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I swallowed. That derision should be putting me off, dammit. It shouldn’t be making me fixate more; it shouldn’t make me salivate with the need to inch closer.

“I’m too turned on to answer that.”

No one could say I wasn’t honest.

Tony still didn’t move away, dammit. Wasn’t he supposed to? He never got anywhere near the lot of us whenever something sexual was going on.

I couldn’t think straight.

The only things that existed were the heat pooling in my stomach, my vision blurring around the edges as I forgot to blink in his presence, and… him.

Tony cocked his head to the side. “So what? You can’t think when you get hard?”

I shook my head. My mouth filled with saliva. I swallowed it down. “I wanna hump your leg.”

That had him reeling back. Just his head. Not far enough, either. I could still count the pores where he must’ve shaved that morning. I still had to clench my fists before I followed him, intoxicated.

There would be no excuse for it.

“You just acknowledged you’re not in the right headspace,” Tony said. I blinked. What did that have to do with— “We don’t have an established dynamic. Never played together.”

“So, establish it.”

My voice was too breathy. I didn’t like it. I didn’t like the way he wasn’t jumping my bones, even if I was still coherent enough to acknowledge that not jumping my bones was the right thing to do.

“Eat your food, Jaime.”

“I’m—” No, I couldn’t say I wasn’t hungry. Fuck him. “I’m not changing my mind.”

It wasn’t what I’d planned to say, but it was more honest. I’d think of what that said about me later. Or Cece would tell me, and she wasn’t one to mince words.

“Good.” Tony bit out the word. I frowned. My obsession with him didn’t mean that I could read his mood. “It’s still not happening. Today.”

Today.

It sounded like it had physically pained him to add that last part. I clung to it. “When?”

Sadly, he didn’t answer. No, he made a whole show of turning back to his food. He stuffed his mouth full of palak paneer before I could blink. I didn’t know how I felt about it.

I should probably think about it when I wasn’t in the same room as him, though that implied I could leave without putting my foot in my mouth again.

I was being realistic here. The chance of me acting like someone with functioning brain cells around him? Clearly close to zero.

FOUR

tony

“What are you doing now?” I asked when Jaime gathered up the dishes and headed to the kitchen with them.

Why was I letting him was a better question. Jaime had—begrudgingly—gone back to eating earlier. There hadn’t been a lot of talking. He’d mentioned something else about Cece being back in the apartment—even though I hadn’t even known she was out of town to begin with. There was no exuberant explanation or rambling. No filling the silence with stories of the people around him or the silliest things that had happened to him. It was weirdly refreshing, a relief compared with most of the subs I’d been with, but it was disconcerting, too.

There wasn’t an easy script to follow. I didn’t know where I stood with Jaime, or if he knew where he stood with me, but I was more anxious with him than I should be, and I didn’t like the feeling.

All I knew was that he’d moved without asking and was now rinsing the dishes before setting them in the dishwasher.

“Um. Cleaning up?” The boy shrugged.

He wasn’t as unaffected and cool as he pretended. Did anyone buy the act?