Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Christina
I’m about to step into my jeans when Danny returns to the kitchen wearing a black tee and boxer briefs, holding one of his white T-shirts. I straighten and yank the jeans over my bare chest.
He smirks at me. “I’ve already seen them, you know. And tasted them.”
I flush hot. “Well, I didn’t want to get you all riled again.”
“Oh, really?” He stalks toward me. “That was thoughtful, but I gotta be honest, I’m riled around you whether your tits are out or not.”
“Yeah, but the tits send you into overdrive.”
He lazily roves his eyes down to them and back up. “Fair enough. Although, I think you like me in overdrive.”
“Did the multiple orgasms give it away?”
He barks a laugh, and I drift a step closer without thinking.
“I brought you this to sleep in,” he says softly, offering the T-shirt to me.
A beat. “You want me to stay the night?”
“Of course.”
No hesitation, no hedging. When I bolted down the highway toward his house tonight, I didn’t think much past that little speech I made at his front door.
After the disappointing app experience, all I knew was that some kind of compromise was necessary.
I needed to linger in that undefined sweet spot with Danny while also finding a way to make a sexual relationship possible.
And part of making it possible was ignoring any next steps and refusing to let any expectations light up a one-lane path under my feet.
He and I are going to have to take this one shuffle at a time, feeling out what’s right with outstretched hands in the dark.
Of course, the caveat is that I now have to listen to myself and know what feels right or not. That’s not a muscle I’ve had to exercise very much, if at all.
Discerning my dark swirl of thoughts, Danny pulls me into him. A calm immediately settles over me in his arms, jeans smooshed between us and all. “You said we can do what feels right when it feels right, yes?”
I nod against his chest.
“Does it feel right to stay here tonight?”
I pull back just enough to look up at him. His gaze is as intense as ever, but I can sense that there’s no expectation. He would support whatever I choose. And with his arms encircling me and his eyes warming me and his house unexplored around me …
“Yes, it feels right to stay here tonight.”
He rewards me with a soft, quiet smile. “Does it feel right to sleep in my bed with me?”
I swallow. “Does that feel right to you?”
His fingers find the ends of my hair hanging down my back. “Yes.”
I close my eyes as he gently caresses the strands against my bare skin. I’ll get to observe his hair strewn across his pillow, hear his rhythmic breathing, bask in his heat. His face will be the first thing I see when I open my eyes in the morning. “That feels right to me too,” I whisper.
He releases me—I open my eyes—but he’s only arranging the T-shirt to slip it over my head.
I drop the jeans to the floor and wiggle into his shirt, which swallows me up to midthigh in cozy softness.
It mostly smells like clean laundry, but I still pick up notes of Danny underneath.
He hums in his throat as he examines me.
“Is that hum in the affirmative?”
“It’s so far in the affirmative that I’m contemplating shredding your other clothes.”
I laugh. “We’d have to find them first. I think my top is in the foyer—”
He grabs my elbow to keep me from turning in that direction. “Leave it. I like knowing your clothes are scattered around my house where I stripped them off.”
My core clenches. My body has always reacted to him, but now that he’s sharing his dirty mouth with me—now that I know what he can do to me—I may never stop being turned on in his presence.
He smirks at whatever he sees on my face. “Come on, my muse. It’s time for pre-bed tea.”
I grin as I follow him over to the stove. I can see now that the kitchen is airy and spacious, with white cabinets and countertops and a pretty blue backsplash. “You do pre-bed tea too?”
“Not usually,” he says, pulling a tea kettle down from a high cabinet. “But you do.”
While he busies himself with the kettle, I pop to the foyer to retrieve my phone.
I find it underneath my rumpled peacoat.
I smile at the tidy row of black shoes lined up below a hook holding his single leather jacket.
I’ll leave my top and bra and jeans as Danny prefers, but my everyday coat should be hanging right next to his.
I wave my phone at him when I reenter the kitchen. “I need to tell Runzhou I won’t be home tonight and actually tell the whole gang I’ll probably miss church tomorrow.”
“Church?” he echoes incredulously.
“Movie Church,” I correct, smiling. “We make brunch and watch a movie every Sunday morning.”
“That may be the holiest Sunday morning I’ve found yet.”
I nod, my chest constricting at his incisive recognition. “The question is how to tell my friends where I am without their going crazy.”
