Page 91 of Written By a Woman

“You have the biggest boner for the Marvel Universe that I have ever seen.”

“All I heard,” Zaid gave me a sly look as he reached forward to grab my forearms and tug me towards the door, “Was that I have the biggest boner.”

I snickered as I ripped my arms from his grip and stepped backward towards the bed, wiggling my eyebrows at him, “You need to walk me through this.”

“Do I?” He asked, giving a nervous glance at his surroundings as if he hoped he could conceal any aspect of this room.

There was no hope. I had seen it all. I wasn’t ever letting this go.

“So, you’re at a bar, you see a woman you want to get naked with,” he slid his dark eyes over to me, a look of exhaustion with his grin, “She, obviously, wants to get naked with you too—”

“I’m going to stop you right there,” Zaid lifted a hand as he marched towards me, and I skirted his reach again by side stepping quickly to the other side of his bed, creating distance between us. Zaid’s eyes narrowed a little bit as he followed my retreat, trapping me in the corner, near his end table, “Women don’t come home with me.”

“Because they see your room?” I asked, gesturing dramatically to the Captain America shield comforter.

“No,” Zaid came to stand in front of me, something flashing in his eyes before he halted and stood a foot away, “Because I don’t bring women back to my room.”

“Ever?” I asked.

He lifted a shoulder, “I don’t do casual hookups, Signe.”

I stared at him for a moment, a question that was none of my business at the tip of my tongue. I slammed my lips shut as I thought better of it.

“What are you thinking, ya amari?” Zaid asked, his voice lower. Intimate.

“What does that mean?” I whispered. He had dropped a few terms of endearment in Arabic now, and I had been too nervous to ask. This seemed like a good alternative to asking whether or not he was a virgin before we got together.

Zaid gave me a longing look for a moment before he released a heavy sigh, “The moon.”

I tilted my head, “You called me the moon?”

He smiled before taking a seat on the edge of his bed, stretching his long arms behind himself, “It’s an affectionate name.”

“That’s nice…Mars.”

Zaid rolled his eyes.

“Specifically, I called youmymoon,” Zaid leveled me with his gaze, his voice softening, “My most beautiful.”

I stood there, frozen.

I was all too aware of the blood pumping in my veins from my rapidly racing heart. I stood in Zaid Ansara’s bedroom, with his nightstand with an Iron Man lamp just inches behind me, while he called me his most beautiful.

Something inside of me both melted and cracked at his words, and I was hopelessly muted as I processed. How this lovable man I had originally written off for being too shy had quite possibly the geekiest bedroom a thirty-four-year-old man ever had.

“So…” I stopped because even though I was a writer when the sun went down, words could still escape me in very real moments like this, “You don’t bring women back to your room,” I couldn’t focus too much on Zaid casually throwing outya amariwithout getting emotional,so going back to the original topic was the best I could do, “Because you don’t do casual hookups.”

Zaid shook his head, his arms still supporting his weight on the bed behind him, “No.”

“What if I told you,” I swallowed around the painful lump in my throat, nerves building inside of me, “That I have only done casual hookups for the last…little bit.”

Zaid lifted a shoulder.

That was it.

“Nothing?” I pressed, casually leaning against the wall near his window, and turning my body so that I could trace my finger down the shade of his bedside lamp to avoid looking at him.

“What do you want me to say?” Zaid asked.