“I’m still not sure about this place.” The food I could see across the way in metal pans between the elbows of people standing in the buffet line steamed and looked good, though, and I was beginning to feel silly that I’d made this a thing. There were enough choices that there had to be at least one thing I would like.
“Going out with me in general is fine?”
I had no idea. I cut him a glance and thought about how he’d held me last night. How I’d come so hard for him. I ducked my head. “Yeah, this is nice.”
He didn’t say anything else. Somehow or other, his arm found its way around me, and I leaned against his side. A few minutes passed before a waiter seated us. The place was hopping, so he didn’t chat, simply brought us a basket of flat bread that smelled like garlic breadsticks and small mugs of milky tea.
“Help yourself. Plates are up on the line,” the waiter said. The smile he flashed Casey was wide and had me all squirmy and unhappy inside. “The chai is good. We add extra cardamom, a pinch of cinnamon. Perfection.”
“Thank you, I will,” Casey replied, all stuffy and formal.
I sipped at the warm tea in my mug, surprised at the sweet delicious flavors. “It tastes like Christmas!”
The waiter laughed and went on to his next table, and Casey propped his chin in his hand, watching me. “Uh, can you help me? I don’t think I need your suit jacket in here.” I hated to be a pain, but Casey was on his feet fast and around the table without complaint.
“Absolutely,” he said.
He brushed my neck with his fingertips as he stripped the suit jacket from me, and then he ran a hand down my uninjured arm while he tugged the sleeves off me one at a time. I was left turned-on and slightly embarrassed at my reaction to barely being touched. He smiled at me as he went back to his own side of the table and draped the suit jacket on top of his winter one on the seat next to him. Fuck, I hadn’t known being helped out of a single piece of outerwear could be an erotic activity.
“Do you want to go get food? I’ll help you first. It’ll be easier if I carry your plate for you.”
I bit my lip and nodded at him.
We got up together and went over to walk along the line of food, and I was lost at the choices. He started with yellow rice. It seemed safe. I nodded, and he scooped some onto the plate. It was strangely enjoyable as we marched along and he asked me things like “do you like spicy?” and said other things like “you need vegetables for your arm to heal,” which was so ridiculous that I ended up snickering at him about the third time he mentioned greens. I laughed less when he put broccoli in a suspect brown sauce on my plate.
“I’m probably not going to be able to eat all that,” I said as we stopped near the end of the buffet table. The desserts on a separate table had me sighing, though. “Can I get a plate of those? They look yummy.” I pointed at flakey crusts of pastry drizzled in what had to be syrup. The lighting above the plates made the cake-looking stuff gleam like jewels. There was a pink one, a greenish one, and something that was oddly topped in red cheese. There were also—“Cookies. Can we get cookies?” I turned to him with hope glowing in my chest. “I need the sugar to survive. You deprived me of my cinnamon roll. Kyle already ate it. I know it. He’s a pastry thief.”
Casey’s eyes sparkled with amusement, but he pursed his lips. “Food first. Then sugar.”
“All those muscles, you probably never eat it, huh? That seems like a sad, sad way to live your life,” I joked, and then immediately my stomach went sour. Should I have said that to him? I checked to see if he was mad.
He chuckled, and I relaxed a bit, but I was still a ball of nerves as he walked me back to our table. “You can have whatever you want, after you eat a vegetable. How about that?”
It was weird that we were… negotiating my plate. I used the tip of my tongue and toyed with my lip ring. But I also kind of liked it. He cared enough to have an opinion, which was new to me.
“Okay, fine.”
“Good boy,” he murmured and settled the plate onto the table for me. I gripped the back of the chair and electric sparks blasted through my abdomen. He turned to go back to the buffet and get his own food, and I quickly dropped into the chair.
My dick had plumped in my pants like it thought this was a good place for a handy time. I closed my eyes, not sure what the fuck had made my dick so happy, other than I was just always on edge—maybe in a good way—when I was alone with Casey. I tried to ignore my semi and eat, but it turned out those didn’t need to be mutually exclusive activities. My hard-on didn’t go away as I sat there and began to nibble the food Casey had told me I had to have before I got a dessert.
He came back with two loaded plates and sat down across from me. In no time at all, he had his fork in his hand like he was on a mission as he glanced up. “What’s wrong?” He stopped, fork in midair, while he tilted his head.
I wanted to sink under the table when the back of my neck caught fire. Heat spread all the way to the tips of my ears. “I… thank you for bringing me here.”
Casey chuckled, a low rumbly sound that did not help my problem. “What did I do to cause that blush? Was it me?”
“Huh?” I glanced up stupidly, but he was studying me the same way he had before we left the office, as if he could see directly into my soul and mind and wasn’t going to stop looking. It was a powerful, confusing moment that had me fighting to stare back at his eyes, rather than get up and leave. “You… you like to tell me what to do a lot.”
“Yes.” He shrugged and stuck his fork in his food. “Eat. Tell me if you like the butter chicken. They make it tangy here, but I thought you’d like it. The orange sauce on your plate,” he said, and then shoveled a mound of food into his face. It was kind of inspiring, in a weird way, to see how fast he packed down his plate. I’d managed to get through a quarter of my meal by the time he polished off his third helping.
The veggies were all gross, except, strangely enough, the broccoli. I liked the rice and hated the chicken. Casey didn’t comment as I pushed it far away from everything else.
“I didn’t actually think you’d be able to do the last plate,” I said with a laugh. I dropped my fork with a clink and rested my cast on the table. I’d moved my fingers too wide while I was talking, and I breathed through the twinge of pain that raced up and down my arm.
“You never told me much about your sticker,” he said, and I got the feeling he was giving me an opening for a discussion, and while the gesture was transparent, it was also caring. He wanted me to talk. Excitement sparked in me, and I spent the next half hour rambling all aboutAvatar, and Sokka, and how I was half convinced Zuko and Sokka should have been in love, “But they didn’t do that type of thing forever ago when the show was made. No gay romances. Not likeShe-Ra. I really loved Kyle and Rogelio!”
“Forever ago?” He frowned. “Wasn’tShe-Raa show from the eighties? I think I remember that.”
