“Do you want some syrup?” he recovers to ask.
“Thank you. How refreshing to have maple syrup offered to me in a controlled, consensual manner.”
Leo’s left eye does a tiny spasm.
I pour the maple syrup generously over my pancakes. “You can never have too much maple syrup,” I say. “Although I suppose the delivery method matters. Ideally onto food. Not, for example, onto a person from a considerable height.”
“Archibald, what on earth are you talking about?” Elizabeth asks.
“Private joke,” I say.
“Very private,” Leo agrees.
The pancakes are delicious. Even Elizabeth makes approving noises as she tucks into them.
I raise my gaze to praise Leo through a mouthful, but my words die when I meet his gaze. He’s watching me with the intensity of a man who has seen me naked and is currently replaying the highlights.
If I didn’t blush at my prim and proper godmother overhearing me discussing my sex life, then I’m not going to blush now under Leo’s scrutiny.
But it’s a close call.
And as I finish up my breakfast, there’s a slightly queasy feeling inside me that has nothing to do with being overstuffed with pancakes.
The unsettled feeling stays inside me and flares back up that afternoon as I watch Leo waddle across the room in his inflatable dinosaur suit. He’s trying to distribute party bags while approximately eight kids hang off various parts of his costume, making him list dramatically to one side like a prehistoric ship taking on water.
“One at a time,” he’s saying, in the patient tone of a man who has said “one at a time” roughly forty-seven times already today. “There’s enough for everyone.”
“There’s never enough,” shrieks one child, who has clearly grasped capitalism at a young age.
Leo crouches to deal with a child who dropped their party bag, spilling plastic dinosaurs and chocolate coins across the floor. The little boy’s lip is wobbling dangerously, eyes filling with tears.
“It’s okay.” Leo’s voice is soft. “The dinosaurs just wanted to go exploring. Let’s round them up before they cause trouble.”
He starts gathering the scattered toys with his tiny inflatable arm, which shouldn’t work at all but somehow does.
This is Leo. Underneath all that corporate polish, he’s fundamentally…kind.
Kindness isn’t ranked high on the sexy traits list, but it should be.
And Leo isn’t performatively kind, not because-someone-is-watching kind. He’s the real thing. The kind of kind that doesn’t announce itself.
People who are generous with money or grand gestures are easy to find. People who are generous with their attention, who’llget on a dirty floor in a dinosaur costume to help a crying child collect plastic toys? Those are rare.
And that’s the problem I’m facing, isn’t it? Because I can handle attraction. I can handle lust. I can file those under “fun” and “temporary” and keep my boundaries exactly where they are.
But kindness, real, unperformed kindness directed at me by someone who doesn’t seem to want anything in return is something I have no defense against.
So my chest does something complicated as I watch Leo help the boy chase down all the “escaping” dinosaurs.
Which might be detrimental to my overall health.
And that is why, despite the health benefits of orgasms, what happened last night with Leo really shouldn’t happen again.
But just as I make that decision, Leo straightens, his dark and brooding gaze meets mine, and a thrill shoots up my spine.
It’s been like this all day. There’s something almost…predatory in the way Leo has been watching me.
Before last night, his attention felt like surveillance. Clinical. Assessing.
