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God willing, it won’t be the last time I do it.
* * *
I’ve never been so aware that my house is decorated for a bachelor.
Yankees memorabilia hangs on the walls of my living room, there are discarded socks under the coffee table and muddy boots in my entry way. Quinn doesn’t seem to be turned off by any of it, though. No, she’s more fascinated than anything, like she’s walking off a spaceship onto an alien planet. Kind of like how I felt walking into her apartment, except her place smelled better and had been cleaned within the last month.
“Sorry about…well, everything,” I say, scrubbing at the back of my neck. “My sisters are always on me about sprucing up, but I kept putting it off. The regret is real.”
“Don’t apologize.” She turns in an elegant circle, cataloging everything with her eyes. “It actually looks like someone lives here. I love that.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes. My place looks like a Pottery Barn catalogue. My bedroom is the only part of my apartment I didn’t let my mother’s interior designer touch.”
“Oh, yeah. Me too,” I deadpan. “I was very strict about the very same thing with my designer.”
“Oh.” Her mouth spreads into a smile. “Is that right?”
“Uh-huh.” The old floorboards groan under my feet as I close the distance in between us, settling my hands on her hips and massaging them roughly. “Don’t take my word for it, though. Come see the bedroom yourself.”
Pink suffuses her cheeks, her palms sliding up and over my pecs. “Is that where you plan to conduct your lesson?”
Lesson.
The word is like a sword twisting in my gut.
She’s here for a lesson while I’m ready to book the church for our wedding.
Have I already forgotten my plan to take this slowly?
Yeah, I think I have. Somewhere in between watching her get excited over bodega coffee and kissing her in the Uber, I’ve dropped off the edge of a cliff and landed in a whole sea of love for Quinn. But I need to remember her feelings aren’t moving at the same pace as mine. They couldn’t be. It’s not possible. So I have to take it easy or I risk scaring her off.
“That’s right,” I say, my voice sounding rusty. “Consider the bedroom my office.”
“And that makes me the client?”
“My fees are reasonable.” God, no one has ever made me smile like this woman. Even the reminder that she’s not in love with me yet does nothing to douse my pure enjoyment of being with Quinn. I marvel over the feel of her small hand in mine as I lead her to the bedroom, guide her inside and turn on a lamp. Thankfully this room is cleaner than the rest of the house and my dirty laundry is in the basement in piles, as opposed to the floor.
Raw possessiveness rolls through me like a storm, seeing her this close to my bed. Having her scent mingle with mine. Visions flash through my head of waking up with her in this very room on Sunday mornings, gripping the headboard while she rides me all naked and rosy from sleep. Or tickling our children when they jump into the bed at sunrise. How am I going to pretend like this is a casual lesson when the future is so close I can touch it?
Quinn is taking a turn around the room, the hem of her dress brushing my bed. She stops in front of my stack of sports autobiographies and runs a fingertip over the top cover, making my groan inwardly, wishing those fingers were wrapped around my dick.
“So, um…” She finally turns to me, her apprehension obvious. “Where do we begin?”
I guess I can’t just pin her to the bed and make love to her. I’ve promised a lesson and I need her to believe my offer was genuine, right? Otherwise she might start to think I just brought her to Queens to make her my wife and procreate. “Right, uh…” I cough into my fist. “Earlier, if I’d been inside you, that would have been called the missionary position. Do you know any other positions men and women use?”
“Yes.” She nods eagerly, but her shoulders quickly slump. “No.”
Don’t worry, sweetheart. You’re going to know them all real soon.
“Would you like me to show you some of the positions?”
Her tits rise and fall. “A-are you going to be inside me?”
“Eventually. When you’re ready.” I take the hem of my shirt in my hands and lift the garment up over my head, tossing it toward the hamper. “You don’t mind if I get comfortable, do you, Quinn?”
Quinn is not hearing me.
She’s in a trance, ogling my torso and I thank God for downtime at the firehouse. The weight lifting must have paid off. I sneak a quick glance at myself in the full-length mirror hanging on my closet door and suck in my stomach a little. All right, fine. I’ll add a few more crunches to my routine. There’s nothing I can do about the tattoos, though, and I hope like hell she likes them. I’ve got fire department ink and tats that represent my family. They’re everywhere, winding up my ribcage and coloring my chest, my shoulders. Do they bother her?
