I chuckled. “You need food. And sleep.”
“Sleep?”
“Yeah, you said your plans for tonight were to actually get some sleep.”
“I reserve the right to renege on that,” he said, his gaze going from my eyes to my lips and back to my eyes.
“Oh, no you don’t,” I said, climbing off him and sitting between his legs. “You don’t look at me like that.”
He sat up, his long legs on either side of me. His hair kind of flopped a little, his lips were wet and red. Christ, he looked so hot. “Like what?”
“Like you know damn well. Like you want to devour me. Or you want me to devour you.”
“Both.”
I laughed. “What food do you want? Anything you feel like.”
“Anything?”
“Yep. What do you feel like?”
“I would kill for a pasta, tomato-based, with vegetables or something. No, scrap that. I want some Hokkien noodles. Where can we order that from?”
“Room service. I’ll call it through and they’ll make you whatever you want.”
He looked panicked. “Oh, I don’t want to be a bother.”
That made me laugh. “It’s no bother.”
I lifted his leg, reached over to the side table, and grabbed the phone. I put in an order for noodles and dumplings, then grabbed us a drink each from the fridge. When I sat back down beside him, he’d taken his shoes off and put them neatly beside the couch. I handed him his drink and picked up the TV remote. I hit the Netflix button and handed the remote to Michael. “Fair’s fair. I’ve seen your viewing history; you can see mine.”
He laughed, and for the next five minutes, he scrolled through, laughed at some, asked questions about others, and was bitterly disappointed in the lack of R-rated stuff.
“I live with my dad,” I replied.
“Oh, fair point.” He chuckled as he took a sip of his drink. “Have you always lived with him? I mean, did you ever get your own place?”
“Nope. There was no need, really. He’s never here. I probably see him maybe four or five times a month. And even then it’s only for a few hours at a time.”
“Oh wow.”
“Yeah, even growing up I was here by myself most of the time.”
“That must have sucked.”
I shrugged. “Yes, and no. I went to boarding school, but the school holidays here without parental supervision was fun.”
He chuckled at that. “I bet it was. Party central, right?”
“Um, more private parties, if you catch my drift.”
He barked out a laugh. “You started early.”
I smiled at him. “Then there was college, which kept me busy, and then I went overseas for two years. So yeah, I live here with my dad but I very rarely see him.”
“Is that hard?” he asked quietly. “You’re not close with him at all.”
“I don’t know any different. I don’t remember much of my mother. Luckily, I was old enough to fend for myself by the time she’d had enough. When she left, I was in boarding school and didn’t know for weeks after the fact that she’d gone.”
Michael’s mouth fell open. He put his hand to my back. “Oh my god, Bry. I’m so sorry, that must have been awful.”
“Her trade-off was enough money to walk away. He basically forbade her to take me, though she hardly needed convincing. I don’t think she ever looked back. She calls me on my birthday. I don’t call her on hers.”
“Christ.”
I tried to laugh. “Listen to me, nosediving the conversation.”
He rubbed my back. “You didn’t nosedive anything. Thank you for telling me.”
I met his gaze. “Kinda fucked up, isn’t it?”
“Well, it’s not what some would call orthodox.”
“Which is a nice way to say fucked up.”
“Pretty much, yeah.”
“It’s okay. I know it is. I made my peace with that. My dad’s very successful and he’s good at what he does. And we do get along. We just have different ideals when it comes to relationships and what they should be.”
“You said before he tried to warn you out of starting something new with me.”
“Not just you. It’s not you. He’d say the same about anyone. So please don’t think it’s about you. It’s not you.”
He put his hand to my cheek and kissed me. “I know. Thank you.”
There was a knock on the door to alert us to room service, which I’d almost forgotten I’d ordered. I jumped up and let them in, and we ate our dinner on the couch watching more of that Chinese police show. We shared straight out of the takeout containers. He sat cross-legged and I had my feet on the coffee table. It was so relaxed and fun, even.
“Oh my god, this is so good,” Michael said, stuffing noodles in his mouth.
I waited until he swallowed that, then picked up a dumpling with my chopsticks and fed it to him. He fed me some noodles and we ate from each other’s containers, laughing, always touching. When we’d had enough, I pushed the containers onto the coffee table, lay back, and pulled him on top of me to watch TV.
It could have so easily become sexual. He was snug between my legs, his head on my chest watching the TV. He’d slid one of his hands under my lower back, his other hand rested on my arm. I rubbed his back and stroked the hair at his temple.
Not even ten minutes later, his hand on my arm fell away and I realised he’d fallen asleep.
I wasn’t even mad. In fact, I liked it. I tightened my arms around him and something warm and lovely settled beneath my ribs. My heart felt too big for my chest, as if it had grown big enough for two.
As scary as it was, as much as it took the ground from underneath me, I relished the freefall.
I loved him.
I was in love with him.
I don’t know how that happened. How we’d gone from a casual hook-up, from something fun and flirty to this.
To love.
But that’s where I was. That’s what this was.
I couldn’t deny it. I wouldn’t.
I was in love with Michael Piersen.
Smiling, I held him tighter, feeling the beat of his heart against my chest, the rise and fall of his chest. I kissed the top of his head, and not wanting this moment to ever end, I let him sleep.
I must have dozed off myself because I woke when he stirred. “Come on,” I whispered. “Let’s go to bed.”
He peeled himself off me, still half-asleep and disoriented. I got up, and taking his hand, I pulled him to his feet. “. . . go home,” he mumbled.
“No, baby,” I said, leading him to my room. “You’re sleeping here.”
My room was dark and he all but swayed when I stopped him by the bed. I unbuttoned his shirt and slid it over his shoulders, his pale skin almost illuminated in the darkness. I kissed his collarbone when I unbuttoned his jeans, and he made a happy sound. “You called me baby,” he murmured.
I slid my hands under the waistband of his jeans and pushed them over his arse. “I did,” I said, kissing up the side of his neck to his ear. “Baby.”
His hands were fisting my shirt at my hips, and he let his forehead fall to my chest. “. . . baby.”