I dump the burned seeds into the trash, turning back to her. “I had a plan,” I admit. “Dinner at Golden Sun. The private room. The champagne that makes your eyes light up. I was going to do it properly. With words prepared and the right moment and?—”
“This is better,” she cuts in, reaching for me. “A surprise. A real one. Not something planned or staged or any of the things proposals are supposed to be.” Her hand is warm against my chest, directly over my heart. “Though you might want to work on your timing. The sesame seeds are a total loss.”
I laugh. “I’ll make more. Better ones. With perfect color and the exact right amount of?—”
She cuts me off with a kiss. Thorough and entirely mutual, her body pressed against mine from chest to knee. I cradle the back of her head with one hand, feeling the softness of her hair against my palm, and deepen the kiss. She tastes like chili oil and possibility, her mouth warm against mine, her bodyfitting against me in a way that makes everything else fade to background noise.
“Bedroom,” she manages when we break for air, breathless. “Now. Before Greta comes looking for the lunch specials.”
“Office,” I counter, walking her backward. “Closer. And it locks.”
She laughs against my mouth. “Practical. I like it.”
I’m moving before I’ve fully decided to, gathering her against my chest and carrying her through the kitchen. She laughs, that bright, unexpected sound that makes my stomach do things it has no business doing.
“I can walk, you know,” she says, her arms around my neck. “This isn’t a romantic comedy.”
“No,” I agree, pushing through the door to our small office. “It’s better. It’s us.”
I set her down on the desk. Our desk, technically, though she’s the one who uses it most. I step between her legs. Her hands work at the buttons of my shirt, her movements precise despite the urgency building between us.
“I’ve been thinking about this,” she says. “Since that night in the living room. Since you said you loved me. Since I realized that what we’re building is actually, completely real.”
My throat goes tight. “Me too,” I say. “Every day. Every night. Every time you look at me across the kitchen.”
Her hand finds the waistband of my jeans, working at the button. Then she pauses, looking up at me with a wicked gleam in her eye. “You know, for someone who just proposed, you’re being very slow about this.”
I laugh, the sound surprised out of me. “Are you seriously critiquing my technique right now?”
“Always,” she says, tugging my shirt free. “It’s kind of my thing.”
I reach for the hem of her shirt, pulling it over her head. She’s wearing a simple black bra. Practical rather than fancy, exactly what I expected and somehow exactly right. I lower my head, my mouth finding the sensitive spot where her neck meets her shoulder.
Her breath catches. Her hand finds my hair, fingers tightening as I work my way down her chest. Each kiss, each careful stroke of my tongue building toward the moment when her control begins to slip, when the sound she makes shifts from appreciation to need.
“Tovek,” she says, and there’s an edge to her voice now, something raw and honest.
“I’m here,” I say against her skin. “I’ve got you.”
We undress each other with more enthusiasm than grace. Her jeans get stuck on one ankle. I nearly knock over the desk lamp reaching for her. She laughs when my belt buckle catches on her underwear, and I have to stop kissing her long enough to untangle it.
“Very smooth,” she says, grinning up at me.
“Shut up,” I say, but I’m smiling too.
When we finally come together, it’s not the careful choreography of movie sex or even the desperate urgency of new relationships. It’s messy and real and punctuated by her sharp intake of breath when I hit the right angle, by my groan when she does that thing with her hips that makes my vision blur.
“There,” she says, her voice breaking. “Right there, don’t?—”
“I know,” I say, building a rhythm that makes her arch against me. “I know.”
After, when we’re both boneless and slightly sweaty and completely, perfectly satisfied, Mei reaches for my hand, her fingers tracing the pattern of scars that cross my palm. “The ring,” she says, her voice rough. “Can I see it? Or do I have to wait for the proper moment with champagne and fancy dinner?”
I should say yes. Should make her wait, should create the experience that proposals are supposed to be. Instead, I find myself saying, “It’s in the pepper grinder. In the hollow base. On our bedroom dresser.”
She blinks. “The pepper grinder.”
“I panicked when you started organizing things,” I admit. “Moved it from the sock drawer to the boot to the pepper grinder. Very smooth. Very romantic.”
