Page 56 of A Small Town Spring

“Good,” he murmurs back.“I’ll be thinking of you as well.But this is your job.”

I want so very much to tell the job to fuck off and take Kingston home to ravish him.But he’s right.“Damn it.Fine.I’ll see you at the apartment.”

“Text me when you’re on your way.”

“All right.”

I hesitate.Am I allowed to kiss him now?Galia makes an impatient noise and I back away without touching him.“See you later.”

Three hours later,I’m in the elevator riding up to Kingston’s apartment.My face hurts from talking and smiling at people for hours, and my head hurts from too little food and too much alcohol.And Kingston didn’t reply to the text I sent him twenty minutes ago, telling him I was finally on my way home.

I have a key, so I let myself in.Except for a light left on over the stove, the apartment is dark.I pad through to Kingston’s room.The door is partially closed, but I see light coming from within.I tap, unsure of my welcome.

“Come in,” Kingston says, sounding sleepy.

“Are you awake?”

The sheets rustle as I walk through the door.The reading lamp on a swinging arm next to his bed is on the dimmest setting, so I can just make him out, shirtless and sitting up in the middle of the bed.“No,” he says dryly.“I’m asleep.”

I give him an apologetic smile.“That took way too long to get out of, so sorry.”

“Did you do your job?”

“Yes, but?—”

“Then you don’t have anything to be sorry for.”

I pause, then decide to take him at his word.“All right.”

We just look at each other for a minute.At this time yesterday, I would have bid him good night, then backed out of the room and gone to the couch, wishing for the hundredth time that I could share his bed.

But this is today.And today is the day Kingston told me he wanted me.Today is the day Kingston kissed me.

This might be my new favorite day.

“Can I?”I say finally, walking fully into the room and looking at the bed.

“Please,” he says, all formality, but with a rough edge underneath that sends my blood racing.

I peel off my outer layers, kick off my shoes.I pass through to his en suite bathroom, the only one in the apartment.I wash my hands and brush my teeth, take off my trousers, and come to the bed in my black T-shirt and black boxers.

I’ve slept in this bed before, when Kingston overrode my insistence that I sleep on the couch, and on a few occasions when I had to stay in the city while he was in Rosedale.It’s a comfortable bed, furnished in the same hotel-white sheets Kingston uses in Rosedale, sateen finish so soft it feels like silk.I’ve never been in the bed with Kingston, but there’s plenty of room for both of us.In fact, the bed holds us perfectly, as if it was waiting for us to come together all along.

Kingston lifts the sheets and I settle in next to him, close but not touching.It’s odd and familiar at the same time, because it’s Kingston, someone I’ve been hovering around for months, someone with whom I feel as safe and secure as a person can feel.

But he’s half naked under the sheets and he’s looking at me with carefully hungry eyes.He’s holding back, still, and it makes me wonder exactly how much he’s been holding back all these months that we’ve spent together, how much was going on under the surface that I didn’t see, or didn’t let myself see.

“Do you want to go to sleep?”I ask, suddenly uncertain of this new dynamic and my place in it.He said he wants me, but that doesn’t have to mean right this very second.

There’s a pause.“I bet you’re tired,” he says.His voice gives nothing away.It’s the same tone he uses when he wants me to eat something, or take a break from work, or come on a drive in his absurdly luxurious convertible.It’s Kingston’s taking-care-of-me voice.I’ve heard it before.And all the time he was using it, he wanted me, he says.

So he must want me now, too.

“I’m wired, actually,” I confess.“But I don’t want to keep you up.”I stop, realize how that sounds.“Any more than I already have.Don’t you have to go to the office tomorrow?”

“I do.A day full of meetings.And you have an enormous party in your honor to go to tomorrow night,” he reminds me.

Oh yeah.The opening.

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