Page 74 of Affinity

He watched her unpack the bags on the breakfast bar. Her delighted smile as she closed her eyes and took a deep breath in to appreciate the aroma of the food. He appreciated her. Her zest. With all her girly giggles Chloe was the shiny bright star in his life that he’d never thought he needed until Jesse brought her into it.

“It smells so good!”

“I went to Chez Moi.”

And he’d gotten all her favorite things. Onion soup with extra cheese melted on top, endive and goat cheese salad, foie gras, coq au vin, and because Chloe could never choose just one, three desserts—chocolate mousse, creme brûlée, and an apple tart.

“Taylor!” She turned around and flung her arms around his neck.

He held her tightly to his chest, with the bouquet of flowers hidden behind his back. Jesse called her little rose and every girl loved them, didn’t they? Taylor went to the flower shop to get them and he’d never been inside a flower shop once in his entire life. He chose blooms in shades of creamy white and the palest pink to dusty rose and the deepest burgundy, because they were the most beautiful. And that’s how he saw her.

Would she laugh at him? Were his romantic gestures too cliché? He was a thirty-one-year-old tatted-up English guy who played guitar in a band. He didn’t know shit about hearts and butterflies. Or picking out flowers. Unless Becky Brinderman counted, and every day he forced himself to forget how that turned out, he’d never done this before. Never had to. Women threw their panties at him for chrissakes.

Chloe tipped her head back to look up at him. He lowered his head and kissed her. It felt different this time and Taylor couldn’t come up with why that was. He handed her the flowers. “For you.”

Her face lit up. She was beaming.

Note to self: Cliché never goes out of style—at least not when it comes to flowers.

“Oh, I love roses! Thank you, Tay.” She stood on her tiptoes to kiss him and went to get a vase for the flowers. Her shirt raised up as she reached into a cabinet, teasing him with the dimples above her heart-shaped ass. His dick twitched.

He was so fucked.

She glanced back at the tiny two-top table off the kitchen area and frowned. “I know!” Her expression changed in an instant. “We can have a picnic on the floor!”

And that’s how they ended up here on her living room floor, drinking wine and lying on a blanket in front of a fireplace alight with candles. Taylor had his back propped against the sofa with his legs stretched out in front of him. Chloe had her head in his lap, staring at the flickering flames as he stroked her hair.

“Tay.” Chloe turned in his lap to look at him. She looked so serious, which was so not like her. “I really want us—you and me.” She tugged on the ends of his hair is if she needed to get his attention. She already had it. “Jesse. The three of us together.”

Fucked, indeed.

“As do I, Chloe.” He leaned over and kissed her forehead. “And you have us. We’re all together…”

She sat up on her elbows. “I mean I want it to really work. I want us to be happy.”

I thought we were.

Then she scrambled to get up. “I’ll be right back.”

Chloe dashed down a hallway and returned with a book in her hands before he could blink. She sat beside him on the blanket. “I was reading all about polyamory online and I got this book for us.” She handed it to him.

He couldn’t help but smile. This was his Chloe after all, the girl who researched MMF threesomes on porn sites so she would be prepared for when they had sex.

Taylor pulled her onto his lap, held her face in his hands, and kissed her. “Baby, we don’t need some book to tell us how to love each other.” His thumbs skimmed along her jaw. “We just do.”

“I know, but there’s some good advice in there about jealousy and making it work and the outside world…” He kissed her again. Not to keep her quiet, but because this rare, exquisite slip of a girl genuinely cared. It became clear to him that she had from the very beginning.

“We’ll figure it out.”

She nodded. “Will you read it?”

“If you want me to, Chloe.”

“You called me baby.”

Taylor dropped his forehead to rest against hers and smiled. “I did.”

Her fingers traced back and forth over his shoulders. “Did I ever tell you I had the hugest crush on you when I was in high school?”

---