“Exactly.”
“And, uh, have you been tempted to give it?”
He smirked gently, leaning in closer, and my breath caught as I thought he was going to kiss me. Instead, I felt his breathagainst my cheek. “More than once, and more with every passing day.”
“Are you...close?” I asked, because my brain wouldnotcooperate and give me something to say that didn’t sound horny as hell. “I mean. Fuck, could you stop? I’m trying to be a decent person here, and you’re making my dick do all the thinking.”
“I don’t mind that your dick does the thinking on occasion,” he said with a chuckle, but to my feelings of disappointment and relief, he drew back to take a seat. “It’s when that’s the only thing on you doing the thinking that I have a problem.”
“Noted,” I said, taking a deep breath. “You have to warn a guy before you do that!”
“Why?” he asked seriously. “Is it a problem?”
I glared at him. “You enjoy that too much.”
“Too much?” he asked with a laugh. “You want the serious answer? Or do you need a moment to let the blood flow upward again?”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m making coffee, and you’re an asshole. Just know that while you give me that serious answer.”
“I do enjoy it. I don’t know about ‘too much,’ but I enjoy it a great deal. Partly because you’re always so confident and self-assured, especially when it comes to sex. Yet the minute I start turning on my version of charm, you turn into a fumbling idiot who can’t decide if he wants to drop his pants or run for the hills.”
“What an amazingly encouraging response,” I muttered as the coffee machine began to chug out a cup.
“It’s cute,” he said, and I could tell from his tone that he wasn’t trying to appease me. “It’s more you than those bad jokes and attempts to hit on people. And in the interest of being honest, I haven’t tried to do that to someone before. Not off the clock.”
I turned to slide a cup to him with a frown. “What? Seduce them?”
“Basically,” he said with a one-shouldered shrug. “It felt...wrong, to do it to someone who was just a normal person and not a client. Yet I did it to you that first time. It happened without me thinking about it, and it was...fun. I was able to take something else from that version of my life and put it into this new chapter, and it was enjoyable. I’d done it with other things, like knowing how to talk to people, how to figure things out about them, but it was the first time I’d dragged something from the sexual aspect of my life as an escort and made it a part of what is supposed to be my real self.”
“The whole escort thing really fucked with you, didn’t it?” I asked, a little amazed. I didn’t realize how much he was constantly going back and forth in his head, measuring his feelings and choices against who he had been before and who he was trying to be. All while trying to figure out what he wanted to be in the first place, how much was left over from who he used to be before he became an escort, and how much he had to forge all over again. “Fuck.”
I wasn’t surprised to see him laugh. “You and Cade are so funny. Everything you think passes right over your faces. Did you just try to put yourself in my shoes?”
“I don’t know about that,” I snorted. “Your shoes are probably too expensive for me.”
“My work shoes, maybe, but my regular shoes? I love a good pair of solid work boots, a good pair of tennis shoes, and some quality flip flops,” he said with a smile. “The boots are admittedly the most expensive thing, but you get what you pay for.”
“Boots was not what I was expecting you to say,” I admitted as I took a sip of coffee.
“You seem to have a hard time figuring out what I’m going to do or say next, I’ve noticed,” he said lightly. “It’s fun, watching you try to guess and still be taken off guard.”
I sighed. “The first time I can think of you describing something as easy, and it’s you talking about how easy it is to mess with me.”
He blinked, then snorted harshly. “Wow, my own words come back and bite me on the ass in record time, how about that?”
“Yeah, how about that?” I shot back with a smirk.
“I’m glad you went to the session today,” he said, and the good mood I was building began to disappear, trickling away from the leaks that were left behind.
“Yeah, well, I’m glad one of us is,” I muttered, heading for the bed to sit down. “I thought therapy was supposed to help. That felt?—”
The black wave swirled around me, dragging me down and threatening, like it always did, to hold me for good this time.
“I think,” he began slowly, setting his cup aside and getting up from his chair, “it’s not supposed to be good at first.”
“Right, and what’s the point?”
“It doesn’t have to stay bad.”
