Chapter 16
sixteen
. . .
Morning came in pale gold pieces across Micah’s bed.
Not all at once. Just enough light slipped through the gaps in the curtains to turn the room from shadow into discovery while I lay there with one arm tucked under the pillow and one bare leg tangled in cool sheets that still smelled like him.
For a minute, I didn’t move.
I just stayed where I was and listened to my body.
Tender. Warm. Satisfied in that deep, heavy way that only came after sex so good it reached places in me I had been neglecting on purpose.
Damn.
My lips still felt used. My thighs still carried the pleasant ache of being spread, held, pushed open, stroked through until my body had given up every elegant idea it started the evening with.
And lower still, there was that soft, worked-over soreness that told me the night had not ended where most nights did.
Because it hadn’t. Sleep had come in pieces.
So had the night.
At some point after the first time, I had ridden him slow and deep while his hands spread hard over my ass, holding and guiding and admiring all at once, until one sharp slap made me gasp and lose the rhythm for half a second.
Later, somewhere deeper in the dark, he had taken my nipple into his mouth while his hand moved between my thighs, and I learned exactly how little the body cared for clocks once wanting got fed properly.
I smiled into the pillow.
Then the smell hit me.
Butter first.
Coffee next.
Then something warmer, richer, unmistakably breakfast.
That got my eyes open.
I turned onto my back slowly and looked around his room.
My dress was folded over the chair by the window, which struck me as both sweet and dangerous.
My heels sat neatly beside it. My jewelry had been gathered onto the dresser instead of left wherever I had abandoned it in the dark.
His side of the bed was empty, the sheets pulled back and cooled.
The condo was quiet in that early-morning way that made every small sound matter.
A cabinet door.
A pan on the stove.
The low hum of the refrigerator.
The city waking up somewhere below us without knowing what had happened in one of its rooms.
I sat up and hissed softly at the pull between my thighs.
“Worth it,” I muttered to nobody.
A black Sunspel T-shirt waited folded at the foot of the bed, and that got me too. Soft cotton, expensive in that understated way men with real taste understood. I pulled it on and let it fall over my body, the hem grazing high on my thighs.
It smelled like him, but not the way I had expected.
Not cologne exactly.
Whatever warm, expensive, faintly addictive thing I had been catching on him all week was partly his fabric softener. Something soft and fresh and masculine tucked into the cotton itself.
That realization should not have done anything to me.
It did.
I had fallen asleep naked after our rinse-off shower, loose and satisfied and too tired to do more than crawl back into his bed. Now his shirt made me feel held in a different way, and that was almost worse.
I padded barefoot toward the bathroom first, because there were limits to how casually I could greet daylight after the kind of night we had had.
And there he was again.
In the details.
The new toothbrush still in its box. The fresh washcloth. The bath sheet folded on the shelf. Gentle soap at the sink and in the shower. He had thought of all of it. Thought of me. Not in some performative way either. In the quiet, useful way that mattered more.
I brushed my teeth like a civilized woman because I could. Washed my face properly. Ran wet fingers over my edges, though calling them decent afterward was generous considering the little curls trying to live their own life around my temples.
Then I looked up and caught myself in the mirror.
My mouth looked fuller. My skin looked better than it had any business looking on a workday morning. My whole face had that softened, satisfied look of a woman who had been pleased with intention and then slept in the middle of it.
My phone sat charging on the bathroom counter where I had plugged it in sometime in the night after we rinsed off all the evidence of ourselves and went right back to each other. I reached for it and saw the time.
Later than I liked.
Not disastrous.
But late enough that getting downtown, getting dressed, and getting into work on time would require a speed I had no desire to perform.
I opened a new text to Zaria.
Running behind this morning. Push my first meeting back thirty and send me the revised deck when you get in. I’ll be there soon.
She replied almost immediately.
Got it. You good?
I stared at that for one second.
Apparently my lateness had to have a story.
I’m good. Just moving slow this morning.
That was true enough to let stand.
When I stepped into the hall again, the smell of breakfast hit harder. I followed it straight into the kitchen and stopped at the threshold.
Micah stood at the stove in gray sweatpants hanging low on his hips and nothing else.
Bare back.
Broad shoulders.
Muscles moving easy under brown skin every time he reached for something on the counter.
