of the room and got the details out of her.” He stared down at his knees and sighed. “It’s not new to me. I’ve seen it before, but it’s a stomach punch every time.”
She moved closer to him and took his hand. He held on tight but didn’t say anything. She didn’t ask any more questions; she figured now was the time to just be silent and let him talk or not talk as much as he wanted.
After a few minutes, he looked up at her and shrugged.
“On top of everything else, it makes me think of my dad. Which sucks, because between Father’s Day this coming weekend and the anniversary of his death next Friday, I try to avoid thinking about my dad as much as possible in June.”
She squeezed his hand. She hadn’t realized that the anniversary of his father’s death was right around Father’s Day.
“Why does this make you think of your dad? Because he was so much better than that guy?”
He laughed and let go of her hand, but only so he could put his arm around her.
“Well that, too. But also because I remember when something similar happened to one of his students. This was when Angela and I were younger; I think I was around twelve and she was ten, something like that. And he sat us down at the kitchen table and told us that his student had come to him, and how if anyone tried to do anything like that to us, we could come to him, and if any of our friends were dealing with something like that, we could always come to him. My mom tried to stop him at one point, told us we were too young to hear all of that, but he said ‘Susana, they need to know this, it’s important!’” She ran her fingers through his hair, and he leaned his head on her shoulder. “He was right. It was important.”
After a few minutes, he sat up and looked down at their almost empty dishes.
“Hey, do you want some ice cream? I went a little wild at the grocery store tonight. I have three flavors.”
Wine, risotto, and three kinds of ice cream. It’s like the man knew she was coming over.
“Bring them all out.”
He stood and picked up her dishes.
“Will do. I’m sorry if this was too heavy. We can talk about something else.”
She shook her head.
“I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t want to talk about it. It’s not too heavy.”
He came back a few minutes later and set a bowl with three scoops of ice cream in it in front of her.
“What do we have here?” she asked.
“Dark chocolate brownie, vanilla, rum raisin,” he said.
She took the spoon he handed her.
“I like all of those things.” They sat together, eating ice cream and not talking for the next few minutes.
“Does Angela remember that? About your dad?” she asked him.
He shook his head.
“I have no idea. Angie and I don’t really talk about my dad. Sometimes she brings him up, but it’s too . . . I don’t really want to talk to her about him. Partly it’s because she’s always bugging me to go to the doctor, probably because she’s scared something will happen to me, too, but I’m too busy to deal with all of that right now. But also, it makes me too sad, I guess, which is stupid. It’ll be five years next Friday. I shouldn’t be sad about this anymore, but I guess I am.”
There were so many things that she wanted to say to him, but who the hell was she to tell him how to deal with his grief over his dad’s death? She’d never experienced that before. But one thing she knew for sure.
“It’s not stupid,” she said. “He was your dad. Of course you’re still sad.”
He wrapped his arms around her.
“Yeah. He was my dad,” he said. “And he was a pretty great dad.”
She took a deep breath.
“I bet Angela is still sad, too. It might make you feel better to talk to her about it. She’s the only one who knows how it feels to have lost your dad.”
He nodded slowly.
“That’s true. She is.”
She rubbed her hand against his stubbly cheek. Would he get mad at her for this?
“I know you’re busy and I’m sure you’re fine, but maybe think about going to the doctor? Just to make Angela feel better?”
He stiffened up.
“I’ll think about it.”
She maybe shouldn’t have said anything.
“I’m sorry, it’s probably not my business.”
He shook his head.
“No, it’s okay. One of the things I like about you is that you always say what you mean.”
Huh. That was a thing that most people didn’t like about her. She leaned up and kissed him on the cheek. He turned and kissed her on the lips.
“Thanks for listening. I’m sorry if I—”
She held her finger up to his lips to stop him.
“No apologies. We all need a shoulder to lean on sometimes. I wouldn’t have offered mine if I didn’t want to.”
Carlos knew Nik well enough at this point to know that she didn’t do anything she didn’t want to. But he was used to being the one offering his shoulder for people to lean on. He wasn’t sure how he felt about it being the other way around.
He couldn’t believe he’d talked to her about his dad. He didn’t talk to anyone about his dad. It had been kind of nice, actually, especially since Nik hadn’t pounced on the topic and asked him a million questions. She’d just mostly listened.
“Oh, hey, Angie is at Jessie’s house tonight for dinner. I should check to see if there have been any updates.”
She took a spoonful of rum raisin ice cream.
