Generosity is its own kind of warmth, and it washes over him in waves, reaching me.
It’s so easy to reach for his hand and just soak into his heat.
His scent.
Looking across at him, I can see how short I am in comparison. With some men, that’s intimidating, and they like to use their size as such. With Jared, I just feel safe.
Like I’m with family, someone who is there to comfort me and be with me, just in my corner.
I haven’t felt that way in so long, probably not since college, when I told my mother I wanted to come to a paranormal-friendly community, and she wanted me to come back home and live with her and dad, avoiding the fragile humans in the world that I could accidentally hurt.
“You went to a sad place, far away.” Jared strokes my hand with his thumb. “Is it the vase?”
“No. I love the vase. I love the food. I love being here with you.” Why fight the best thing I’ve felt in years?
“I was wishing I had my family closer, but my mother... my mother doesn’t even think I should be here.
She had some bad run-ins with humans, and so did I when I was in college.
She just doesn’t want me to hurt anyone, or have me get in trouble, get blamed for something I can’t control. ”
“I get it.” He nods, and then... He’s silent. Beautifully, compassionately silent.
I wait for him to talk it out, to bring up his own sad tale, to jump in with some solution or some mansplaination... Nothing.
“You’re a good listener,” I praise.
“You have a beautiful voice to listen to.”
“I love singing, but I...”
“I have three records. Used to have three hundred.”
“Patsy?” I hiss, even though he mentioned it last night.
“Mhm. Here, it’s not exactly fine dining music, but you can sing along if you want.”
He puts on a collection of Doo-Wop hits. They’re all familiar, easy to sing along with. And... And just to test out my theory, I whisper-sing a single line of one verse.
Jared doesn’t clutch his head. Or scream. Or faint. He sings the next verse to me.
I sing back, and suddenly, we’re singing together.
I can’t stop smiling.
It’s not until the third verse that I notice the roses are now gigantic, and the beautiful white vase topples onto the table under their weight, sending water all over the white tablecloth and the carpet underneath, sloshing into our empty salad plates.
“We’re gonna need a bigger vase,” he says, absolutely deadpan.
“I’m so sorry. I’ll help you mop up. Are you okay?” I start scooping up plates, wadding up the tablecloth as Jared moves the wine and bread.
“I’m sorry I didn’t buy a bigger vase.”
“No! Do you feel funny?”
“I’ve been told I’m sort of witty.”
I lightly smack his arm. “My voice doesn’t affect you?”
“Oh, it does. I hear it like a beautiful dream. I even heard it last night when I was falling asleep. I heard—” Jared stops suddenly, like he was so comfortable talking that he forgot he had an audience.
“What? What did my voice say? What did you hear?”
“Nothing. I mean, I heard something, but I can’t repeat it.”
He blushes. I blush.
“Did you hear me calling your name?” I ask, preparing for my immediate death by embarrassment. That’s the politest way to put it.
He nods and mops up the table.
My appetite plummets, probably a side effect of that whole impending death thing. “I’m so sorry.”
“Why are you sorry? That’s something every man dreams of hearing! Especially said by someone he loves, some gorgeous woman who sweeps him off his feet.” He puts down the towel he’s using, stepping closer to me as I put the wine and bread back on the now-dry table. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“No, I shouldn’t have called out last night.”
His eyebrows fly high. “That was you calling out? Out loud ? I thought maybe you were just projecting it in my brain somehow, like your love song.”
“Might’ve been both,” I mumble, realizing I’m just digging my grave deeper every second. I could have let him think it was a dream, but no. Now he knows I’m a horny screamer who was begging him to come.
“It worked out well. Sweetest dreams I’ve had for a long time,” he admits, so close now that I can bump into him if I lean to my right.
I lean. I sigh. A wall of sturdy warmth supports me as I manage a weak chuckle. “I guess I’m not dying of embarrassment today .”
“Nothing to be embarrassed about. I just want you to consider something.”
“Soundproofing my apartment? It’s a rental. I can’t.”
“No. Next time, maybe we could make those sounds together?” he whispers, and I hear him hold his breath, as if he’s fearing his turn on the death-by-mortification wheel is up next.
“Together?” I mouth, almost soundless.
“I could make you call much louder. Oh, I know I’m not fancy fae,” he hurries on when I open my mouth, “but I’m a nerd.
A geek. A guy who once played one game of chess-by-email for fourteen weeks.
