“Both.”
“Well, when do you see him?”
I flushed, nervous to open up about my life. “I live with him.”
They looked at each other, completely gobsmacked, and then both their gazes swung back to me. “When did you move in together?”
“When we moved here?”
They exchanged another look.
Tanya leaned forward. “We have so many questions.”
I decided to be as honest as I could. “We aren’t really a situationship. We’re sort of like roommates.”
Selena took off her glasses to polish them on her shirt. “When do you see him?”
“Hardly ever. He works all the time.”
“A man is either interested or he’s not. If he’s not interested in the spice, there isn’t anything any woman can do about that.”
I thought about how he’d touched me and the way he talked dirty to me, like he was saying all the things he wanted to do but wasn’t letting himself. “He’s interested. He just doesn’t want to be interested. He says he’s trying to protect me.”
They both aahed over that. “Yeah, he’s interested.”
Selena pushed the last pierogi toward me. “Have you tried seducing him?”
“Like how?”
“My personal favorite is to give him a little show, you know? Skimpy clothes, leaning toward him with lots of cleavage, that kind of thing.”
I remembered coming home from the bar and stripping off my clothes on the staircase while he impassively watched from below. But I had been drunk, which seemed to be hissticking point. Unfortunately, I had never had the courage to try anything like that while not under the influence.
“I guess I can try that.” I shoved the entire pierogi in my mouth and spoke with my mouth full. “These are insane.”
“Don’t deck yourself out in lingerie,” Tanya added. “Be subtle. Like, walk around the house without a bra, in crop tops or little workout shorts.”
Selena nodded sagely. “Yeah, guys go crazy when they think you don’t notice them.”
I wasin my room reading when I heard Axel come home around ten that night. My nerves jangled as I contemplated what I was about to do.
Now or never!
I kicked off my sweats, put on a thong and paired those with a pale blue sweater that barely hung past my butt cheeks. I pulled the barrel roll out of my hair and shook out the bouncing curls that he’d probably think were natural and not the result of dry rolling for five hours.
I wandered downstairs in bare feet, with Bandit on my heels.
Axel was sitting at the island, looking at his phone. He had shrugged out of his suit jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his white dress shirt, which was also unbuttoned at the neck.
The microwave hummed.
“Oh,” I said softly. “I didn’t realize you were home.”
He glanced up and froze when he saw my bare feet and the sweater that barely came three inches down my bare thighs. “Just got here.”
“I’m just going to make some tea,” I told him. “Don’t mind me.”
I turned on the kettle, deliberately keeping my back to him. I fussed over picking which flavor I wanted, and then reached up to the higher shelf, knowing that by doing so, I was lifting my sweater up past my naked butt.
