Debt

Burning questions, all.

But I fell asleep long before I could even mull over one fully.The next day, I woke up in my own bed alone.

On a sigh, I climbed out of bed, showered, changed, and went downstairs to bring him his coffee.

But, for a change, when I walked in, his eyes snapped up in my direction, despite being on the phone.

He didn't say anything, but I got a minor chin jerk when I placed his cup by his hand. And, well, that was improvement. It was something to cling to.

We went to bed that night and had slow, sweet, incredibly overwhelming sex.

The day after that, he pinched my ass when he walked past me in the hall. Again, it was a little nothing. But it was still more than I was accustomed to. The day after that, he came into the kitchen where I was baking dessert, bent me slightly backward, and kissed me like it was the last time he would ever get to.

"You alright there, babe?" he asked afterward as I clung to him, not quite trusting my legs to hold me on their own just yet. My body felt like it was buzzing.

"That was... unexpected," I said, shaking my head to clear it of the dreamy fog coating it.

Byron being Byron, sidestepped the issue entirely and pulled himself up on my flour-coated counter in his expensive black suit, and stuck his finger in the bowl of batter I had been mixing. "This doesn't look like crumb cake," he said, inspecting his finger before sticking it in his mouth.

"That's because the crumb cake is already in the oven. This is madeleines batter."

"Madeleines?" he repeated, brows furrowing.

"Yeah. French butter cakes. You know, the spongy ones in the shape of shells? They're my favorite," I said, grabbing the cookie mold. "And Ella just so happened to have the molds for them."

"Of all the desserts in the world, you pick butter cakes?" he asked, face scrunching up like I was out of my mind.

"I'm a bit of a plain Jane, I guess," I said, shrugging, as I put the mold down beside the bowl to start rationing it out.

"Nothing plain about you," he said and I felt my chest do the warm thing again. I was getting way too used to that feeling. And it was making it way too easy to forget how fleeting it could be. It was easy to play house with Byron and convince myself it was real. But aside from a few small actions that suggested to my overly analytical mind that he was warming to the idea of having me as more than a fuck buddy and personal assistant, there had been no more conversations about what we were. And, chicken shit that I was, I could never bring it up. One, because it showed a vulnerability in me that I was uncomfortable sharing. Two, because it ran the chance of ruining what we had prematurely.

Weak as it might have been of me, I wasn't willing to risk that.

The next week, I was summoned to his office where he ever-so-casually told me to pack a bag. I was pretty sure my heart constricted hard in my chest, thinking he was kicking me out. "I have a business trip, babe. I'm gonna fuck you on every surface in that hotel room."

And with that, my heart swelled again.

He was taking me with him. On a business trip. He wanted me with him.

See... I was slowly but surely learning that Byron, and possibly all men, communicated more through actions than words. So while it certainly would have been nice for him to sit me down and inform me that he liked having me around and didn't want to be away from me for a weekend, him telling me to pack a bag relayed the same message.

I wasn't going to nitpick.

I packed a bag. I put in a pair of jeans, a tee, a button up, all the fancy lingerie Byron bought me and two of the dresses along with the tan heels, figuring that covered all my bases. I didn't bother with pajamas as Byron seemed inclined to fuck me into a stupor that made me forget that such things existed.

"That's it?" he asked as I rolled into the foyer the next morning.

I looked down at my bag, then back at him. "Ah, yeah?"

"Come here," he said, giving me a small smile. I moved toward him and he hauled me up against him, his lips crashing down on mine, hungry and needy, but not rough. Deep, intense, his tongue toying with mine until I was breathless and clinging to him.

He pulled back a long couple of minutes later and it took what seemed like forever to force my eyelids open. "Well," I said, shaking my head to clear it. "If that's all it takes to get a kiss like that... what would I get if I tossed half the stuff out of it and condensed it all down to an overnight bag?"