Page 40 of Rogue

I sit up and slap her ass lightly. “Come on. Dino, the head chef at the restaurant learned everything he knows from my mom. And I just happen to have a whole jar of her pasta sauce downstairs in the fridge.”

She rises, moving the way water moves at its prettiest. “I could eat.”

“Then hurry up and get dressed before I eat you,” I say.

“Nah, let’s just have some pasta.”

She gives me one of the heart-pounding smiles as she slides off the bed and puts her dress back on. And I regret suggesting it the moment her perfect curves disappear.

But it’s fine. Because we’re coming right back here afterwards. And then I might need a gun to my head before I let her get dressed again.

16

Melody

Maybe I messed up coming here tonight to throw myself at him for a night of passion meant to let me forget everything else. Mostly because now, I don’t ever want to leave. But also because I’ve done all I could, short of telling him straight out, what a slut I am. And between his ultra-religious mother and dead ex, I’ve just filled the only space left for me in his life and there’s no place to go from here.

“You thinking about something important?” he asks, looking back at me as he takes a box of spaghetti from the pantry.

He only put on his jeans to come down here, no shirt or shoes, and the muscles in his back are rippling like sunlight dancing on the forest floor.

“I can make the pasta,” I say and move away from the stove where the water for it is already starting to bubble in a stainless-steel pot. The sauce next to it is almost heated too.

He narrows his eyes at me, smiling lightly. “You got any Italian in you?”

I shake my head. “Only some English and French, as far as I know.”

“Then I’ll make the pasta,” he says and brushes against me to get to the boiling water.

“What is this? Some kind of snobbery?” I ask in mock indignation.

He grins. “Yeah, definitely. But you can thank me later when the spaghetti isn’t all soggy and gross.”

He dumps the spaghetti into the boiling water and gives the sauce a stir.

I don’t know if it’s the kisses, or the orgasms he gave me or just the lateness on top of not sleeping well for the last three days, but I suddenly feel like we’ve made dinner together just like this thousands of times before.

He’s so easy to talk to. So easy to smile for. So nice to touch or just look at. Or kiss. Or fuck. All those things seem like I’ve done them a million times before.

“You’re definitely pondering something heavy,” he says, holding up the wooden spoon he’s been stirring the sauce with. “Come taste this instead.”

I do as he asks. “Wow, that’s the best red sauce I ever tasted.”

And it’s not an exaggeration, not in the slightest.

“Red sauce?” he asks, eyeing me sideways. “Now that’s the whole reason you’re not making pasta right there.”

I smack him on the chest, grab the wooden spoon and eat some more of the sauce.

If I don’t tell him who I was, we can have a million more dinners just like this. And everything in between too.

“Save some for later,” he says and takes the spoon from me. “We’ll need plates, they’re in that cupboard.”

That’s what I’m gonna do. Just not tell him. Then I don’t have to be the slut ever again.

He drains the pasta and I set the table for us. There’s only the one long table in here made of light brown wood and lined with at least twenty matching chairs. I claim a corner of it for us.

“So, what made me so irresistible to you tonight?” he asks as he ladles the pasta onto my plate.

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