“Here,” Danny pushes a tray of tea options toward me. “You mull over which tea you want, and I’ll get a draft going to your friends.”
He holds out a hand for my phone. I stare at it. “You’re going to text my friends?”
“I’m going to draft for you and absolutely will not send without your final approval.”
I cluck my tongue. “You are getting too big for your britches, Danny boy.” But I open to Sloppy Bitches + Runzhou and hand him the phone.
“You know exactly how big my britches need to be,” he mutters, typing.
I scoff dramatically even though heat flashes through my veins again, and he just grins as he continues typing. I ready peppermint tea in the mugs he set out and pour the water when it’s ready. He finally hands my phone back to me.
“Ready for your approval.”
I roll my eyes and read the unsent message aloud: “Heads up: I won’t be home tonight or at Movie Church tomorrow.
The hot documentarian got me so hot and bothered after I kissed him last weekend that I showed up at his door unannounced and begged him to fuck me.
He obliged, and now I’m too satisfied and safe and happy with him to leave.
He’s made me pre-bed tea, and I’ll be sleeping soundly in his bed tonight.
Don’t worry, he’s very committed to making my Sunday morning as wonderful as possible to make up for all the terrible ones. Details to come.”
With one text, Danny just won the record for making me feel the widest range of emotions with the fewest words. I look up at him, unsure if I’m about to roll my eyes or laugh or burst into tears, and his big eyes melt all the emotions into one blur of my pounding heart.
“Accurate?” he asks.
Now I’m too satisfied and safe and happy with him to leave.
“Accurate.”
His smile flashes wide, and I hit send on the message as if punch-drunk on him.
He gapes at me. “You really sent that.”
I shrug. “It was accurate.”
“How long?”
“T-minus five seconds.”
We crane over my screen, and right on cue—
Ally: WHAT?! MY SEX GODDESS SUPREME!!
K: CHRISSSSSSS
Runzhou: Danny wrote that, didn’t he?
Runzhou: What did I say? Worship. Period.
Reese: Cheers to orgasms all around
I’m laughing, and Danny chuckles into my hair where he’s nuzzling it softly.
“C’mon, Sex Goddess Supreme,” he whispers, and I snort. “I know you wanna see the rest of the house.”
Every room appears cleanly and simply furnished, mostly in calming blues and whites and greens.
But just like Danny, there’s more happening beneath the surface: We sip our teas as he explains the long process of selecting the soft but durable material of his couches; how he built the mantel around the brick fireplace himself because Charlie freaked out to realize there would be no place to hang Christmas stockings; how the framed paintings in the hallway are the last ones his grandmother painted in her retirement home before passing; that the fern in the corner is one he’s managed to keep alive since he was sixteen.
He’s so thoughtful about everything he does. So caring. Just like in his documentaries, that care radiates through every detail of his home. I just soak in the warmth as he talks.
His studio is the last room we explore downstairs.
There are the three enormous monitors that I once saw in a picture he sent me, but there’s also an additional desk with multiple monitors, as well as a cage of computers and an enclosed booth with a fancy microphone.
All of his cameras and related paraphernalia are arranged on shelves.
The stuffed dinosaur I chose for him is perched next to a monitor. It’s the only touch of personality in the room.
“Your editing assistant, right?”
He smiles. “Yes.”
Blackout curtains cover the big window. “You spend a lot of time in here?”
“I do. Most of my time, actually.”
There’s a weariness to his words. Yeah, we have to do something about that. I’m going to do something about that. The documentaries matter so much, but so does he.
“I can’t believe I’m in the studio of Danny Reeves of UNsweet Tea.”
He rolls his eyes. “Glamorous, huh?”
I accidentally bump the mouse on the desk as I move into the room, and it wakes the monitors from their sleep mode. I halt.
He was last cutting and editing footage of the two of us at dinner. Image after image after image fills the screen in the software program—close-ups of me, close-ups of him, side shots of the two of us. At the table. At the bar.
“I can’t believe you have to watch all of this footage of yourself,” I say. “No wonder you stayed off camera before.”
“Honestly, I barely even notice I’m there. And I doubt anyone else will, either.”
“What?”
“It’s you, Christina.” He’s still casually leaning against the doorframe, tea in hand, but his eyes shift to high heat in two seconds flat. “You must know how magnetic you are. Witty, brilliant, warm.”