19. Emily
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Emily
We cook together now. Tuesdays and Thursdays, and it’s a whole thing, with rules, and the main rule is that Richard Reed cannot stand to be bad at anything, including chopping an onion.
“Your dice is uneven,” he says, leaning over my shoulder to squint at my cutting board like he’s reading bad news.
“My dice is rustic.”
“Your dice is a crime. Look at this. These three are the size of dimes and this one is the size of my thumb. They’re going to cook at three different speeds.”
“It’s an onion, Richard. It’s going in a pan. It’s going to turn into mush and nobody at dinner is going to write Yelp reviews about my knife skills.”
“I’ll write one. One star. Onions wildly inconsistent. Chef hostile.”
“Chef will get more hostile.”
“Noted. Adding it to the review.” He flicks a chunk of onion at me, and I catch it in my mouth, and his eyebrows go up. “Okay, that was kind of impressive.”
“I have many talents you don’t know about.”
“I’m learning. Seal trick. Holds grudges.
Reads the end of books like a psychopath.
” He’s grinning now, and he looks about twelve years younger than he does in any meeting, sleeves shoved up, flour on his jaw, a smear of something on his shirt he hasn’t noticed.
This is the most undone he ever gets. No suit, no glass office, no Mr. Reed.
Just a guy losing an argument about vegetables.
“Take it back. About my dice.”
“Never.”
“Take it back or the thumb-sized one goes straight in your mouth. Raw.”
“That’s not the threat you think it is.” He sets the knife down and comes for me, and I make it half a step toward the cutting board before he catches me around the waist from behind and hauls me back against him, both arms clamped across my front, his mouth at my ear. “Try it. See what happens.”
“This is a hostage situation. Over an onion.”
“I’m holding you. The onion’s a bystander.
” He turns me around in his arms, walks me back until the counter hits my thighs, and then his hands drop to my hips and just lift, and now I’m sitting on the counter at eye level with him stepping between my knees like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
“Better,” he says, smug, hands sliding up my thighs and staying. “Now I don’t have to look up to win.”
“You haven’t won anything. My dice still stands.”
“Your dice is a war crime, and I’m done debating it.” His gaze drop to my mouth and the whole room goes quiet and warm. “I’ve got a better use for your mouth than arguing.”
“Smooth.”
“I’m not trying to be smooth. I’m trying to get you to stop talking about onions.”
He kisses me, and there’s nothing unhurried about it this time, one hand fisting in the back of my shirt and the other cupping my jaw to tilt me exactly how he wants me, and I get my legs around his waist and pull him in and feel him groan against my mouth, low, like I’ve undone something in him.
He kisses like he means to keep me. Like the ten years are right there in it.
I forget about the onion and the pan and my own name for a solid minute.
“The sauce is boiling over,” I manage against his mouth.
“Don’t care.”
“Richard. The sauce.”
“Still don’t care.” But he pulls back just enough to look at me, pupils blown, breathing uneven, and then he hears the hiss, registers the overflowing pot, and mutters “shit” and lunges for the stove, and I laugh so hard I nearly fall off the counter.
The sauce is a lost cause. We eat the rest of the meal anyway, because neither of us will admit the dinner’s a loss, and because he keeps one hand on my knee under the table the entire time like he can’t quite stop touching me.
This is the part nobody warns you about.
Not the grand stuff, the billionaire stuff, the house and the car and how he looks in a tux.
The dumb stuff. The laughing. The arguing about onions.
The way I just want to be near him all the time, want to touch him, want to make him do that laugh again.
Two years ago I was in a kitchen with a man who corrected how I loaded the dishwasher.
Now I’m in one with a man who throws onion at my head.
I try not to think too hard about the difference, because it’s big enough to knock me over.
He keeps giving me things, too. That’s the other part I don’t know what to do with.
This week it was books, a whole shelf of them, first editions, beautiful old hardbacks of the novels I mentioned once, exactly once, that I missed having around.
He didn’t make a thing of it. I just came home and there was a shelf where there hadn’t been a shelf, full of the exact books, and a note in his slanted handwriting that said for your room. no occasion.
