Page 84 of Madam, May I

Remembering that, she stiffened her back, squared her shoulders, and locked her knees. There was no shame in choosing herself.

* * *

As soon as Lo opened the door, Desdemona stepped into his embrace. She didn’t care how it looked or how he interpreted it. She wanted—needed—to be wrapped in his goodness. His sweetness. His kindness. Everything.

“Awww,” he said, pressing a kiss to her temple as he walked them back into his apartment to close the door. “Bad day?”

“Horrible day,” she said, snuggling her face against his neck. “That’s why I’m so late.”

Plum was finally checked in to a ninety-day program in Connecticut. Desdemona had driven her there herself, never once leaving her side. Now all she could do was hope—and pray—for the best.

“Heal me?” she asked, tilting her head back as she rose up on her toes and kissed his mouth.

He rocked their bodies back and forth. “‘When I get that feeling, I want sexual healing,’” he sang near her ear. It was deep, low, and on key.

Desdemona leaned back. “Is there anything you don’t do well?” she asked teasingly.

“You tell me,” Lo said.

“Not a thing,” she said. “You’realmostready for your finals.”

“Almost?” he balked, backing them over to the sofa bed that was pulled out and made.

She straddled his lap after he sat down. “The Perfect Lover is a weighty title, you know?” she asked, with a smile she tried to hide as she playfully massaged his shoulders.

“So is claiming to be a woman perfect enough in bed to teach him to be the Perfect Lover,” Loren countered, chuckling as he snaked his hands under her dress to cup her soft buttocks.

“I haven’t even taught you all my tricks, lightweight,” she teased, removing his glasses to toss onto the bed as she studied his eyes with her own.

They’re beautiful.

“What more is there?” he asked.

Oh, you beautiful innocent.

“We’ll get to that,” she said, deciding not to overload his mind.

“Okay,” Lo acquiesced.

Desdemona smiled at him as she dug her fingers through his wild and curly Afro to stroke his scalp.

He reached to pick up a small wooden box from a wooden slab serving as a shelf on the brick wall behind the sofa. He removed a prerolled blunt and a lighter.

“You smoke?” she asked in surprise.

“To relax. Maybe once a week, sometimes not at all,” he explained, lighting the end of the blunt. “Only weed. No lacing. No chemicals. Only quality herb.”

“Every time I think I have you figured out you peel back another layer, Loren Palmer,” she said.

He took a long toke and then released the silvery smoke through his nostrils before offering her the blunt. She shook her head. “I don’t partake,” she said.

“Cool,” Lo said. “I got something for you to relax to anyway.”

He reached across the bed for a remote and pressed a button. Moments later, the first sweet refrain of Chopin’s “Nocturne, Opus 55, Number 1” began to play.

She gasped and then smiled sweetly in surprise. “You remembered me telling you I love this?” she asked.

He nodded as he took another toke. “It’s pretty dope, actually,” he said.

---