Chapter 14 Rowleigh
Chapter fourteen
Rowleigh
We’re sprawled out on Bellatrix’s bed. I like the simple patchwork quilt she has.
It’s not old, but it is lovely, the mixture of blues and patterns a striking contrast to the rest of the room, which is more millennial grey with a matching bedroom set in espresso.
It’s certainly tasteful, but I can see why she’d want to personalize it.
She’s tucked in against my side, her hair still dripping wet.
She had a shower while I ordered food. I had to get dressed to receive the delivery, but I undressed and rinsed off after.
Her big, fluffy purple robe shouldn’t be so alluring.
It’s granny in the extreme, but it’s also gaping open just enough in the front that it’s giving major side boob.
My dick appreciates that. He appreciates it far more than he should, given that he just got a full workout in.
Bellatrix said she had a craving for wood-fired pizza, so that’s what I got. Plus, pickle spears.
We have the boxes carefully arranged over some bath towels on her bed.
She picks off a piece of pineapple, one of many, and pops it into her mouth. “Mmm. My good gravy goggins. Pineapple does not only belong on pizza. It has a right to be on everything. It’s the most delicious food known to mankind. After ice cream cake.”
Her instructions were to get a frightening amount of pineapple on her pepperoni pizza and to add jalapenos, olives, banana peppers, and basil, as well as to get it made with barbeque sauce instead of red sauce.
What she wanted, I was happy to get, even if her use of the word frightening describes that monstrosity.
Hers makes the deluxe I ordered look boring.
She eats quietly, and the sweet serenity of her face only changes when she closes her eyes to savor the horror show of a mostly fruit pizza.
I wait until we’re just about done eating before I broach the question I need to ask. Even if Bellatrix weren’t so quiet, I need to make sure. Aftercare is more than just a shower and tucking someone into bed.
“Are you doing okay?” I ask.
She freezes, another piece of pineapple she’s picked off nearly at her lips. “Okay as in feelings, stress, chicken with its head cut off anxiety level, or did I just wreck your vagina okay?”
Laughter is not an appropriate response right now. “Is all of the above an option?”
She locks eyes with me, hers warm and glowing like the rest of her. Post-coital bliss looks stunning on Bellatrix. “I’m okay. Maybe a little terrified. I’ve been pretty much invisible for so long that it’s a little bit scary to be seen.”
That right there is straight-up rage fodder for me. I can’t believe people have treated this amazing woman the way they have. There’s no way she should not be seen, appreciated, treasured, and made to feel as special as she absolutely is.
She climbs off the bed, taking the pizza box with her. The way she crawls off gives me a full view of the round moons of her bottom as the robe rides up.
I stifle an ungentlemanly groan.
“Are you done with that? Can I take it and put it in the fridge?” she asks.
“You don’t have to. I can do it,” I tell her.
“No. Just stay right there. If you get up, you’ll want to get dressed, and I’m really enjoying the practically naked Rowleigh look you’re rocking.
Really, really enjoying it.” She gathers up my mostly empty pizza box, stacking it with hers.
She pauses at the door and then turns around with a swish of her hair. “Tea?”
“Yes, please. Let me help you make it.”
She shakes her head. “No way. Tea and nudity don’t mix.”
I know I’m giving her an eyeful of a goofy grin, but I can’t help it. “I think we proved that’s not true.”
A faint pink blush stains her cheeks, and her eyes darken. “I meant scalding tea.”
“Are you sure I can’t do something for you? Clean the kitchen? Put away paint cans? Organize unused wallpaper rolls?”
“Just stay. I’ll be back right away.”
She means it. When she breezes back into the room, the tea she brings is lukewarm at best. And the minty scent trails her.
She sits down across from me, tucking her legs up under her slowly, intentionally flashing me.
“You asked me if I was okay, and I am.” She cups her mug in both hands, her face infused with a brand-new softness.
“I want to do me. And you. No one has all the answers, and no one comes through life unscathed. It means so much that you trust me after you’ve been hurt, and not just with that.
But with…I guess the economic disparity. ”
“I know you’re not in this to use me in any way,” I say.
She sips her tea, her throat bobbing hard. “No. I know what it’s like to be used, and it’s a terrible feeling.”
