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Twelve

My alarm went off fartoo soon.

“No,” I moaned as I turned it off for the third time.

“Also no,” Echo said in a scratchy voice.

I opened my eyes and turned on my side to find a very naked Echo stretching her arms above her head, the covers all the way down to her waist, revealing her luscious body. Okay, so that made things a tiny bit better. Only a tiny bit though.

Our night of debauchery was over and it was back to reality, and Echo was back to being the complicated woman I had fucked. Again.

“Enjoying the view?” she asked and then shimmied her shoulders a little bit to give me a show.

“You’re very good at that, you should charge money.”

She grinned at me with her hair spread out on my pillows.

“I’ve taken a burlesque class or two in my day,” she said, and then sat up, careless about her nudity. We were comfortable around each other in a way that I didn’t expect and wasn’t sure how to process.

“Oh, have you? I’d like to see some of those moves. But later, because I am so hungry I could eat my pillow.” The snacks we’d had hadn’t been enough.

“Same,” she said. “But you don’t have to feed me. I can grab something later.”

I gasped dramatically, as if she’d offended me. “You think that I would bang you into oblivion and then send you off without a hearty breakfast? Do you know me at all?”

Her smile was soft and guarded as she reached up and dragged one finger down my cheek.

“I don’t really know you, Kiri, but I want to,” she said.

Things were getting a little too intense this early, so I escaped from the bed to the kitchen, taking a moment to don a robe so I didn’t burn myself. Naked cooking was only sexy in the abstract.

I made pancakes and bacon and poured us each a glass of orange juice. The tray from last night’s snacks came in handy again and I made a note to thank Dom for it. I just couldn’t tell him what occasion I’d used it for.

He was going to murder me for sleeping with Echo, but what was done was done.

“Breakfast in bed,” I said to her, setting the tray down. She’d been messing around on her phone and had draped the other robe around herself, much to my disappointment.

“I’m so spoiled,” she said, sitting cross-legged and reaching for the tray to help me.

“Hold on, I just have to get the syrup.” I raced back to the kitchen to fetch condiments and butter and silverware.

Echo and I lay in bed together and ate, feeding each other bacon and pancakes from each other’s plates as if we’d done this same thing hundreds of times.

“This freaks me out,” I admitted, as she pierced the last bite of pancake with her fork and ate it. Typical.

“What does?” she asked after she chewed and swallowed. I’d noted that she drenched her pancakes in both butter and syrup. Echo enjoyed excess.