11
Lisa
Having to be quiet was…the best thing ever. It intensified everything, not being able to let it out. After he spooned me right through a nap and back, I tottered to the master bathroom. I felt like a newborn foal on a nature show—like my legs didn’t work right at all. He’d made me come so hard that my knees were actually knocking together. I braced myself on the edge of the sink and looked at his reflection, him watching me from the bed. His eyes moved down to my bare ass, and he shook his head. Smug. Satisfied. And totally entitled. I spun to get a look, and there, in glorious pink welts, was his handprint.
He rolled out of bed and followed me into the bathroom. Just as he was about to close the door, though, we heard a clattering of pans from downstairs.
Dave pinched the bridge of his nose. “I love her, but I’d really rather that we’d ended up here snowed in, just the two of us.” He pressed into me from behind so that the marble edge of the countertop made a cold line against my thighs. “Because there’s a pool table in the basement, and I really have to see this body on that felt.”
With that thought making me shudder—fingers tangled in rope pockets, on my knees, goodness gracious—I turned to face him. “Dave, I need to be straight with you. I don’t usually do things like this. Actually, I never do things like this. I’ve got a three-date minimum before things move to the bedroom.”
Dave didn’t seem fazed by this at all. “Wait. So you don’t usually find yourself in the middle of a once-in-a-century natural disaster, stumble into a stranger’s house, and have the best sex of your life?”
Little did he know that the most exciting date I’d had recently was a round of speed dating cut short by a restaurant kitchen fire. Smoking hot! “Not since George W. was in office. And even then, it was only a tropical storm.”
He snickered and pressed his still half-hard cock into my belly button. “Me neither, actually. I have the shittiest luck with women. It’s like a sitcom.”
Out of nowhere, I got a flash of jealousy. Him. With other women. I didn’t like it. No, I did not. But I didn’t have a claim on him, I knew that. How silly. How ridiculous. That a man like this, with a mattress empire and an estate, would want anything to do with little old me.
Except, before I could make some self-deprecating crack to let him off the hook, Dave said, “Listen, I don’t want to go too far toward the Ouija board side of things, but I gotta tell you, Lisa…” He dug his hands into my ass more aggressively, and I watched his thick eyebrows shift into a serious line. “Maybe it’s crazy, but I really just…like you. And I want to see where this goes.”
Seven thousand butterflies took off in unison in my stomach. I raised my eyes to him, and he hoisted me up onto the countertop. “You do?”
“Fuck yeah, I do. Don’t you feel it? The sparks?”
Sparks! Please. I could feel it in the heat between us and every time he touched me, but sparks wasn’t even close. “More like a fire at a fireworks warehouse.”
“You’re goddamned right about that. So, what do you say? You want to set fire to this and see what happens?” He gave me another thrust. “Because I don’t think we can fuck like we do without getting…” His eyes moved over my face. “Attached.”
This man. He was over the top. He was clearly a die-hard romantic. He was also lovely and respectful and made a mean scrambled egg. He did things to me in bed that I didn’t even know were possible. And he was some sort of prince!
“I’m not opposed to attached,” I whispered, so overpowered by the moment that even my voice was unsteady.
“Good. And I love my grandma, but I don’t give two shits about where you come from. I just want to get to know you. And fuck you senseless every chance I get. How does that sound…” He lifted my chin so he was looking me in the eye. “…princess?”
If he hadn’t had me perched on the countertop, I think my knees would’ve gone straight out from under me then. “Pretty much perfect.”
“Good girl,” he said, tipping me back for a kiss.
But before I got lost in him all over again, I stopped him. “I’m determined to win her over, Dave. I won’t let a lady in a Lenin hoodie scare me away.”
“I’ve got no fucking doubt about that at all.”
* * *
We came downstairs to find Dave’s grandma on the sofa, with a hilariously huge bowl of popcorn in her lap and her mug of whipped cream nearby. On the big flat-screen television, Idris Elba as DCI John Luther was strolling through the wet streets of London with his hands jammed into his blazer pockets. I glanced at Dave, with his dimples and his brawn and his kind eyes, right then looking in the refrigerator and scratching his stubble thoughtfully and considering what looked like a whole roasting chicken for dinner. I glanced at Idris, still with his hands in his pockets and strolling along. Dave put the chicken on a cutting board and looped an apron over his head. Sorry, Idris. No comparison. Not to me.
“Honey! You were right!” Grandma said. “New season!” She smacked the sofa next to her, signaling for me to come take a seat. I glanced at Dave, and after sizing up the situation—appearing to scan for, I don’t know what, a stack of tarot cards and Witchcraft for Dummies, probably—he gave me a reassuring look to say, Yeah, go ahead. “You want coffee? Tea? Something stronger?”
