"Smells good."
"It is good."
I bend. I kiss her temple. She turns her face into mine and we kiss, soft, no hurry, her tongue pressing into my mouth and her free hand comes up and rests at the front of my jacket. The wooden spoon is in her other hand and she holds it out a quarter inch so it doesn't drip on me. I smile against her mouth.
"I have something for you," I say.
"Yes."
"In my pocket."
"Which one."
"Right."
She looks at me. She reaches her free hand into my right jacket pocket. Her fingers find the key. She pulls it out. She looks at it on her palm.
"Max."
"It's the front door."
"Max."
"You should have one. Your own key.”
She closes her hand around the brass. She closes her eyes a count. She opens them.
"Thank you."
"Stop thanking me."
"No."
She lets out a small laugh. It is not the laugh of a woman about a key. It is the laugh of a woman about everything else.
She sets the spoon down on the rest. She turns to face me. She puts the key on the counter beside the stove, careful, like it is breakable. She puts both her hands on the front of myhenley, low at my stomach, and she looks up, her beautiful eyes seductive.
"Max." Her voice is a purr.
"Yes."
"Dinner can wait."
"Evangeline."
"Yes."
"Tell me what you want?”
She holds my eyes.
"I want you to fuck me before we eat."
I do not move for a second.
I do not move because I have been driving home with a hard knot of want in my chest for forty miles, because I have been thinking about her since I left her in the bed at four, because I had not let myself say think about sex all day, because I had been carrying the tenderness of last night up around it like a coat. The tenderness is still there. The coat is still on. The want is under it, and her saying it plain has just put a hand inside the coat.
I put my hand at her jaw.
