Page 113 of People Skills

‘A very very nice time.’

‘But the cake?’

He pauses. ‘Let’s have some first.’ He gets the big knife, and carefully cuts a slice, a little frown of concentration on his face that I find unbearably cute. He puts a piece of cake on a plate and hands it to me. I eat a mouthful, and then another. It’s rich, creamy, delicious.

‘It’s so good,’ I say.

‘Let me try it,’ he says, and I take a spoonful and put it in his mouth.

He eats it and nods. ‘Not bad.’

‘You’re ready to go pro,’ I say.

A bit of cake is on his lip, and I reach up and wipe it with my finger, and he catches my hand in his, and slips my finger into his mouth. His tongue swirls against my skin, around and around, and a rush of desire floods me. He slides my finger out of his mouth, slowly, and I dip it back into the slice of cake and put it back into his mouth, because the feeling of his lips on my skin, his tongue, the way he is sucking my finger, is so hot I can hardly stand it.

He picks me up and sits me on the bench, and takes my face in his and kisses me. I reach around his back and undo the apron and slide it off, so he’s just in his T-shirt, and I pull him closer. We kiss, and kiss, and kiss, until we’re breathless.

‘Baby, I want to fuck you so bad,’ he murmurs in my ear. ‘I’m begging.’

‘That’s not begging,’ I say. I know what he sounds like when he’s begging now.

He pulls me off the bench so I’m standing again, and he kneels down, undoing the top button of my jeans and placing a kiss above the band of my underwear.

He looks up at me. ‘I’m on my knees, begging.’ His voice is husky.

I laugh, but my cheeks are hot, my body is thrumming and ready for him.

‘Show me how you want to do it,’ I say.

He looks at me for a beat, then he stands up, turns me around and bends me over the kitchen bench.

‘Like this,’ he says into my ear, pressing hard into me.

I moan without even meaning to.

‘But first,’ he says, and he scoops me up in his arms.

I give a little shout of surprise at how easily he picks me up. I put my arms around his neck, and he gives me a quick kiss, before carrying me into his room and lying me carefully on his bed.

I don’t think I’ve actually been all the way into his room since he moved in. Certainly not to his bed. It’s very clean in here, the bed made, the sheets smell fresh. I lie on my back and look up at him. He smiles at me and takes off his T-shirt, then leans down to pull off my already-unbuttoned jeans.

God, I want him so badly.

It’s almost anthropological, this feeling. I suddenly understand addiction, obsession, the way an object or a drug or a person can hit the pleasure centre of your brain in a way it’s never been hit before.

Xavier takes off my top, slides off my underwear, and pushes my legs open, and then he’s kissing me, sucking me, licking me, and I’m moaning, writhing—I don’t even care what I look like or how much noise I’m making (a lot) because I just need this, him, I need him touching me, I need his mouth on me, I need him inside me, I need him to do things to me that I’ve never had done to me before, I need him to make me come over and over, and, god, it all feels so wonderfully, deliciously, unbelievably good.

34

AFTERWARDS, WE LIE in a tangle of sheets, and the feel of his body is so intoxicating, the post-sex haze so strong, that it takes a while for me to realise how quickly I backtracked on my vow to not be with him again until we’d figured things out.

I’d walked into the house and immediately had sex with him. (In the bedroom, then the kitchen, then the bedroom again.)

It’s the cake’s fault. No, it’s the apron’s fault. And it is (almost) my birthday. And he did make the whole experience very, very nice for me. But these are excuses. Because I would have had sex with him without the cake, or the apron, or the birthday. I knew I would the minute he said hey. I knew I would the moment I parked my car outside.

Xavier rolls over and looks at me.

‘Should we have cake for dinner? Or do you want me to get pizza?’ he asks, and I’m tempted to say, Yes, let’s have pizza, or Let’s go out somewhere. I am so tempted to just keep it nice and easy, but I can’t go to sleep tonight without having some sense of what he thinks this is.