Page 83 of Craving Cooper

“No, she couldn’t stand them,” he says, shaking his head. “She said they were boring, and dull, and old-fashioned.”

“Well… I like them.”

He chuckles. “So do I. But she definitely didn’t. Her feelings about them were so strong, one day she brought over a few paintings of her own and replaced my seascapes with her abstracts.”

“Couldn’t you stop her?”

“I wasn’t here. She’d insisted I should go grocery shopping, and that she didn’t want to come with me. I—I wasn’t entirely comfortable leaving her here by herself, but…” His voice fades and I look up at him.

“Did you have a premonition about what she might do?” I ask, smiling.

“Not in the slightest. It’s just that this is my space, and while I didn’t mind her coming over, I didn’t like the idea of her making herself too comfortable.”

“I see,” I murmur, wondering if he’s trying to tell me something. I’m too scared to ask, so I get us back to the story. “So, what did she do in your absence?”

“She’d obviously kept the paintings hidden in her car, and once I’d gone out, she brought them in and transformed my bedroom.”

“Why? I mean, couldn’t she just allow for a difference in tastes, and live with your seascapes while she was here?”

“No. It wasn’t just about the seascapes, you see. She’d given me a picture a few months before so I could hang it in the living room… only I’d hung it upside down.”

“That’s easily done with Meredith’s paintings, though, isn’t it?”

He laughs, making both of our bodies shake. “Yeah, it is, but at the time, it caused an enormous fight between us.”

“What happened when you got back from the grocery store and found she’d hung her paintings in here?”

I look up in time to see him shaking his head. “She was so pleased with what she’d done, but I wasn’t. I hated it.”

“Did you tell her?”

“Of course. I couldn’t live with it like it was, and I wasn’t about to take the paintings down every Sunday night when she left, and put them up again every Friday before she got here. Aside from the fact I knew I’d hang them the wrong way, I didn’t have the time or the energy. So, I told her I couldn’t live with it like that. I like things calm and peaceful, and she’d turned my bedroom into a maelstrom of clashing colors. It was hideous.”

“Did you use the word ‘hideous’?” I ask, trying not to smile.

“I think I might have done. I remember I told her it was my apartment, and I’d choose how to decorate it.”

“How did she take it?”

“She took down her paintings and slammed out, taking them with her, thank God. It took her two days to call me.”

“You didn’t call her?”

“No. Whenever we fought, she was always the one to call me.”

“Because you were too arrogant to pick up the phone?”

“Partly,” he says, smiling, and I smile back, admiring his honesty. “But it was also because she was the one who did the storming out, and because she was usually the one in the wrong.”

“Surely if you’d screwed up, though, you’d have gone after her and apologized, wouldn’t you?”

“No. I didn’t care enough to make the effort… and yes, I know that sounds conceited, but I’ve realized over the last few days how little she meant to me.”

He stares into my eyes and I stare back, remembering how he came to my apartment on the day of the Fall Festival… how he apologized, and said he wanted to make it up to me by taking me to dinner. A smile forms on my lips, unbidden, and I move a little closer to him, tracing a line of kisses across his chest.

I wanted to be the exception, and I guess I was… even if it didn’t feel that way at the time.

I glance down, amazed by how big his cock looks from this angle, but before I can reach down to touch, he grabs me and pulls me up his body, moving me on top of him.

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