For a few days, my assumption proved correct.
But now?Onemere day into a fresh new week of meal-prepping for two, I am being attacked. Viciously.
“One bite,” Malcolm says, the monster. “Just one bite off my plate.” He lifts his hands away from the pesto I made yesterday afternoon. “I haven’t even touched it yet.”
“No.”
“Please?”
I angle myself and my food away from him, cemented in my central seat only because I already know that theotherone feelsbad and wrong. “If you’re trying to rehabilitate my germaphobia, can’t we start with bare hands on doorknobs, not…stuff…in mymouth?”
“You already barehand doorknobs in this environment, and I have a feeling you’d be kicking and screaming if I tried to get you to touch anything barehanded in my apartment.”
He’s right.
I would be.
Because his apartment is a black hole, and I don’t know what will happen if I don’t protect myself from it. Nevertheless, I turn to him, lift my chin, and say, “That’s not true.”
“Isn’t it?”
“I’d touchyoubarehanded in your apartment.”
His brain shuts down, which is exactly what I was hoping for. Smiling, I settle in to enjoy my food. Off my plate. Which is completely different thanhis. Even though I prepared both. And he really hasn’t so much as laid a finger on his yet…
Maybe…
Maybe I shouldn’t actually be fighting him.
It’s not like Ilikebeing this way.
I should, honestly, try his methods. If he really is making every effort to help me, I shouldn’t protest. Doing my best, too, is reasonable. And it’s not like he’s throwing me into the deep end here. He’s been careful, cautious, and subtle, pressing against my rules to settle hairline fractures where shatters could be.
Leather skims my wrist while I’m muddling through my thoughts, and a chill pours down my spine as my fingers twitch. I drop my fork.
Crimson cheeked, Malcolm holds me steady in his iron grasp and uses his free hand to tug buttons of his midnight dress shirt down, baring the ink on his chest.
“Wha—” I squeak.
He presents the azalea and dove tattoo I’ve only seen once before, and I jolt my face away.
“You just said…” he murmurs, low, sultry.
“I didn’t mean—” I choke. “I was thinking like…hands or something.” Breath saws through my lungs when he doesn’t relent. Clearly deciding that now’s the time to toss me in the deep end, he fixes my full bare palm against the beating heat of him.
My fingers tremble.
His grip rises from my wrist to cover my hand, holding it steady against his bare, ink-stained chest. “One, two, three,” he whispers, then he frees me from the pressure of his leather grasp.
I do not move. I don’t dare.
An amused sound hums from him, and he says, “Four…five…six…seven.” Deep, he chuckles. “You like it there, darling dove?”
Thatsnaps my fingers away. Jolting to my feet, I turn in an attempt to flee toward the kitchen sink.
Malcolm catches my wrist again. “No.”
My heart lurches, and I face him. “N…o?”