I don’t know if she’s talking about her ex or someone else, but I’d like to find them and make them suffer in the worst, most bizarre ways.
And by worst and most bizarre, I mean deodorant that gives a strange rash, sheets that never feel properly crisp, and perpetually bland food. Nothing psychotic.
Although, if I were the kind of badass, outlaw, borderline not sane kind of man, I would very much like to find those guys and hammer them into a bloody pulp in an underground illegal face-slapping match where anything goes.
“It takes a lot of trust for you too,” I say softly, swallowing back the anger at anyone daring to ever hurt this woman or abuse her trust.
“Yes, but it’s far more fun freaking out internally while sitting here with you, surrounded by your man scent.”
“Explain it to me, this ‘man scent.’”
All I smell is mint from the tea and the fragrant body wash Bellatrix used in the shower.
“I don’t know.” She gives a tiny shrug. “Women just don’t smell like that.
Every person is unique. It’s your one-of-a-kind eau de man.
It’s like an invisible call straight to the lady animal in me.
My lady wolf and my lady devil, and the lady who is nothing but a lady.
We all love the way your natural scents mix with what you use in the shower, your hand soap, your clothes, your shoes, your cologne. ”
“Shoes?”
“Your feet are divine.” I happen to be sitting with my back against the headboard, in only my boxers, my legs stretched out in front of me. My feet are extra visible. “I’m saying that with no great love of feet. Not that I don’t love them. They’re very useful. I just don’t love love them.”
“I think the scent you’re looking for is bergamot. I’ve always enjoyed it. It’s a little spicy with mostly citrus notes.”
“Yes! Bergamot! That’s it!” she exclaims.
I wait a few minutes while we both savor the tea before I broach the next uncomfortable topic. I don’t know if I should spend the night. That might be too much too soon, and I don’t want to leave here without assuring myself that Bellatrix is absolutely okay.
“Is this bad timing? You said you hadn’t told your parents that you’d broken up with your ex.” That’s also code for, and now you have to tell them that you’re seeing your best friend’s dad. Heavily implied: age gap. Big. Gappy. Age gap.
She gets up and sets her empty mug on the opposite nightstand, then arranges herself in my lap so her knees are on either side of my waist and her hands are on my shoulders. She’s hovering over my dick with nothing on under that robe.
I try very hard not to groan.
Or slam her down on top of my raging hard cock for another round of being inside her sweet, tight pussy.
She gets all intense. But for an entirely different reason.
I think. “Everyone says timing is everything, and maybe it is, but it could be the right time even if it doesn’t seem like it.
” She kisses my cheek, and I turn and inhale the fresh strawberry aroma of her hair.
“Who are we to tell the universe that it doesn’t know what it’s doing?
The universe makes the sun. I barely understand how sundial or solar power works, and it’s just up there, megawatt-ing away and providing all life.
And that’s just one star. It’s hard not to care what people think, but the people who love us will get it. Mika already gets it.”
I sweep the hair off her neck, planting little kisses there. She gasps, the sound reverberating through me. I’ll remember this night for the rest of my life.
“I can imagine she’ll send a thousand texts asking me if we’ve gone out on a proper date yet, but that’s not why I’ll ask you if you want to go,” I say.
“She’ll text me a million times asking me the same thing, and it’s not why I’ll say yes when you ask.”
“I’m committed to this in whatever way you want,” I say to her.
She strokes my cheek, her fingers so soft and her breath minty as she leans in close. “I’m like anglerfish-level committed.”
I quirk a brow. “Don’t they absorb each other when they find a mate?”
She giggles. “I can’t believe you know that.
No one knows that. I don’t understand how it even works, but they become some kind of inseparable.
” She jerks back, searching my face and panicking.
“And that’s way too much. Maybe just an anglerfish spots another anglerfish from a distance and knows that one day, they will be inseparable. ”
“It’s not too much.” I don’t want her to pull back. I don’t want her to go. I’d like to freeze time and stay like this forever, or at least for the next five minutes, completely uninterrupted.
“I like that you get me,” she admits shyly.
“I like that I feel safe with you. I like that you’re a good, honorable man who isn’t afraid to admit he’s made some mistakes and is willing to learn from them.
I like that you care about everyone else, even people like Geneiva, who is a complete stranger. Is she going to be okay?”