6. SIX
SIX
Brooklyn
Eight days after Caleb Wolfe slept in my bed for the first time, he told me to keep Thursday night free.
I spent most of the week braced for the catch.
There’s always a catch. I’ve spent my entire adult life on the supply side of nice things — finding them, sourcing them, making them appear for other people at the exact right moment — so I know what they cost and I know who pays.
When a man like Caleb says keep Thursday free, the part of my brain responsible for self-preservation starts doing math before he finishes the sentence.
“Where are we going?” I asked. We were in my kitchen — which is to say we were standing three feet apart because my kitchen doesn’t allow for more than three feet in any direction — and he was leaning against my counter eating leftover pad thai with a fork.
“You’ll see.”
“I don’t like surprises.”
“I know.”
“So why won’t you tell me?”
He ate another bite of pad thai. Looked at me the way he looks at everything. Gave me nothing.
“You’re infuriating,” I said. “You know that? You are a deeply infuriating man. Matteo told me you once went three full days at the club without speaking to anyone and Theo had to physically confirm you were alive.”
“Four days.”
“That’s not the flex you think it is!”
Thursday came. He turned up at the end of my shift the same as always, coat on, hands in pockets, waiting by the closet. But instead of walking me out, he walked me back in.
The main floor had emptied. Lights dropped to the low after-hours gold that made everything look warmer and more expensive than it had any right to be.
I’d watched the last member leave at twelve-forty.
I’d watched the jazz pianist — a man named Earl who’d been playing the club since before Danny bought it and who had strong opinions about Monk that he shared whether you asked or not — pack up his sheet music and leave.
Except Earl was back at the piano. Playing something slow, something I didn’t know, unbothered, like he’d never left.
“Caleb.” I stopped walking. “The club’s closed.”
“It’s closed to them.” He lifted my coat off my shoulders. Matteo appeared in his vest with a towel over one shoulder and a look on his face that I will never forgive him for. The look said: I know everything. I have always known everything. I am going to enjoy this more than you are.
“Not a word,” I told him.
“I haven’t said anything.” He took my coat. “You look nice.”
“I’m in my work clothes.”
“And you look nice in them.” He turned to hang the coat and I saw him mouth something at Caleb over my shoulder. I couldn’t tell what it was. Caleb’s jaw tightened a quarter-inch, which meant it was either funny or terrible. With Matteo, those were the same thing.
There was one table set in the middle of the empty floor.
White cloth, the good glasses — the crystal ones I’d been afraid to carry for the first three months of this job because they cost more per stem than my weekly grocery budget — and on it was a collection of things that made no sense together and made complete sense to me.
Dumplings from the place by my first apartment in Sunset Park.
I recognized the container — the same greasy brown paper bag they’d been using for fifteen years, the kind that goes transparent at the bottom by the time you get it home.
I’d mentioned that place once, on a walk, at one in the morning, mostly to fill the silence, telling him about how I used to buy four for a dollar and eat them on the stoop of a building I didn’t live in because I didn’t have a stoop of my own.
Gas-station coffee candy. The specific brand — Bali’s Best, the ones in the gold wrapper that taste like someone described coffee to a person who’d never had coffee and that person made a candy about it.
I’d told him about those on a different night, embarrassed about it, the way you’re embarrassed to admit that a forty-cent candy from a 7-Eleven is one of your comfort foods because it’s what you ate when you were seventeen and broke and working a counter job and the gas station next door was the only place open when your shift ended at midnight.
And a slice of lemon cake. From a diner I’d worked at in Sheepshead Bay the year I turned eighteen.
I’d described it once — the too-sweet icing, the slightly dry crumb, how it wasn’t good cake by any standard that mattered but it was mine, it was the thing the cook saved for me at the end of a shift, and eating it on the bus home was the closest thing to being taken care of I’d had at that age.
I’d told Caleb this in the dark, half-asleep, mostly to myself.
He’d filed it. He’d filed all of it and then he’d gone and found it.
