“You don’t owe me anything, Ben.”
“And you don’t owe me, either. We’re even.”
“No. We’re not,” she said, getting impassioned again. “I’mlivingin your apartment. You bought me—”
“Sweet Cheeks, you’re breaking the deal.”
“What deal?” She spit that phrase at me like a gangster holding brass knuckles in front of my face. God, she was feisty.
I grabbed her shoulders and walked her backward until her low back was pressed into the counter. Jessie’s breath caught as I leaned over her and opened the cabinet behind her to get down plates.
“You said if I told you why, you’d eat,” I said. “I told you why. Dinner’s getting cold.”
I held a plate out to her. Her ears turned red as she took it.
“Right.”
“Hope rice bowls are good with you.”
After filling her plate, she stalled, not knowing where to sit. She stood by the dining room table. “Should I go to the other end like we’re mortal enemies and have a stare-down?”
I cracked a smile for the first time since we’d been arguing. “Wait, are you implying we’renotenemies?”
“Hmm, good point.”
The banter that I loved so much was back. Had we just had our first real fight?
She ended up sitting across from me. “I’m sorry I got so... loud.”
I chuckled. “Don’t sweat it. You’re fun when you’re loud.”
“That’s demeaning!” she cried, her cheeks getting pink again. “That means you don’t take me seriously!”
“I take you seriously.”
She bristled. “Not if you think I’m ‘fun’ when I’m communicating a problem.”
Jessie was winding up for another rampage, but I swear, the woman just needed to eat. I stood as she prattled on, walking to her side of the table.
“It’s so classic for a man to think that a woman is being ‘cute’ when she’s mad, like her anger is just a child’s tantrum.” She stopped short as I took her fork from her hand, which she had just been using as a weapon to gesticulate at me. I rested my hip on the edge of the table. “What are you doing?”
I forked up some rice with the sauce I made and held it in front of her face. “Open.”
“Excuse me?”
“Are you going to open nicely, or are you going to make me shove it in when you’re cussing me out?”
“This is exactly what I’m talking abou—”
I pushed the fork past those plush lips and she bit down. Her eyes went from a disbelieving shock to a new softness as I removed the fork.
Then.
She fucking moaned. Her eyes rolled back and her head tipped. “Fuck me, that’s good. Did you really make that?”
I bit back a laugh. “If you want me to fuck you, Jessalyn, all you’ve gotta do is say ‘please.’”
I was being crass, but in reality, my stomach clenched. Why was the act of her enjoying my food so sensual? Why could I feel that moan at the base of my spine?
