I squint at her, willing the scene to come together in some kind of logic, because I’m like ninety-nine percent sure I’ve got pillowcases. I’m not Suzy Homemaker or anything, but I have accomplished “pillowcase” level of adult. And they’re really nice pillowcases too. I told my assistant to pick out something expensive, and he pretty much found the most expensive linens money can buy.
Oblivious to my presence, Zenny takes a pillow off the bed and gently wiggles it out of its pillowcase, replacing it with her own.
“What are you doing?” I ask through all the toothpaste, confused.
She turns to face me and looks down at the pillowcase in her hand. “It’s a pillowcase from home. It’s satin,” she adds, as if that explains everything.
“Well, mine are Egyptian cotton,” I say, using my toothbrush to gesture at the bed. “They’re imported from Paris.”
“Yes, but your Parisian pillowcases won’t work for me.” With a few deft shakes, she has the pillow neatly inside her satin case.
I squint at her again, very confused, and decide this is too complex to be a toothbrushing conversation. I go to spit, rinse and dry off my face, and then I come back out. “Should I buy new pillowcases?” I ask. “Did I buy bad ones?”
I get the sense that I’m missing something when she holds her pillow in front of her mouth to hide her smile. “No, I’m sure they’re very nice pillowcases. But they’ll dry out my hair.”
Dry out her hair?
A slow-dawning horror washes over me. “Do they dry out my hair?” I try to surreptitiously catch my reflection in the decorative mirror behind her, wondering if my hair has been slowly drying out over the last year and everyone has been secretly judging me for it.
My vanity has Zenny outright giggling now. I walk up to her, still wearing nothing but a towel, and a low growl builds in my chest when her eyes rove all over my bared, still-wet chest and her smile grows shyer and also hungrier, in that Zenny way. I want to crush her to my chest and kiss that contradictory smile until we’re both dizzy and panting.
“It’s my hair,” Zenny finally says, but she can’t drag her eyes up from my abs. “Black girl hair. The satin keeps it from getting too dry or frizzy while I sleep. My guess is that all this noise is fine with the pillowcases you have.”
All this noise means my hair, which she says as she runs her fingertips through the wet strands, tousling them over my forehead. Her pupils dilate as she watches drops of water roll over my cheekbones and down to drip off the line of my jaw.
My stirring cock is threatening to nudge off the towel currently tucked low around my hips, and I take a step closer to her, close enough that I could lean in and kiss her.
“But satin is better for wrinkles, for everybody, so really everyone should have a satin pillowcase,” she says. “Or a silk one, but silk is more expensive. Although I guess you wouldn’t mind that.” I get the feeling that she’s reaching for something to say right now, that she’s very close to babbling nervously, which is very unlike Zenny.
Which means she probably is nervous.
Fuck.
This is so goddamn hard to figure out. Normally I wouldn’t care if the woman about to climb into my bed was nervous—for one thing, I never have a woman crawling in my bed to stay the night, because my hospitality extends only to a shower and a car service home. (A gentleman always pays for the ride home—remember that, ladies.)
For another thing, if I get the slightest wave of apprehension off a woman, it’s game off, right away. I’m not interested in coaxing a reluctant woman to bed, for a host of ethical and I-don’t-want-the-emotional-aftermath reasons. And I’m not interested in being with a woman who’s only pretending to have a good time.
I can do all that because I don’t normally care about the women coming in and out of my bed; I can find a new one who’s enthusiastically consenting before we even finish our appetizers. But I do care about Zenny, which means I care about whatever is upsetting her, and I’m going to make it better.
Trusting that she’ll call me an asshole if I push her too hard, I scoop her up and toss her gently onto the bed, crawling in after her once I drop my towel. Her eyes are glued to the erection swinging heavy and dark between my legs, and I take my time reaching for the light switch and turning it off. Then I gather her to my chest and simply hold her, ignoring the throbbing bar of heat pressed against her warm thigh.
At first, she’s tense. Rigid and holding herself still, breathing carefully, like her tent is being circled by a bad-tempered grizzly ready to maul her for her empty potato chip bag.
But slowly, slowly, as the dark settles into a hazy golden glimmer of city lights through the window, she relaxes against me. Her breathing goes even and easy, and her hands tentatively find places against my shoulder and chest.
“Everything okay?” I ask quietly.
“Yes,” she answers. It doesn’t feel like the entire answer, though.
“Honest girl thing?”
“Honest girl thing.”
I stroke her arm, long sweeping strokes just so I can feel her skin again. “You’re not going to scare me off, Zenny-bug. I’m not going anywhere.” Ever is the next word I want to say.
I don’t say it.
“I guess—” She clears her throat, plucks at the sheet. “I thought you were going to have sex with me tonight. Like we’d climb into bed, and that would be it. And I was ready for it, but I suddenly felt so stupid and immature. As if you’d want to fuck me in my Winnie the Pooh pajamas, and maybe you’d even changed your mind after we’d done all that tonight, maybe I’d done something wrong or I tasted bad or I should have—”
I silence her with a kiss. A long one.
“I’ll prove you don’t taste bad right now,” I murmur against her lips. “I’ll spend the entire night with my mouth on your cunt.”
“But—”
“Do you honestly think there’s anything you can do to make me not desperate to fuck you? I practically came as you told me about your teddy bear friend. I’m dying to fuck you in your little college-girl pajamas, I want to fuck you in your dorm room, I want you clumsy and new and inexperienced. I want you as you are, Zenny, and one of the things you are is young. I’m going to hell for it, but that’s the way it is.”
“Oh,” is all she says. But I think it’s a good oh because she’s currently rubbing her pussy against my thigh like a needy cat. I don’t even think she knows she’s doing it.
I’m not going to survive this, I think. It’s Night One, and I’m already about to have a heart attack from how fucking sexy she is.
I continue. “We’re waiting to fuck because you’re mine—”
“But only for a month—”
I growl at her words, and she shushes…and then rubs herself against me harder.
“Because you’re mine,” I repeat firmly. “And because you’re mine, I want to take my time with you.”
“That’s what you would do if this were real?”
If this were real…already I’m hating every single reminder of what this is. Project Doubt. A stop on the road to thoroughly interrogated sacrifice. “Isn’t it still real?” I ask, and I hope with everything I am that she doesn’t hear the vulnerability in my voice.