“Whatever you’re thinking, Flick, I’m convinced I won’t like it.” He traced a finger down her nose to rest on her lips.
She bit it softly. “Do you believe in love?”
“I believe in attraction. The chemistry. Can’t claim to understand it, but it exists. We have it. People do crazy things in the name of it.”
They did. It wasn’t a terrible answer. It’s just that she wanted more than a chemical reaction to build her life on, because after the froth and steam, after the color change and the oxidization took effect, what were you left with?
“Think I’d like to go to bed now. I’ll play the brothel madam and you can play the innocent-but-ready-to-be-debauched tourist who has no moral qualms about doing it with a robot woman.”
“I didn’t choose the fantasy coupon yet.”
He had a lot of things left to choose, before their chemical reaction was a finished experiment. “Consider it practice.”
He made her whoop when he picked her up and tossed her over his shoulder, a slap to her ass to hold her in place. He played the brothel-visiting ready-to-be-debauched tourist surprisingly well for a man who’d only recently learned to enjoy a blow job, and enthusiastically requested another
one, and the next morning he hung her black satin off-the-shoulder body-con dress on the bedroom door.
They were going out for dinner. She had to scramble to get a reservation somewhere decent.
And that dress called for some quality primping. She sent him to the gym while she did the full overhaul including an avocado clay mask, mini facial and hair treatment. He did not need to see her wandering around with green goop all over her face and her head in a plastic bag.
She exfoliated and moisturized from top to toe. She curled her hair and put it up. She took extra care over her makeup, and the first thing Tom said when he saw her dressed and ready was “How does that stay up?”
“I have to breathe carefully.”
“You can breathe in that? I had no idea it would look like that from seeing it on the hanger.”
“You don’t like it?” She wanted to take that back. She looked edible and if he couldn’t see that, he was blind, and outside of having to dress a specific way for work, to hell with dressing to please a man, which was what she’d spent all afternoon attempting. Goddammit.
“I’m in—”
He paused, and in the gap, she heard love.
“—awe. I’m worried about touching you in case I wreck something.” He said that as he hesitantly ran a hand around her waist to spread his palm over her back.
“What’s the worst that can happen?” Heartache, despair, the return of the sleepless nights she’d stopped having, mostly because the sex was exhausting and she didn’t want to leave a bed Tom was in.
“You could flash your underwear in a restaurant full of nice, unsuspecting people.”
“What underwear?”
He double-blinked and then his eyes narrowed as his hand went first up her back, feeling for a bra strap, and then down looking for a panty line.
“Fuck me, are you naked under this dress?”
“It’s not going to fall off.”
“Oh Lord, you are. Why are we leaving the condo?”
“Because you chose the dinner-out coupon.”
“I need my head examined.”
“I thought that’s what I’d been doing since I moved in.”
He tried to pinch her butt, but he couldn’t get a grip on the slippery satin and she danced out of his arms.
The restaurant was one of those hip places Flick loved, with an interesting menu and a talented chef, with stunning décor and a way of being both forbiddingly elegant like Tom’s apartment and yet not snobby or off-putting.