“No problem. How’s Jessie doing?”
“Bored, but okay. We just need to keep her there.”
He pulled his phone out of his pocket to see four texts from Angie. His heart rate sped up, but when he clicked on them, they were four different selfies of her and Jessie together. At least, he thought the fourth one was of the two of them.
“What the hell is this picture?” He showed Nik the last one, with two faces covered in some white material with holes cut out for eyes and lips.
She shook her head at him, a disappointed look on her face.
“For someone with a sister and a cousin who’s like a sister, you should know what a sheet mask is. The best kind of girlfriend activity. You pop them on, relax for ten to twenty minutes, usually take a few selfies, and take them off. You should try them; I bet it would help after a long day at work.”
He laughed and put his arm around her.
“That’s what a big-screen TV and basketball were invented for.”
She handed him the remote from the coffee table and leaned her head on his chest.
“Speaking of, I’m impressed at your restraint. I know the playoffs are on.”
So he turned on the game, and they spent the next hour curled up on the couch watching the second half of a pretty exciting game between two teams he couldn’t care less about. His ideal post-work wind down kind of game—he got all the fun of the lead changes and the great shots, but none of the up and down emotions of a true fan of either of those teams.
“Ahhh, that was excellent,” he said when the buzzer blew. Nik didn’t respond. He pushed her hair back from her face. She was fast asleep, her head still on his chest. He bent down and kissed her forehead.
“Hey,” he said in a low voice. “Time for bed.”
Her eyes fluttered open, and she looked confused for a few seconds before she realized where she was. She sat up straight.
“I fell asleep, didn’t I? I’m sorry.”
He stood up and held out a hand to her.
“You missed an amazing game. I bet that breaks your heart. Let’s go to bed.”
He led her into his bedroom and she looked around.
“This is nice,” she said. “Very peaceful.”
He was just glad his clothes were no longer all over the floor and were in the hamper in the closet.
“Thanks. It is peaceful, but maybe too peaceful? I had no time to paint before I moved in here, and I keep thinking of painting this room, because it feels kind of depressing with all of the gray. Maybe some weekend I’ll try to tackle it, once I figure out what I want instead.”
She put her arms around him.
“As long as it isn’t Dodger blue, any color works for me.”
He leaned down to kiss her.
“I’ll keep that in mind, though you know, I am a Dodger fan.”
She ran her fingers through his hair and kissed his stubbly cheek.
“I know, don’t remind me. I keep trying to forget that,” she said as she unbuckled his belt.
“And here I was, about to say that if you were too tired for sex tonight, it was okay.” He unbuttoned her jeans and pushed them to the floor. She kicked them to the side.
“Why did you think I took a little nap? I had to rest up.”
She wrapped one leg around his waist, and he put his hands under her butt and lifted her. She laughed and wrapped her other leg around him.
“Well then, we need to make good use of that nap of yours, don’t we?” He dropped her down on his bed. He liked the way she looked there, unsmiling, with her eyes roaming over his body. “You look good in my bed. I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to get you in it.”
She stretched her arms above her body in a way that accentuated her breasts, almost, but not quite visible in her thin tank top.
“I can’t believe it, either,” she said. “I think it was because you didn’t want to share this incredible bed with me. First your couch, then your bed—you are incredible at selecting furniture. I could stay here forever.”
He pulled his clothes off before crawling above her onto the bed.
“Well then, you’re in luck, because I’m going to keep you here for a damn long time. We have . . .” He glanced at the clock as he pulled her tank top over her head. “Eleven hours until I have to get up in the morning. Eleven and a half, if I push it. You’re going to be very familiar with this bed.”
She propped herself up so she could unhook her bra and tossed it to the side. Thank God she did—he was agile, but unhooking a woman’s bra from behind her back while he was kneeling over her in bed might have been too much for even him.
And now those breasts of hers were bare for him. He cupped them with his hands, enjoying their fullness, their hard nipples in the middle of his palms. She stared up at him, her eyes heavy lidded, a smile hovering around the corners of her mouth.
“Do with me what you will, Dr. Ibarra. Your bed, your rules.”
Holy shit, did that get him hot. He took a deep breath, and her smile got bigger.
“Oh, you like that, do you?” She glanced down. “Mmm, I can tell you like that.”
He bent down to kiss her.
“If I had known it would be this fun to get you in my bed, I would have managed it weeks ago.” He looked her naked body over and grinned. “Okay. Here’s what we’re going to do first . . .”