A guy who has been on the same D&D quest for three years and is planning to continue until the DM dies.
I will complete any mission my lady gives me.
” He bows low, one hand flung out, the other across his broad middle.
“And yes, that was corny as hell, and if you want to join me in that dying of embarrassment thing, we can go together.”
“I’d rather we come together instead,” I say—because I’m relaxed, and my filter is stuck in my second glass of wine.
“Okay, but you come first. I insist,” Jared says, and before I know it, I’m scooped up, into his arms and out of the room.
I LEAVE THE LIGHTS out. I’m shy.
Doesn’t matter, because my Chloe glows, a faint candlelight glow as we kiss, long and sweet, sitting on the bed in my room. “We don’t have to do anything. I didn’t invite you here to—”
“I know. And I want my dinner—after dessert.”
“I got Georgie to make me a Guinness Chocolate Cake for you,” I whisper. “So we can have a three-course dinner and a two-course dessert.”
We giggle together in the dark. My nerves melt away—and then my clothes seem to melt, too. First it’s her hand on my leg, then my chest, then my collar.
“Jared,” she breathes between kisses, the hungriest, tiniest voice you can imagine, as if she’s afraid to speak.
I’m afraid to touch her, but she snuggles into me, arms wrapping around me. Clinging to me.
“You’re perfect. So perfect,” she moans, and I hate that I tear up, but I do. No one has ever loved me like that, or believed that.
“You’re perfect,” I return. My hands get bolder. I find the bare back under her long, flowing hair. Find the straps of her dress under my fingers as they slide down. As one, we lift my shirt and drop her dress, clinging to each other to capture the maximum amount of skin-on-skin.
Under the tiny straps, she wasn’t wearing a bra, so her soft, full breasts fall into my hands, and I make sure that I use them as tools for her pleasure, not for my selfish, giddy-with-disbelief pleasure.
I massage my way around the whole breast, not just targeting the nipple, listening for her responses.
When her hand connects with my crotch, I almost jump off the bed. Somehow, I don’t know why, I never thought she’d want to touch me as much as I want to touch her.
“I didn’t get any condoms,” I suddenly realize. “I thought it would be too soon, too presumptuous.”
Chloe nods, fiddling my belt free and working my zipper down. “I don’t take the pill, either. No point in my situation.”
“Oh. You can’t—”
“I don’t have any lovers. Haven’t for years.”
That doesn’t solve the problem. In fact, as we’ve been talking, she’s unzipped me completely, and now her hands slide smoothly into my boxers, cupping and stroking my erection, somehow making it longer and thicker than it’s ever been.
Is she working magic on me like I’m some plant—or am I just so turned on by her?
“I really want to feel you in me. Nothing between us,” she whispers, nibbling my ear.
I can pull out before?”
Chloe nods eagerly, lying back, motioning me to come with her.
“I wished you were on my pillow last night,” I admit, just staring at her, drinking in her beauty.
“I dreamed we were spooning in front of a fire. Your hands were on my hips.”
As we lay face to face, I make that part of her dream come true, rubbing her outer hip and thigh. Nothing is between us now but thin pink panties and navy blue boxers—and they’re useless, since she pushed the waistband down to stroke me.
I keep waiting for the barbed words to come, for the comments that make me feel ugly to start.
They don’t. Instead, she guides my hand from her hip to her pussy. I hear her audible swallow before she says, “Then you touched me here. And that’s when I called for you.”
My fingers don’t delay in massaging her, finding her pleasure center in the soaking valley between her legs.
She’s wet for me. This isn’t an act. When I touch her, she moans and arches into me, desperate and loud.
Without even trying, she sheathes me in her slippery paradise and welds our mouths together, burning me with her kisses.
“Can I taste you?” I whisper.
She just nods and lets me continue my exploration, lying still.
I roll to my back and shake my head. “It’s probably better if you ride.”
“I want to ride you until my thighs break,” she grunts, sitting up and clawing her way over to me.
“I meant my face—at least my face, first . Then my cock.”
“My God. You are so perfect. I’m going to keep saying it because I can’t believe it’s true,” Chloe exclaims.
“It’s not true. I’m so far from perfect.”
“I get to be the judge of that, and I say that you feel perfect. You act perfect. You are proof of my magic being right, even when I fight it.” Her voice is hard, but not mean.
But I know not to mess with her, and so I will let this little lie go. She can believe I’m perfect if it makes her happy.