Page 83 of Almost Love

Guess you’ll have to rely on your fantastic imagination to finish that for you

Oakley

…

Back on topic, may I use your kitchen?

Clementine

What’s wrong with yours?

Oakley

Don’t have enough dishes or a functional oven.

Plus, I like your house and bed.

Clementine

It is a good bed. Will you bring Gracie? I miss her.

Oakley

You were cuddling her this morning.

Instead of me.

Clementine

Yeah, so?

Oakley

You’re cruel.

Clementine

You like it.

Oakley

I like you.

Clementine

You better.

Every single day since their night in his apartment had been much like this. Even though they saw each other first thing in the morning, Oakley would text and make plans for that evening. He’d also gotten a lot more forward with his filthy texts and often they made her feral. She needed to stop what she was doing just tobreathe. It was one thing to hear him say it in the privacy of a bedroom, and another when she was elbows deep in dough. However, shelovedit. Everything about this relationship was unexpected, but in all the best ways.

Speaking of the best ways…this was meant to be a purely sexual relationship where she got to experience pleasure and understand her body better. She’d even laid down those rules, but they’d barreled right past like they didn’t exist. The fact that Clementine thought she wouldn’t feel so deeply for him was the joke. He’d been slowly and surely worming his way into her heart and she hadn’t even tried to stop him. Proof of that was in the fact that she had changed.

Not in bad or big ways, but enough that she felt the difference.

For one, she was always eager to leave work at the end of the day. In the past, she would have worked from five a.m. all the way until the work was done. Thanks to her mother and Rhiannon reminding her constantly, she was delegating more. This freed up time which she used to see Oakley. Leaving him in bed every morning was hard, so she loved wrapping up on time and meeting him at one of their places. It wasn’t just about sex, which was what she thought would be the focus. Sure, their clothes came off eventually, but they would cook together, watch mindless television or talk about their day. She’d never allowed herself to think about this kind of relationship before. She was fine reading it in her romance novels or watching it in rom-coms. To find it in real life was startling, but exciting.

And the sex?

Romance novels didn’t fully prepare me for how good it could all be.

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