“This is me,” he says.
He unlocks the front door, and I step into his real life.
The entryway smells like wood and coffee and something faintly green, like the herbs from the stoop have been finding their way inside. The hallway opens into a living space that stops me in my tracks. Not because it’s grand. Because it’s human.
Bookshelves line one wall, and they’re not the curated kind where someone arranged the spines by color. These are working bookshelves. Cybersecurity manuals next to a dog-eared Michael Lewis. A stack of paperback thrillers. A small collection of framed photos I can’t quite see from here but that looks like it holds real people in it, not a design concept.
The kitchen is open to the living room and it is clearly, unmistakably, a kitchen that gets used. A French press on the counter next to a bag of coffee beans. Black, no sugar, of course. I could have drawn this kitchen from memory. Wooden cutting board with knife marks. A cast-iron skillet on the stove that has the dark, seasoned patina of something that’s been fed and cared for over years. His mother probably has one just like it.
Running shoes by the door, laces loosened and tucked neatly inside. His 5:30 AM habit, standing by the entrance in physical evidence, waiting for him to come home and pick up where he left off.
The floors are worn hardwood, the kind that creak in specific places, and I watch Alec move across them with the ease of a man who knows exactly which spots to avoid if he’s trying to be quiet. He opens a cabinet without looking. Pulls down two glasses. Fills them with water from a filtered pitcher that lives on the second shelf of the refrigerator door, left side, and every one of these automatic gestures tells me the same thing: this is not a showroom. This is where he lives.
My chest aches. Not the sharp, undeniable awareness I’m used to with Alec, though that’s here too, humming underneath everything like it always does. This is quieter. A steady pressure behind my ribs that comes from recognizing that the man whotold me about his parents on the beach and who held me in the ocean and who bought me a scarf at a street festival is the same man who lives in this brownstone with his cast-iron skillet and his worn floors and his bookshelves full of things he’s actually read.
He didn’t take me to a hotel. He brought me to the place where his real coffee mugs are, and his real books are and his real running shoes sit by the real door. The trust of that gesture is so big I can feel it pressing against the walls of my ribs, making room for itself.
Alec hands me the glass of cold water. His fingers brush mine in the transfer and the contact sends a streak of awareness up my arm that I feel in my collarbones. Even here. Even doing something as mundane as handing me a glass. My body hasn’t figured out how to be casual around domestic Alec yet, and honestly I don’t think it’s going to.
“You cook,” I say, nodding at the kitchen. “Like, actually cook. With a skillet and everything.”
He grins, bringing out those sexy dimples. “I eat, so cooking is the prerequisite.”
“Right. And the cutting board with the fifteen years of knife marks is because you occasionally slice an apple.”
He leans against the counter opposite me. His arms cross over his chest, and the movement pulls the fabric of his shirt across his shoulders in a way that is frankly distracting and he absolutely knows it. “I can make a decent risotto.”
“Of course you do.” I hoist myself onto his kitchen counter, my legs dangling, because I’m incapable of standing in a kitchen without finding a perch. “Let me guess. You follow the recipe exactly. No improvisation. Precise measurements. You probably time the stirring intervals.”
“It’s risotto, not jazz.”
I laugh. The sound bounces around his kitchen, and I realize it’s the first time this room has heard me laugh. The thought is strange and comforting and my stomach flips with it, a quick warm tug I wasn’t expecting.
He pushes off the counter and moves closer to me. His body heat radiates toward me, his hip grazing my knee, his hand landing briefly on my thigh. Casual. Certain. The heat of his palm feels electric through my sundress, and I am briefly and intensely aware of the fact that there is a bedroom somewhere in this brownstone and we are not currently in it.
“I’m taking you to dinner. One of my favorite places.” His expression has shifted, the dry composure loosened into a look I haven’t seen on him before. It takes me a second to place it.
He’s excited. But also a little nervous.
“Yeah?” I reach out to him, running my fingers through his hair. “What should I wear?”
“Anything.” His eyes travel over me and the temperature in the kitchen ticks up. “Everything looks good on you.”
“That is not helpful fashion advice.”
“It wasn’t meant to be fashion advice.” His gaze holds mine for a beat longer than necessary. Then he slides his palm around to the back of my neck and draws me to him for a brief kiss. The scent of him fills my awareness and the warmth radiating from his chest makes every nerve in my body lean toward him like a plant toward sunlight.
“Come on,” he says, his deep voice a low purr. “I’ll show you the rest of the place.”
The house tour ends, predictably, with us naked and tangled together in his bed. Not that I’m complaining. Nope. Not one iota. I’d been craving Alec all day and he leaves me wrung out and blissfully satisfied.
Afterward, we make our way into his shower to clean up for dinner. His brownstone shower was designed for exactly oneperson. Fitting two people into it requires a level of creative problem-solving that would impress an engineer, and we rise to the challenge with enthusiasm. The tile is cold against my back until his body pins me against it. Then I stop noticing the tile altogether.
His mouth finds the spot below my ear that makes my knees weak and his hands grip my hips hard enough to leave impressions I’ll feel tomorrow. By the time the hot water runs out I’ve confirmed that Alec’s thoroughness is not a location-dependent phenomenon.
Brooklyn Alec is every bit as devastating as Barbados Alec.
I’m standing in front of his bathroom mirror afterward, wrapped in one of his towels, feeling like someone who just got taken apart and carefully reassembled by a man with very focused hands. Flushed skin. Damp hair. A satisfaction in my limbs that feels almost liquid, like my bones decided to take the evening off.