The sight of a grown man in his own kitchen making breakfast shirtless should not have had as much effect on me as it did. But there was something almost indecent about how domestic and fine he looked at the same time.
He glanced over his shoulder, saw me standing there, and smiled slow.
“Morning.”
I leaned against the doorway and took him in without pretending otherwise. “So you cook too?”
He turned back to the stove and slid something from the pan with the ease of a man who actually knew what he was doing. “That sound like disbelief.”
“It is disbelief.”
That got a laugh out of him.
On the island behind him sat two plates.
Omelets folded perfectly. Toast browned at the edges.
Orange juice in glasses beading with cold.
And because apparently he had decided to stay irritatingly thoughtful in the daylight too, a little bowl of cut fruit sat between the plates with whipped cream on top like he had been raised by people who believed details mattered.
Damn.
I pushed off the doorway and came farther into the kitchen. “After a whole chef in here last night, I did not expect you to be at the stove this morning.”
That made his mouth shift.
“I had no intention of wasting my time cooking last night,” he said, reaching for a spatula. “My plans for last night were entirely focused on you.”
The results of his focus moved through me, low and immediate. My nipples tightened under the T-shirt before I could do anything about it, peaking against the soft cotton like my body had just volunteered information I had not agreed to share.
Micah glanced over, caught it, and went still for half a second.
His eyes darkened.
“See,” he said, voice lower now as he turned back to the stove, “that right there is why breakfast had to be simple.”
A laugh slipped out of me, thinner than I meant it to. “You are entirely too pleased with yourself this morning.”
“No.” He turned off the burner. “I’m just paying attention.”
Of course he was.
I slid onto one of the stools at the island and tried to act like my whole body had not just answered him in broad morning light.
The cool stone felt good under my forearms. My thighs still held that pleasant soreness from the night before, and now my breasts were too awake all over again for a workday morning I was supposed to survive in public.
Micah set a mug in front of me, then his own plate, then took the stool beside mine like none of what he had just said should have left me sitting there replaying his mouth on my body.
I picked up my coffee first because it felt safer than looking at him too long.
It wasn’t.
For a second, neither of us did anything but look.
His face showed no signs of the barely two hours of sleep we got. That diamond stud still caught the morning light. His mouth looked used in a way that made memory stir too fast in my body again.
I picked up my fork before I embarrassed myself.
The omelet was perfect.
Not decent.
Not surprisingly edible.
Perfect.
I chewed once, swallowed, and looked at him. “You are irritating.”
His mouth curved around his coffee. “Because I cook?”
“Because you apparently cook well.”
“That part is fair.”
I took another bite and sat in the quiet of that for a second. The city outside. The smell of coffee and butter. My body still tender from him. His bare shoulder warm beside me. It all felt too intimate for a workday morning and exactly right anyway.
He nodded toward my plate. “Do you cook?”
I laughed softly before I could stop myself. The question caught somewhere familiar.
My parents’ kitchen.
My mother at the stove.
My father seasoning chicken and looking at me like he knew things I had not admitted yet.
Micah heard the laugh and tilted his head. “That bad?”
“Not bad.” I set my fork down. “I’m just hearing my parents in the background.”
“Uh-oh.”
“That’s exactly the reaction it deserves.” I took a sip of coffee. “I’m not a huge cook.”
His eyes stayed on me, amused already.
“I can handle breakfast,” I said. “French toast. Cream of wheat. And I make a mean steak.”
That got a real smile out of him.
“French toast, cream of wheat, and steak.”
“Don’t say it like you’re judging me.”
“I’m not judging you.” His gaze dropped once, lower than my face, then came back darker. “I want to eat all three.”
I bit my lip.
His mouth.
His tongue.
Those big hands on my thighs while I opened for him all over again.
I looked down at my plate because my face was not to be trusted.
“Talia.”
His voice had dropped.
“What?”
“That thought crossed your face.”
“It did not.”
He laughed under his breath. “You lying.”
I looked up then, and that was my mistake.
Whatever had been simmering between us over breakfast sharpened all at once. The coffee, the plates, the harmless little bowl of fruit with whipped cream on top—none of it looked innocent anymore.
He stood and came around the island slowly, giving me plenty of time to stop him.
I didn’t.
“Micah.”
“Yeah?”