Page 105 of Mate
He groans. “What was the other one?”
“You give me a tour of your shop.”
“Why do I always pick the less fun one?” He sighs, but we move to the couch and start a new puzzle. His ability to solve it hasn’t improved, which delights me.
“This must be so embarrassing for you.” I pat his back.
“What shall I do without this valuable life skill?”
I press my toes into the hard muscle of his thigh. Lay my head on his shoulder. Scribble, on twelve down,Rosicrucianism. I think about having this, but times twenty. Times one hundred. Times tens of thousands. When two people fall in love, how many nights do they spend together, doing absolutely nothing, before they’ve had their fill? How many silences and crosswords and mugs of tea do they share? What can Koen and I do, to get as many as—
“Don’t,” he murmurs into my hair, not even bothering to pretend to read the clues. Yanking me back to our agreement.
A moment out of time.
No before. No after. Just during.
“Don’t . . . show you up with my amazing vocabulary and language expertise?”
“Precisely.” He inhales deeply from the hollow at the curve of my neck, arms looping around me. He does it again as I pull new words out of the page.Litigation.Boulevard.Deck. Yorkshire.He touches me, and yet he doesn’t. As close as possible, without breaking the one rule we abide by.
It’s nice.
I would give anything for a million more nights of this. Or one.
But I’m getting sleepy.
And he is, too.
And then the fever starts.
CHAPTER 26
Every single time he sets a hand to his cock, he will have this moment in his mind.
IGO TO MY ROOM, AND WE BOTH KNOW WHAT FOR.
Just like we both know what it means when I come back flushed and sweaty, wearing one of his T- shirts and nothing else.
“Didn’t work, huh?”
I didn’t get a good look at him yesterday. Tonight, the physical proof that he wants this just as much as I do is aggressivelythere, a ridge stretching his jeans in a way that must be painful. Looking away doesn’t even occur to me.
“I tried to . . .” It’s embarrassing. I’d have thought a piece of information like this one couldn’t be waterboarded out of me, but here I am. Giving it out for free. “I tried to lick one of your worn shirts. Around the neck.”
I force myself to hold his stare. Wait for him to burst out laughing, mock me, but his eyes are darker than ever.
This is the most unpredictable mix of awkward, devastating, and mind addling. Needing something that I barely know how to ask for. Standing in front of someone who instinctively understands but isn’t allowed to offer it to me. How do we talk about this?
Dear Koen:
Roses are red
Violets are blue
I’m about to undergo a period of enhanced sexual receptivity in which I will require the assistance of a compatible partner
Could that perhaps be you?
