There it was. I grinned, realizing she was oblivious to the fact that with that question, she’d finally slipped up. Despite our proximity in the past few nights, Lia had kept a certain distance. She was noticeably antsy about saying anything too familiar – anything that might sound like something a girlfriend would say.
It was cute, especially since she thought she was being slick about it.
There was no use of the words “we” or “us" – it was only, “Are you hungry?” or “Should I grab dinner?” There was also her worst offense: “I’m going to go grocery shopping today. I can pick up extra food if you’re interested in me cooking dinner for you tonight.”
It was a hilariously robotic interlude to our otherwise intimate routine. We’d had more sex in the past three days than I had in the months before I met her. I showered with her the past two mornings. I soaped her up from head to toe and obviously spent extra time on her tits. At night, she sat on my lap while we watched TV and I spread her legs so I could finger-fuck her at my leisure.
And when we went to bed, she laid on my chest.
Last night, when she woke up out of nowhere, I asked her what was wrong and she whispered to me her adorably stupid dream. Something about getting an angry letter and an entire shipment of truffles back from an unhappy customer. She let me kiss her for several minutes before we drifted back to sleep.
To be clear, I was generally never eager to use the words “intimate” or “routine” to describe anything in my life but there was no denying what the past few days were.
Yet there was no mention of “we” till this morning.
Just to be a dick, I made sure to repeat it back to her.
“Yes. Same as we had yesterday,” I smirked as I sat at the counter in just my sweats, reveling in how she paused and blushed before going to work on breakfast.
It was a quarter to nine by the time we finished eating and I probably should’ve been thinking more seriously about getting to work. But then she started making chocolate and suddenly, there was another thing I hadn’t seen her do yet. Apparently, my mind was collecting images of her like baseball cards. There were several I had more than one of, many I fantasized about and apparently a good handful that I didn’t even know I wanted till I saw it.
So I stayed another hour watching her do things I didn’t really understand. Something about tempering chocolate. Some other thing about cooling it. I didn’t care what the terminology was – I just enjoyed watching Lia drift away to a happy place I wish I had. It was like I wasn’t even there as she leaned over to carefully paint each round mold with a small brush and what looked like paint. Occasionally, as she drew small, identical strokes over the rows upon rows of tiny canvases, I heard her give a little hum of contentment.
And though her top was starting to slip irresistibly off her shoulder, I closed my eyes for a second. I wanted to feel what she was feeling. Even if it was a borrowed feeling, I wouldn’t mind at least a taste of it.
“What are you doing?” Lia giggled. “Meditating?”
I opened my eyes. “No.”
“You should try it. You look stressed out.”
“There’s no way I could look stressed out right now. I’m watching your clothes fall off your body while you make chocolate. This might actually be the best thing I’ve ever laid eyes on.”
She giggled as she poured an abundance of chocolate over her mold. Flipping it over, she held it in the air, letting the excess drip down like threads onto a pan. “I have no doubt you’re pretty pleased in this particular moment,” she smirked, “especially since I don’t have the hands to fix my top.”
“Just the way I like it.”
“Mm-hmm.” Her voice was rich, velvety. It put me in a trance. “But that doesn’t mean there isn’t something bothering you right now. Underneath everything.” She peered up to catch the furrow in my brow. “Don’t worry. I’m not asking you to tell me. I’m just giving a light suggestion that you meditate before work.”
“You’re kidding. Do you actually do that shit?”
“Not the way you’re imagining it,” she said, sliding the painted shell of the truffles into her freezer. “My form of meditation is something I do every night. Not the past few nights but I usually do when I don’t have guests, which of course is most of the time,” she laughed softly to herself.
“Alright, enough mystery. What is this secret practice of yours that you want me to do?”
“Take a bath.”
I paused. “You’re serious?”
Her eyes were bright as she nodded. “And you have to do it right. With salts and oils and all that good stuff. Otherwise you’re just sitting in water.”
I smiled. “Is that what you were doing the night I met you?”
“Yes.”
“Goddammit.” I groaned when I thought again about that night. As if feeling summoned, my dick hardened. I had to be grinning from ear to ear as Lia came right to me, straddling me and grinding so gently on my cock that if someone looked through the window they wouldn’t think she was moving. But she was because I could feel it – every pump of her thighs, every throb of her pussy through the cotton of her panties. Grabbing two handfuls of her ass, I kissed down her shoulder till her top fell off one breast. My laugh was low and languid as she let out a sound that was part-moan, part-whimper.
“Don’t turn me on right now, Lukas, I’m trying to help you.”