Chapter 4
DESIREE
The problem with Theodore Kelly is that he knows how to make waiting feel like part of a punishment.
The whole twenty-minute drive home, I pretend I’m thinking about dinner, tomorrow’s schedule, and the shipment Jetta still needs to fix in the system. I’m not. I’m thinking about that man turning one text and one statement into a whole problem and knowing exactly what it would do to me.
Lizzie didn’t help at lunch either, sitting across from me with all that judgment in her sunglasses, talking about, “You know he’s doing this because you like it.”
That woman was loud and correct, and I didn’t appreciate either one.
On the way home, I turn into the strip with the little sushi spot Theodore likes. It’s one of those quiet, minimalist places where the air smells faintly of cedar and high-grade vinegar. They know his order and don’t ruin the rice, which is part of the reason he keeps going back.
I park, head inside where the hostess greets me with a smile. “Dining in or picking up?”
“Picking up for Desi Perkins.”
The bag’s already waiting behind the counter. She brings it over, and after thanking her, I head back out into the humid afternoon like I’m not buying dinner for a man who has had me twisted up since his ass walked out of my clinic.
When I pull into the garage, I sit there listening to the engine tick, then grab my bag and the sushi before I can make a whole issue out of being irritated.
Theodore has me stopping for his dinner after turning my whole afternoon into foreplay without putting a hand on me, and the worst part is he didn’t even have to ask.
I know how he likes his evening to start.
I also know he’s going to walk into this house fully aware of what he did to me, waiting to see how long I can pretend I’m not affected.
That won’t take long.
Inside, the house smells like white gardenias and coconut, which means the cleaning service has been through.
I set dinner on the kitchen island beside the flowers.
The card’s still there, but I let it be.
I read it once. Smiled about it once. I’m not handing that man another win when he hasn’t even made it home yet.
Agitated or not, I can’t pretend Theodore doesn’t love me well. He knows what I want, respects what I choose, and has never made my appetite feel like something I’m supposed to apologize for.
I’m a Size 18 and grown as hell with a sex drive that has no interest in acting shy.
When Theodore met me at thirty-eight, my body wasn’t a mystery to me.
Neither was my pleasure. I had my own taste, my own appetite, and no patience left for men who needed every desire translated into something they could approve.
My expectation? To have a man to respect that without turning it into a negotiation.
And that’s what Theodore did.
He paid attention in a way that made me more aware of myself. The kind that had me sitting taller, moving slower, noticing the way my clothes sat on my body and how much harder it got to act unaffected when he came too close.
The conversation came up naturally, layered into everything else we were already learning about each other.
I didn’t soften it for him, and he listened without interrupting, taking in every word.
“What does that look like for you?” he finally asked.
And so I told him. I’d never been the woman who needed one man to carry every part of me. I liked variety. I liked control. I liked moving the way I wanted without feeling like I was breaking someone’s precious ego every time I did.
He sat there like nothing I said surprised him.
“And where do I fit in with that?” he asked.
“You don’t fit into it,” I told him. “You’d be the man I’d trust to know what to do with it.”
Saying it out loud should’ve scared me. It didn’t. I had finally said the thing most men would punish me for wanting, and Theodore was still sitting there, calm, listening, not making me regret the truth.
“And when it’s happening, what am I to you in that room?” he asked.
“The one I answer to,” I told him. “Because I choose to. Because I trust you with me.”
That was the beginning of our understanding.
The night another man touched me with Theodore there, I paid more attention to him than anything happening to my body. I wanted to know what it would do to him. Whether his pride would get loud. Whether he’d step in too soon. Whether he’d make the room about proving something instead of knowing me.
He didn’t.
He sat back, a glass of that Blackleaf Vodka he loves in hand, and let the moment play out. His focus stayed on me, reading what I allowed, what I liked, what needed to stop.
And when he finally stepped in, I gave him what I didn’t give anybody else.
Submission.
His name flashes across my screen.
Theodore.
I look at it and feel that little bit of satisfaction I have no business feeling.
The man came to my clinic in a tailored suit, wearing that damn Amouage Interlude Black Iris, smelling like “do what I tell you.” Then he handed me flowers, kissed me in front of my staff, and spent the rest of the day acting like I was the problem.
I pick up the phone and watch it ring in my hand.
DECLINE.
Straight to voicemail.
Then I set it back on the counter beside his sushi and those beautiful flowers like I didn’t just make a choice that’s going to get my ass ate up.
He calls right back.
“Mr. Theodore Kelly,” I say through a laugh to an empty kitchen, “you don’t like your own medicine, huh?”
I let it ring twice.
DECLINE.
I set the phone down again and leave it there. He’ll walk through that door knowing I chose voicemail twice and dared him to do something about it.
And God, I hope he does.