“Yeah,” I say, and my voice has gone husky.
Her gaze flicks to me for half a second, and there’s a question there she doesn’t ask.
She looks away and takes another bite of lemon, running her tongue over the spoon lightly.
I watch her do it.
I watch the way she keeps her eyes on the TV like the paint samples of the home renovation show are suddenly fascinating, like if she stares hard enough, the screen will save her from the fact that she’s sitting under a throw blanket with me, in this empty house, eating gelato out of containers as if this is normal.
My body doesn’t care that it isn’t.
My body registers her mouth, the slow drag of her tongue over the spoon, the soft sound she makes when she takes a particularly good bite.
And my first instinct is to lean in.
To take. To lick the gelato off her tongue, out of her mouth.
To test how far she’ll let me go right now.
It’s a bad instinct.
So I clamp down on it.
I force my gaze off her mouth and onto her face instead, and the reality of the day is right there. Puffy lids. Raw skin around her eyes. That blotchy flush that doesn’t come from heat or embarrassment—it comes from hours of crying.
She’s an emotional wreck.
She’s barely holding herself together, and she’s relying on me to help her.
The last thing she needs is me adding my dick to the whole mess.
Or my tongue. Licking her like she’s licking that spoon.
Control it, Conti.
I drag in a slow breath through my nose and make my voice steady again.
“Try the pistachio,” I tell her, holding out the container, trying not to think about how there’s one flavor I can think of that’s better than all three of these.
And it’s sitting barely a foot away, between her legs. Ready for the taking.
Erica huffs a small laugh without looking at me. “You have some sort of obsession with feeding me, don’t you?” she says.
Feeding my dick between those lips, little by little, until it’s too much. Until she’s begging me with those big blue eyes for mercy.
I shift on the couch, trying to get comfortable without giving away the fact that I’m currently as hard as steel.
“Somebody has to,” I say, and my tone is rougher than I intend. “You forget to do it yourself.”
A beat of silence hangs between us.
The TV is on. A woman is talking about kitchen islands with waterfall countertops.
I’m trying not to think about putting Erica over my countertop.
Her spoon makes a soft click against the side of the container as she sets it down. Then she picks it up again, like she forgot what she was doing.
The scent of her shampoo drifts over, and it’s all citrus and clean and something uniquely her.