I stood there looking at a table that was just the scavenged good parts of a not-very-good life, arranged on white linen, and I didn't know what to do with my face.
Caleb pulled out the chair.
“You drove to the Bronx for a pear,” he said. “Sit down.”
Matteo served. When he set the glass down he caught my eye and said, very quietly, “The dumplings are cold. He drove to Sunset Park for them and they’ve been sitting here for forty minutes. I offered to reheat them and he said you’d want them the way they came.”
“They’re perfect,” I said, and my voice did something I hadn’t authorized it to do.
* * *
He took me home after. Four flights up. The door.
The chain — which he slid into place the way he did every night now.
Quick. Firm. Tug to test it. Done. He never made it a thing.
He just did it, the same way he checked exits and put himself between me and the street.
Another silent item on the list he kept for me.
I should’ve been exhausted. It was past two. Instead I was wired, restless, buzzing with cold dumplings, cheap candy, and something hotter I didn’t want to name.
So I didn’t. I crossed the room and kissed him.
He kissed me back — slow and deep, his hand finding the back of my neck like it belonged there. I let him have my mouth for a minute, then planted both hands on his chest and pushed. He went, because he let me.
“Sit,” I said.
He looked at me.
“On the bed. Sit down.”
He sat on the edge, hands resting on his thighs, watching me with an expression I’d never seen before — raw, open, and costing him. A man who controlled everything, choosing to hand me the reins.
I stepped between his knees and started unbuttoning his shirt. My hands weren’t steady. I didn’t hide it. Button by button, I opened him up, then got frustrated with his tactical belt.
He reached down and undid it one-handed, eyes never leaving my face.
I dropped to my knees, kissed his throat, felt his pulse hammering under my lips. I dragged my mouth down his chest, tasting warm skin and coarse hair, then traced the scar across his ribs with my tongue. His abs clenched hard.
His hand hovered near my head, then fisted at his side.
“You can touch me,” I murmured against his stomach.
“I’m fine.”
“Your hands are shaking, Caleb.”
He exhaled roughly. “If I touch you right now, I won’t stop. I’ll take over.”
I looked up at him. “Good.”
I got the rest of our clothes off. His boots took forever — I had to kneel between his legs to unlace them, which made his breathing turn ragged. When we were finally naked, I pushed him back onto the bed and climbed on top.
I took my time, dragging my pussy along his thick, hard cock, teasing us both until he was gripping the sheets. Then I sank down onto him slowly, inch by inch, until he was buried deep inside me.
“Fuck,” he groaned, head falling back. “Brooklyn… you feel so good.”
The angle was perfect. I rolled my hips, grinding on him, finding the spot that made my toes curl. I rode him slow and deep, savoring every thick inch, every ragged breath he took.
His hands stayed at his sides until I grabbed them and put them on my hips. “Here.”
His fingers dug in hard, holding me but not directing. The restraint in him — this enormous, powerful man letting me use him — was the hottest thing I’d ever felt.
I rode him faster, breasts bouncing, one hand braced on his chest. “You’re so deep like this,” I gasped. “I can feel all of you.”
His control finally snapped. He sat up suddenly, locked both arms around my back, and drove up into me hard. His mouth latched onto my neck, sucking and biting as he fucked me from below, hips snapping up to meet every downward thrust.
“Mine,” he growled against my skin. “This pussy is mine.”
I came hard, crying out into his shoulder, clenching around him as pleasure ripped through me. He followed right after with a rough, broken groan, burying himself deep and spilling inside me while his fingers dug bruises into my hips.
We collapsed together in my too-small bed, tangled and sweaty. His feet hung off the end, one arm locked around me like he had no intention of letting go anytime soon.
“You’re quiet,” he said eventually, lips brushing my hair.
“Don’t ruin it,” I whispered.
His chest vibrated with that almost-laugh, and his arm tightened around me.
I fell asleep pressed against him — warm, safe, and full in every possible way — with the chain on the door and his heartbeat steady under my cheek.