Calvin put a knee on the mattress and leaned over me. He was staring, an expectant sort of expression on his face.
“I’ve got a burn in muscles I didn’t even know I had,” I explained.
“Oh yeah?”
“And I don’t think I’ve ever….” I trailed off when Calvin’s eyes seemed to glimmer with sudden arousal.
“Ever, what?”
“You know.”
“Do I?”
I could feel heat prickling my face now. “The thing I did.”
“You mean, come without touching yourself?”
I swallowed hard and nodded. “That’d be the thing, yes.”
Calvin ran one hand down my bare back, slipped it under the covers, and firmly grabbed one asscheek. “You know what I want?” he asked, dropping his voice low.
“It’s really not taking much imagination on my part.”
His mouth quirked into an unbelievably sexy grin before Calvin leaned close and whispered, “I want you to get up so I can have coffee.” Then he smacked my ass hard and stood from the bed.
I sat on my knees in a rush, shouting, “Calvin!”
“That’s my name, baby.”
I rubbed my ass with one hand and reached for my glasses on the nightstand with the other. “Be gentle.” I climbed out of bed and went to his closet, where I’d been keeping a few articles of clothing, since spending the night was usually a spur-of-the-moment decision.
Calvin wrapped his arms around me from behind and kissed my neck. “That’s not what you said last night.”
I’d gone from being sexual putty in bed to wanting to melt into the floorboards from humiliation in a snap. How’d Calvin do this? Talk sexy or dirty without even trying, without caring? And here I was, ready to spontaneously combust from the utter embarrassment of admitting—in broad daylight, no less—that I liked having my ass spanked.
I shrugged, cleared my throat, and tried to say with a casualness I didn’t feel, “Sort of think different when you’ve already got a chub.” I grabbed a pair of trousers and a button-down shirt I’d left folded, so now it had wrinkles on the front.
Calvin stepped to the side and gently turned me to look at him. He held my face in both hands and gave my lips a chaste kiss. “Good morning.”
“Morning.”
“I like you.”
I couldn’t help but smile then. Calvin had proven to be a really intuitive partner from the start, but especially where sex was concerned. He was always keyed in to how close I was, or what got me off, or what I wanted but refused to ask for, so of course he put two and two together pretty quickly and realized that I was about to spiral into panic over sounding like a complete weirdo for enjoying something so— “I like you too,” I said. This perfect man was honest to God willing and wanting to live under the same roof as me and my neurosis. What had I done to deserve this?
Calvin gave my jaw a brief rub with the pad of his thumb, my whiskers pleasantly scraping back and forth. “There’s a grande house brew with your name on it just waiting.”
“All right, all right.”
“And a cheese danish, if they haven’t run out.”
“Now you’re singing my song.”
Dressed and as ready for Tuesday as I could hope to be, we left with Dillon and made a pit stop at the Starbucks two blocks from Calvin’s studio. I ran inside to pick up our coffees and came back out with a cup in either hand, trying to push my sunglasses up my nose, which only resulted in me sloshing a few drops of scalding-hot house brew on my hand. Calvin, waiting with Dillon beside a USPS mailbox, took his latte and nudged my glasses up with his finger.
“Thanks,” I said before sucking on my hand where the coffee had burned me.
“No danish?”
