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“Can I interest you in a drink?” he asked.
God.
I didn’t even remember the last time I’d had a sip of alcohol.
It felt so indulgent. So… human. To share a drink with another adult.
“Yeah,” I said, genuinely excited as I closed Judah’s door with a quiet click, then followed Aurelio downstairs, trying not to marvel at how well he filled out his button-down. Or how nice of an ass he had.
What can I say? I was only human. And the man was practically sculpted from marble.
I hadn’t known the touch of a man in almost three years. And that last time, well, it hadn’t been good.
Not… forced. But not exactly wanted either.
At the end with Warren, intimacy had been more like an obligation, like a right he felt he had to my body, than something to be shared and mutually enjoyed.
Come to think of it, it had never really been something I particularly enjoyed with Warren.
Back in the early days, full of love-bombing and limerence, I would say there was interest. Wanting to be intimate. Even if the act itself, well, let’s just say that it was never a ‘fireworks’ thing for me. But it still seemed nice to be ‘close’ with someone I thought I was falling madly in love with.
How naive I had been.
So, no, I wasn’t surprised at the way my body was responding by being close to a gorgeous man. Especially because this one clearly had a good heart along with all that handsome.
Though, obviously, the last thing in the world I needed was to be attracted to the only man in the world who was willing to help me and my baby right now.
Not that anything was going to happen.
I mean, just because I was eye-banging him didn’t mean he had the slightest interest in me.
Though, I had to admit that some small, still hopelessly romantic part of me, maybe wished he would.
The man had bought me fuzzy socks and self-care items. A soft blanket. A decadently soft robe. He hadn’t just picked up what I said I needed. He’d walked around a store, thinking about things I might like. Then he’d bought them for me.
I wasn’t sure I’d ever actually been something a man thought about when not around me before. At least not in a positive way.
It made my heart feel all gooey to think of Aurelio doing so.
“How do you feel about red?” he asked, waving toward his bar cabinet—up high and locked because this man was always thinking about little hands getting in places they didn’t belong. “Or do you prefer mixed drinks?”
“Red sounds good,” I said, giving him a smile.
I hadn’t had an alcoholic drink since before Judah was born. Warren didn’t like when women got ‘sloppy,’ but he allowed me to have a drink with dinner.
Allowed.
God.
I can’t believe it took me so long to try to leave him. That I’d been someone who let a man control things like her alcohol intake.
Objectively, I’d been young. A little awestruck by an older, attractive, very wealthy man showing interest in me.
I’d probably thought at the time that he was wiser, knew more about manners and things like that, and that was why he knew I should only have one drink. And when he’d started to control my food, I’d agreed that he knew more about nutrition than I did. Even as my soul cried out for the pasta he almost never allowed me to have, and my body started to shrink smaller and smaller.
I wondered, in my quiet moments alone when Judah was asleep, but I was too anxious to get any rest myself, if he restricted my diet because he liked me frail. Because I would be less of a threat. Easier to overpower.
I guess it said something about Aurelio’s own self-assurance that he occasionally made comments about how I needed a second serving.
