Chapter 15 #2
Not in that first-date way where people kept trying to prove something.
We had done enough circling by now to leave a lot of that behind.
We talked about our people. About work. About what had surprised us about each other.
About how ridiculous it was that a person could start as a profile picture and some comments in the same digital orbit and end up here.
“At your table with a chef in your kitchen?” I said.
He smiled around his wineglass. “That dramatic to you?”
“A little.”
“You don’t like it?”
I looked around once more. The candles. The flowers. The city. The warm scent of dinner still hanging in the air.
Then I looked back at him.
“I like it too much.”
Something deepened in his face. Not surprise. Not triumph. Just that quiet little shift he got when something mattered to him and he was trying not to overplay it.
Chef Elijah brought dessert last. Vanilla bean panna cotta with macerated berries and one little shard of almond lace laid against it like an ornament. Light enough for the kind of evening this was becoming. Pretty enough to make a woman smile.
We only ate a little of it.
Not because it wasn’t good, but because by then I was too aware of Micah’s eyes on me every time I lifted my spoon, every time I licked a little sweetness from my lip, every time the silence between us stretched a second too long and did not feel empty.
Chef Elijah gathered the last of the dishes after that and gave me a knowing little nod that was respectful enough not to embarrass me.
“Goodnight, Ms. Vaughn.”
“Goodnight,” I said.
Micah walked him to the door and came back into the room looking like the whole condo had changed now that we were finally alone in it.
For a second, neither of us said anything.
The music had shifted somewhere softer. The candles burned lower. The city outside kept minding its business while everything inside that room narrowed.
I picked up my spoon for one last bite of dessert just to have something to do with my hands.
Micah reached over, took the bowl from me gently, and set it aside.
“You done?”
“Probably.”
He gathered the dishes and carried them into the kitchen.
I followed because leaving him in there alone felt impossible all of a sudden.
By the time I got there, he was setting the plates in the sink, running water lightly over the spoons, moving with that same calm, efficient ease he seemed to bring to everything.
I stood a few feet away just watching him.
He looked over his shoulder.
“What?”
I smiled. “Nothing.”
“That’s a lie.”
“I’m just looking at you.”
That got him turning fully toward me.
Then he came over, took the dish towel out of my hand though I had not realized I was even holding one, and pulled me against him.
No speech.
No warning.
Just his hands at my waist and his body fitting mine in the middle of his kitchen like he had been waiting to do that since I walked through the door.
My breath left me.
His didn’t sound much steadier.
For one second, we stayed there, chest to chest, his hands firm at my waist, my palms sliding up the front of him because there was nowhere else in the world I wanted them to be. The music changed behind us, softer and slower, something with enough ache in it to make the air feel heavier.
Micah lowered his head, but he didn’t kiss me yet.
He stopped with his mouth close to mine, close enough for me to feel his breath, close enough for my body to remember the truck and answer like we were still parked in the dark somewhere with no sense.
“You sure?” he asked quietly.
The question should have cooled me down.
It did not.
It made me softer. Hotter. Certain.
Because he was asking even though both of us already knew. He was giving me room right there in the middle of all that want, and somehow that made me want to close every inch of it.
I looked up at him and let my hands settle at his chest.
“Yes.”
His eyes searched mine for one more beat.
I gave him the truth before he could make me say it twice.
“I’m sure, Micah.”
Something in his face changed then.
Not wild.
Not careless.
Just honest.
Like whatever restraint he had been holding with both hands finally understood it did not have to protect us from what we both wanted anymore.
He kissed me then.
Slow at first.
Deep.
A kiss that did not ask where the night was going because the answer was already moving through both of us. His hands tightened at my waist, and mine slid higher, around his neck, into the warmth of him. He tasted like wine and dessert and restraint finally giving way.
And when he moved us from the kitchen back toward the living room, I went with him.
No hesitation.
No part of me still trying to talk my body out of what my heart had already begun to trust.
The music lulled me deeper into my feelings.
Brent Faiyaz. Butterflies.
