that you were a sucker for chocolate cake,” he said, pulling out my chair. “Do you like it?”
I smiled. “I love it, Ethan. No one’s ever done anything like this for me before.”
He sat down next to me. “Damn shame.”
He picked up the fork, cut a chunk of cake, and then brought the fork up to my lips. I slipped the soft, airy chocolate into my mouth and he studied my mouth’s movements as though mesmerized.
“Sexy,” he said, smiling.
“So, I’m guessing that you don’t feel uncomfortable about what happened between us?” I asked, my nipples hardening as I watched the same fork go into his mouth.
He seemed surprised. “No.”
“Are you sorry that it happened?”
He used his finger to brush a piece of chocolate away from my lip and then sucked the finger into his mouth. “I’m not.”
I cleared my throat in an attempt to burn away the lie that was about to spill forth. “But you know that it can’t happen again, Ethan. Rick and I have been together for a while and, it’s not right. Plus, I don’t want to be just another sexual outlet for you or any man for that matter.”
His brow lifted. “Sexual outlet?”
“Yes.”
“You’re definitely not that, Alexandra.”
I decided to go with my other angle. “Well, you can’t tell me it’s not wrong,” I added. “If you were in Rick’s position, you wouldn’t want your girlfriend to be doing what I’m doing. This isn’t even like me. I don’t cheat. I don’t stray from the pack. For some people that might sound ludicrous, but that’s the way it’s always worked for me. My life was planned even before I was born: go to a good school, earn good grades, take on leadership positions in high school and then go on to Princeton. In the walking herd of sheep, I’m not the one that turns around and goes backwards.”
Even I couldn’t believe how extremely pathetic of an existence that appeared to be. Yet, it was true. I was safe. I was comfortable. I was predictable and reliable. The world could be a dangerous and unpredictable place, so living by a routine schedule and making sure that I hit the major mile markers of my life helped to detract from that uncertainty. It made the world seem a bit less daunting. But Lord did it leave a bad taste in my mouth now.
He studied my face in what I would almost call an incredulous fashion. It was as though I’d just given my entire spiel in an ancient language that not even the Rosetta Stone could have deciphered.
“Do you really believe that, Alexandra?” he asked, slipping another piece of cake into my mouth. “That you’re supposed to go through life in a calculated fashion dictated by other people?”
I didn’t, but I was still lying. “Yes.”
“And never once have you ever considered what you want?”
I was ripe with fibs tonight. “That’s what I want.”
“Well, what do you think I want?”
I paused before answering, taking the time to watch his tongue lick a piece of chocolate from his top lip. My mind betrayed me as it remembered the things that tongue could do and the areas of my body that it had traversed.
“You want me to have sex with you again?” The answer actually wasn’t supposed to come out in the form of a question, but the intonation at the end of the sentence snuck in at the last minute.
He grunted, but didn’t give me much more of a response than that. Instead, we continued to feast on the cake until only a few crumbs and swirls of melted chocolate remained on the plate. Admittedly, I missed it when it was gone. It was the most satisfying dessert that I’d ever had in my life but I couldn’t tell if it was the actual dessert, or the company I’d had the pleasure of keeping.
He pushed the empty plate away and turned my chair so that we were facing each other. Then, he inched me a bit closer. “Alexandra, how did you feel when you were with me?” he asked. “How did I make you feel? And, I want you to be honest. Don’t hold anything back.”
I