Page 37 of Desirous

After a few minutes of silence where the only sound in the bedroom is our breathing, I ease out of her and lie on the bed. She turns to face me and when I turn my head, I see her smiling.

“What’s that for?”

“Uh, great sex makes me smile?” she answers with a giggle.

“Well, then I expect you to be happy from this point on because of all the things I can deliver in this world, great sex is at the top of the list.”

That gets me an eye roll. Resting her chin on my chest, she says, “You know, that coming from most men would sound like the biggest ego trip I’ve ever heard.”

Curious if we’re about to have a fight right after an incredible round of sex, I lift my arms behind my head and stare down at her. “Oh yeah?”

She doesn’t back down, clearly wanting to make a point. “Yeah.”

“And with me?” I ask, sensing I may not like her answer.

With a tiny smile I know she’s trying to temper, she says, “Not so much, strangely enough. Maybe it’s because I’m crazy about you, but you never sound like an egomaniac when you say things like that.”

“That’s because I can deliver the goods. I told you I’m good at two things: food and fucking.”

“And everything else is a crapshoot,” she says, repeating my own words I said to her the first time we slept together.

Lowering my arms, I pull her to me and kiss her mouth. “Maybe not everything. I might be getting good at this being a one-woman man thing.”

“Oh yeah? Who told you that?” she asks with a sharpness in her tone I know is more of her acting like she did on the reality show.

“Nobody. Just a feeling I’m getting.”

“Well, if I’m being truthful, you are pretty good at that. And making up when you hurt someone. Along with sex and food.”

“Good. I like that.”

Kat narrows her eyes to slits and stares down at me. “But you can’t rest on your laurels with being a boyfriend. It’s like food and sex. You have to make sure you stay on the top of your game.”

Her use of that word makes me realize neither one of us has ever said it before. Boyfriend. I’m someone’s boyfriend. I’ve never been anyone’s boyfriend.

Maybe I’ll be good at that too.

“I’ll do my best,” I say with a laugh.

With a sigh, Kat lowers her head to my chest and presses her cheek to the spot above my heart. “I know you will.”

And with that, she drifts off to sleep as I enjoy the reality of being the man who’s crazy about her. She was a stranger to me and then an enemy before she became someone so important to me that I couldn’t just let her disappear from my life.

So this is what it’s like to finally be in love.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Alex

A knockon my door rouses me from my daydreams about what Kat and I will do tonight. She’s only been gone for a few minutes, so maybe she came back instead of going to her apartment.

I hurry to the door, thrilled to spend a little more time with her before I have to go to the studio in a couple hours. I’ll make her breakfast and feed her in bed. Crepes with bourbon instead of the brandy the recipe calls for. I think I have apricot preserves that will go nicely with them.

By the time I get to the door, I’ve got the entire breakfast menu planned out in my head. She’ll be so surprised, but that’s a good thing. I can’t wait to see the look on her face.

I fling open the door and see not Kat but my friend Evan. “Hey! I wasn’t expecting to see you standing in my hallway. What’s up?”

He waves a piece of paper in front of my face and walks past me into my apartment. “I’ve got the results of the tests youwanted me to run. I was hoping you’d be up and not laying around in bed with some woman at this hour.”

---