“What’d you get?” he asked, pouring a glass of whiskey for himself, then putting vodka in another glass, presumably for me, reached into the fridge, and got some cranberry juice he had seen me pick up earlier.
“Brownies and cupcakes. You’ll just have to run an extra mile or two tomorrow to work it off.”
With that, I cooked. He moved around me, pulling tags off things, unwrapping and unwrapping other stuff, helping me set up house while we casually kept up conversation about the town, about the job openings Jules had emailed to me (along with the information on how to get into said email) for to look into when I was ready.
I had time, he reminded me. I had a nice nest egg to live off of for a while if I didn’t find anything I liked right away.
“I think I will go stir crazy if I don’t work,” I admitted. “I have always worked. I don’t think I’d know what to do with myself if I didn’t work.”
“Draw. Paint. Do shit that makes you happy.”
“Work made me…”
“Secure,” he cut me off. “Work made you secure, not happy. Some people find it easy to confuse the two.”
He wasn’t exactly wrong about that. I had, somewhere along the line, started to confuse security with joy. Because it meant I would never have to go to bed hungry again. It meant I would never have to wear hand-me-downs or clothes from the Good Will. It meant that no one could ever confuse me with that little beat-down girl I had been growing up.
Because it felt good to have a full stomach, to be able to afford whatever I wanted, to be respected.
But that wasn’t exactly happiness, was it?
Contentedness, maybe.
Security, absolutely.
But not happiness.
If you asked, I couldn’t say when the last time was that I was truly happy.
Honestly, the closest I had come was when he held me in the cabin, when he held me up when I was drunk, when he pried my walls out of his way so he could see inside.
Little tastes of something I would never have again.
That thought seemed to assure that I wouldn’t know much happiness for a while.
“I plan to draw and paint,” I told him. “I got some supplies. I think there is a craft store a few blocks away too. I can stock up if I don’t find a job right away.”
“Good. That’s good,” he said in that soft voice of his. And it was weak and needy of me, but his approval made my belly go liquid. “Smells good,” he told me half an hour later as he held out my new plates to me to fill up.
“Fuck, duchess,” he said after cleaning his plate for the second time, rubbing a hand over his stomach, filling me with a surge of primal, feminine pride at having filled him up, given him that small bit of enjoyment. “That was banging even without cheese.”
“And with all the veggies,” I added, smiling.
“That too,” he agreed. “Nah, leave it. I’ll deal with it later,” he told me when I went to reach for the plates. At my confused look, he shrugged. “Got another few Fast & Furious movies to finish, don’t we?”
And so we did.
And so I had to admit after the sixth movie that he was right; the couch wasn’t exactly that comfortable. But it did have the advantage of being nice and small. Cozy. Meaning the entire four hours we sat there, we were touching from shoulder to knee.
It had been wreaking havoc on my system since the moment we sat down.
When my behind couldn’t take the hard cushions anymore, and I pulled my legs up to sit cross-legged, my knee went up on his thigh.
There was a second of nothing, just a tense silence, just me wondering if I should pull away.
But then his wide palm clamped down on my kneecap, squeezing, and then staying put.
It wasn’t until the credits rolled that my head finally turned, eyes questioning. Feeling them, his head turned.
The guards were fully gone.
All that was left was pure, undiluted need, something I felt acutely within myself as well.
His hand slid slowly up my thigh, curving outward at the last possible second to sink into my hip, pulling, as his other hand rose to slide around my neck, pulling as well.
There wasn’t even a hint of resistance, of second thoughts, of logic as I lifted up and moved to straddle him.
His arm went around my lower back, crushing me to his chest as my lips pressed down on his.
In that moment, everything melted away.
Everything.
My past.
His.
The guards we both tried to hold onto when it most suited our insecurities.
The fact that we both knew this was fleeting, that this moment, this night, this was all we could ever have.
All that existed was the here and now.