“Let me spoil you,” he said, when I tried to protest the cost. “Please, Emily. I have more money than any one person should legally be allowed and nothing I actually want to spend it on except making your life soft for once. Let me.”
So I do. The books. The flowers that just show up on my desk for no reason.
The coat that appeared in the hall closet in my exact size when mine wore through at the elbow.
He gives and gives and gives, easy as breathing, and I stand there with my arms full of the good life and I do not know how to give him a single thing back.
Not the one thing he actually wants. The three words that have been sitting in my throat since the parking lookout, that I almost said and swallowed, that I keep almost saying and keep swallowing.
He hasn’t asked for them again. Not once. He told me there was no rush and he actually meant it, which only makes it worse, because now I can’t even be mad at him for pushing.
***
Dinner is a disaster, so we order pizza, which is how every cooking night ends so far.
“We’re bad at this,” I say, folding a slice, sitting cross-legged on his enormous couch with my knee against his thigh.
“We’re great at this,” he says. “The cooking specifically needs work. But the cooking was never the point. The point was the part where you make fun of my plating for an hour. We nailed that. We’re elite at that.”
He holds out his slice, offers me the pepperoni off the top, and watches me eat it with an expression that has nothing to do with pizza.
“You’re staring,” I say.
“I’m admiring. Different thing.” He sets the plate down on the coffee table and reaches over, hooks an arm around my waist, and drags me across the cushions into him like I weigh nothing, so I end up half in his lap with his hand splayed warm and low on my back. “Better. You were too far away.”
“I was a foot away.”
“A foot’s too far. I’ve decided.” The air changes, like it does, a shift I’ve learned to feel coming a half-second before it arrives.
He brushes a curl off my face and lets his hand stay along my jaw, thumb dragging slow across my cheekbone, his eyes gone dark and fixed on me like nothing else in the room exists.
“I want to touch you. I’ve wanted to all night.
I’ve been thinking about it since you sat on my counter and wrapped your legs around me. ”
“You were cooking.”
“I was pretending to cook. I was thinking about you.” His voice drops, low and certain, the dominant edge of him surfacing like it does when he’s done waiting. “Tell me I can.”
“So touch me.”
The living room feels warm and dim under the single lamp.
Richard pulls me into a kiss that starts slow and deep.
His mouth moves over mine like he has all night, tongue sliding in lazy strokes while his hands cup my face.
I kiss him back, a little mouthy even now.
“Took you long enough to get to the good part,” I murmur against his lips.
He chuckles low and keeps kissing me, slower this time, drawing it out until my head tips back against the cushions.
His fingers work the buttons of my shirt open one by one, and he pushes the fabric aside to palm my breasts through my bra.
He rubs his thumbs over my nipples until they tighten under the lace, then he leans down and sucks one into his mouth right through the fabric.
The wet heat makes me arch up, and he switches to the other, teeth grazing just enough to pull a soft sound from me.
“You’re beautiful,” he says, voice low and rough as he tugs the bra cups down.
His mouth closes over bare skin, tongue circling and sucking until my nipples ache and stand stiff.
He takes his time there, kissing and licking and nipping until I’m squirming under him, heat already pooling low in my belly.
I thread my fingers through his black hair and tug a little. “Richard, come on.”
He lifts his head, eyes locked on mine, brown and intense.
“Not rushing this. Not tonight.” He kisses down my stomach, hands sliding my jeans and panties off together until I’m bare on the couch.
Then he settles between my thighs and lowers his mouth to me.
His tongue licks a slow stripe up my pussy, savoring, and he does it again, slower, like he wants to taste every inch.
I gasp and my legs fall wider. He sucks on my clit gently at first, then firmer, tongue flicking in steady circles while two fingers slide inside me and curl.
He works me open with his mouth and hand, taking long minutes, building it until my hips rock against his face and my thighs start to shake.
“Fuck, you taste good,” he mutters into me, the words vibrating against my skin.
He keeps going, tongue pressing flat and circling, fingers thrusting deeper until the pressure coils tight and I come with a broken moan, walls pulsing around his fingers while he licks me through it.
My whole body trembles and he doesn’t stop until I’m pushing at his shoulders, oversensitive and breathless.