Maybe it's a little bit rushed, but I'm falling in love
Hope that's not too much, but this isn't a crush
I've done that enough, girl, I know that it's real
— Christopher Brent Wood, Benjamin Levin
I felt it before I recognized it, the low ache in the song, the questions under it, the sense of a man standing in the middle of real feeling and trying to decide if he trusted it to be what it seemed.
Micah drew me closer, one hand at the small of my back, the other spread between my shoulder blades, and we moved slow in the candlelight while the room softened around us.
I looked up at him, and my breath caught at the sight of what was waiting for me.
His eyes were dark brown and heavy-lidded now, the softness of dinner gone from them, replaced by something slower, hotter, and far less polite. His gaze moved over my face like he was trying to hold on to the last bit of patience he had left, and the effort of it made my whole body go quiet.
All that time we had taken. All that circling. All that restraint. Every kiss we had pulled back from, every text we had not let turn into a bad decision, every breath we had spent pretending we could keep wanting each other at a respectful distance.
It was all right there between us now.
Not as tension anymore.
As recognition.
His thumb moved once at my back, slow enough to feel deliberate.
“You all right?” he asked softly.
I smiled a little. “You really like asking me that.”
“I do.”
“Why?”
His eyes held mine, dark and steady, already telling me too much.
“Because once I stop asking,” he said, voice low, “I’m done pretending I’m not about to give you everything I got.”
That sent a hot little shiver all the way through me.
I heard the shift in the music before he did.
Raheem.
Never Never Land.
Oh, I was gonna get it.
He felt me react and smiled against my temple.
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “That’s where we at.”
We were still swaying, but slower now. Closer. The room had gotten darker around the edges. The candles were doing most of the work. The scent of stargazers, rum-tobacco wax, and him had braided together into something thick enough to breathe.
I looked up at him again and saw that his face had changed.
There was still patience there. Still that same careful, watchful tenderness he had been giving me all week. But under it was something else now. His dark brown eyes were heavy-lidded, fixed on mine with a heat he was no longer trying to make polite.
A man done playing with the edges.
“You good?” he asked, and I heard it for what it really was.
The last check.
The last moment to stop this before he tore my ass up and made good on everything he had been trying not to do too soon.
Heat went through me so fast I had to grip his shoulders.
“Yes.”
“You sure?”
I held his gaze. “Micah.”
His jaw flexed once.
“I’ve been sure.”
That was all it took.
He kissed me right there in the middle of his living room, and the first press of his mouth nearly folded my knees.
Not rushed. Not messy. Certain. Like he had waited long enough and saw no reason in this world to do any more of it.
His hand came up to the back of my neck while the other spread low over my waist and held me there, and I opened for him so fast it almost made me angry.
He made a sound low in his chest when I did.
“Come here,” he murmured against my mouth, and I almost laughed because I was already in his arms and somehow that still felt like a command.
Then he started moving me.
Slowly at first, his mouth still on mine, his hands guiding my waist as he backed me out of the living room, past the low glow of the candles and into the darker hallway beyond it.
Every step felt deliberate. Every breath.
Every place his self-control was starting to tear open.
I held on to him and let him lead because the truth was, my body had already decided there was nowhere else it wanted to go.
By the time we reached his bedroom, I was breathless.
My back met the edge of his dresser first.
Cool wood against my spine.
He crowded in close, one hand at my waist, the other planting beside me on the dresser like he needed the leverage just to keep himself from taking too much too fast. His mouth left mine and moved to my jaw, then just under my ear, and my whole body gave a small, helpless shiver under his hands.
“You know what cumming on my fingers did to me the other night?” he asked, voice gone dark.
My thighs parted before I could help it.
His eyes dropped and stayed there for one hard second.
“You know what smelling that sweet pussy on my hand all the way home did?”
“Micah—”
My pussy clenched around nothing.
His dark eyes found mine.
“It fucked me up.” He kissed the corner of my mouth, then my jaw again. “Still got me fucked up.”
Shit.
He looked down at me, breath slow and measured like he was talking himself through the last of his own restraint. Then his hands found the hem of my dress.
“Lift your arms.”
I did.