“Ooh,” I said, taking a peek at the clock. “Can we drink at two p.m.?”
“All’s fair in love and storms,” Dave said, patting my ass. “Two hot toddies, coming up.”
“Remember how I made them?”
Dave clicked his tongue against his teeth. “I watched your every move.”
Heavens.
I made my way into the huge living area off the kitchen and took my place next to Grandma on the sofa. She thrust a fuzzy throw blanket into my arms and nudged an ottoman toward my feet. Then she offered me the popcorn and grabbed a remote, licking butter from her fingers. She pressed something, and the blinds went down on the row of huge picture windows. Instant home theatre. See also, awesome.
“Listen, honey,” Grandma said, “Didn’t mean to scare you earlier. I get a little carried away.”
She didn’t look at me when she said it. I felt like we were two cops on patrol, both looking out of the windshield as we cruised along.
“That’s okay.”
“It’s just that he’s my only little prince. His folks are gone, only child. Same old story.”
Turning, I watched Dave in the kitchen, where he was crushing some garlic. He wiped the knife off on a dish towel and programmed something into the oven, giving me a perfect view of his yummy buns.
As if he could feel me looking at him, he met my stare and winked. He made a bottoms-up gesture and pointed at the stove, and then he gave me a single finger in the air to say, Coming right up.
A bony elbow jabbed me in the side. “You listening, hon?”
“Sorry. What was that?”
She passed the whole container of whipped cream to me, her eyes locked on me. Like a test. I considered the can and thought about going to get a spoon or a bowl or something. But, what the hell. When in Rome. I squirted a big dollop onto my tongue, and Grandma hooted. “I just want to make sure you’re the right kind of girl.”
I swallowed my mouthful of sweet cream. “I don’t want to be rude…”
“Pffft. You say rude, I say no bullshit. Potato, potahto.”
I handed the whipped cream back to her. “But I don’t know him at all. We haven’t even been out to eat together. What if he’s a…I don’t know…loud chewer? A slurper? A skimpy tipper? Maybe’s not good enough for me,” I said, totally joking. In my periphery, I saw him trussing up a chicken like he was on a cooking show. Way too good for me, way too good.
She snapped apart her bifocals and began cleaning them with her sweatshirt, nodding somewhat sadly at the lenses. “He does slurp sometimes, but he always tips twenty-five percent. He’s my person, honey. We’re blood-bound. I want to see him happy.”
“I understand that. I really do. But this isn’t anything serious. We just met.” As soon as I said it, I knew that was a lie. It might be really early, but I could feel it: the excitement, the hope, the connection. It was never too soon to feel that.
“When you’ve been around as long as me, you know which way the love-winds are blowing. He’s roasting you a chicken, isn’t he?” She raised a painted eyebrow, as if to say roasted meats equal love. “But I’ll stop with the Ouija. I’ll just let nature take its course.”
“Promise? Because you really freaked me out!”
She chortled and then put a bony hand on my forearm and squeezed. Then she turned up the volume as Luther stepped into a grisly crime scene. “Promise,” she said.
“And I promise I won’t go breaking his heart,” I whispered.
“Good enough for me,” Grandma whispered back.
I settled down into the couch a little deeper, making sure there was room next to me for Dave, if and when he came to join us. I scooted closer to Grandma, and the smell of Bengay got slightly stronger.
But as I got comfy, I felt something poking into me from underneath. I scooted my tush side to side—there was definitely something there. Something large and hard. Thinking it had to be another remote, I took my feet from the ottoman and crouched down next to the sofa. I stuck my hand under my seat cushion, where I found…a cue ball.
I looked at Grandma, and Grandma looked at me, for just one fleeting instant, before she went back to Luther and shoved an enormous handful of popcorn into her mouth. I took the ball out from under my seat and put it on the sofa next to her. Grandma played totally dumb and didn’t even look at it.
“Okay, Google,” she’d said earlier. “How do you test for royalty?”
I considered the situation. No way. This woman couldn’t possibly have gone completely fairy tale on me. Insanity. Madness. And yet…
Sure enough, as I plunged my hand back under the sofa, I found more round items—one of those big balls of rubber bands, a round lip balm container, and finally… I peered at the strange little something between my fingertips.
“Is this a pea?” I whispered.
She didn’t answer right away, but instead waited for a gap in the dialogue and whispered back, “Wasabi edamame.” And beamed.
* * *