Page 31 of One In Vermillion

“Yes.”

“Okay, I’m not happy you’re not at the Big Chef, and I want an explanation for why Cash was here . . .”

I undid the belt on my robe and let it drop.

“We should talk about that but not now,” he said and pulled me to him and kissed me, letting his hands drop down to my naked ass in his classic first move to get laid.

I pulled back a little. “You didn’t really think I’d fool around with Cash, did you?”

“I don’t want to talk about Cash,” he said and pulled me toward the bed.

There was a slight pause when he looked at all that white bedding and said, “Where’s the shower?” and I had to admit I didn’t know, but we found it behind a door next to the door to the toilet and he pulled me in with him and hit me with a lot of soapy foreplay before he showed me what he needed a long stretch of counter for. Then we staggered back to that bed and settled in under the covers and he said, “Hell, maybe I’ll move in here. How much is this place?” I told him, and he said, “Maybe not.”

“Anemone’s giving it to me awhile for free,” I told him.

He was looking at the ceiling, a line furrowed on his forehead. “Why?”

“Because I need some time to figure things out. And finish the copy edit.” I was going to add, “that’s private and quiet”, but it doesn’t get much more private and quiet than the Big Chef except when someone was wielding a sledgehammer, so I just added, “Alone.”

He went up on his elbow to see my face. “Figure out what things? You and me?”

“No. I know you and me, I love you and me, I am not considering anything but you and me for the vast foreseeable future.”

“Then why—”

“Because living together isn’t working,” I said, going for brutally honest. “It isn’t working for me, inyourplace, followingyourrules, bending toyourpreferences. You have a right to insist on that, and I have a right to leave.”

He frowned at me. “What do you mean, bending to my preferences? I told you, anytime you said no, I’d stop. Or I’d do whatever you want.”

“Not sex,” I said, exasperated. “The sex is great. But everything is not sex. I’ve never said no because I’ve never wanted to say no. Well, except for last night and that was because you were being a pain in the ass, not because I wasn’t up for it. But I do want a blue bedroom. And now I want a bed like this and a tub like the one in there. And maybe a kitchen because I might want to learn to cook. And I want time to myself, to think, to be alone, not because I don’t want to be with you, but because I don’t want to be with anybody right now.”

“Okay.” He took a deep breath. “If you want a blue bedroom, we’ll paint the bedroom blue. I asked every guy on the force today and not one of them knew what color the walls of his bedroom were. Although, I bet Bartlett does. If you’d been done painting before I got home, I never would have noticed. It was bad timing.”

“That is not making your case stronger.”

He sighed. “I don’t see why you had to move here to tell me this.”

I went up on one elbow, too, so I was nose-to-nose with him. “Itoldyou this. You told me you didn’t want your bedroom to be blue. Not our bedroom, your bedroom. Which was fair, it is your bedroom. Not mine. Not ours. This is mine, temporarily. It’s doesn’t have blue walls, but it is silent. As in just me.”

“And Cash.”

“Oh, for the love of God,” I said, flopping back onto the sheets. “I told him not to come back. Ever.”

“But you’re going to work with him on the factory.”

“Of course, I’m going to work with him on the factory. There are papers there. It’s an amazing space. And he wants me to do it and he’s going to pay me.”

“Yeah, he wants you to do it because he wants you back. He was acting pretty pumped up when I got here.”

I rolled my head to look at him. “So? It’s still something I want to do. I want to know about that factory. Do you really think I’m going to let him seduce me?”

“No,” he said, and his voice was sure, and I relaxed a little. “But I do think you’re not going to be in my bed tonight when I get home and you’re going to be spending the day with him tomorrow and the day after that and I don’t like it.”

I felt tired, and not just because of all the athletic sex. “So what is it you want me to do?”

“Tell him no, you won’t work on the factory with him, and come back to the Big Chef.”

“No.”

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