She could not have been more alluring had she been in the buff. The light, playful tease of the scanty fabric showed enough while not showing it all, making her somehow even more enticing.

“Thank you,” I said, clinging to my composure. “Now go sit down, please. Bare skin isn’t safe in here.”

“Adam Logan, as I live and breathe, are you looking out for my safety and well-being?”

“Yes. You’re in my house, so you’re my responsibility. Now, please do as I ask.”

“Yes, sir.”

I hadn’t meant to say it— not that way at least. Showing my hand like that was foreign to me. Yet I had laid all my cards on the table and then the tone of her reply not what I expected.

The subtle, submissive whisper was one I’d heard many times before. Too many to have possibly misinterpreted what it meant. But I had never heard it from Petra before, and now all I wanted to do was keep making her say that to me in that way. With my cock aching once more, I tried to concentrate on feeding my guest.

Once our places were set as usual, a most unexpected thing happened. Picking up everything she needed, Petra moved along the mammoth table, to settle again mere feet from me to my right. Her nearly bare thighs were enticingly within reach.

“Is this okay? I just feel so silly over there. I know there’s supposed to be social distance but we both tested negative back at the studio.”

She had a point. Seth was almost like a dictator in making us all take weekly Covid tests so that none of us would accidentally infect the other while we all worked in rather close proximity.

That wasn’t why I’d kept my distance, but it was almost sweet that she thought so. She didn’t seem to have any idea that I was trying to avoid her, and she’d instead put it all down to COVID fears.

We were perfectly safe out there, behind the brick. Not so much as a bear or a deer was able to get through to my designated grounds. What I’d said on the night of her arrival about it not being safe wasn’t true— at least not in the way she thought. There were no big bad wolves or bone-crunching ogres to be found in the penetrating dark. Just brambles and stinging nettles and jagged, broken tree branches, which weren’t always easy to see until it was too late.

Despite the reticence on both sides, my protection instinct had kicked in long before. It wrongheaded of me, perhaps, but I saw Petra almost as innocent. Not because she was young— I would never be so patronizing. But rather there was something in her manner, almost her essence. A sense of tension mixed with wonder that marked her out as a novice, in experience, if not in life in general.

From what I’d heard from Theo after a few beers at launch parties and the like, his parents were basically hard-asses who had sheltered him, at least inadvertently. What they thought he should be doing with his life, and how things should go, conflicted quite hard with Theo’s own plans.

I could only imagine it was the same with Petra, if not more so. Not only was she the younger of the two, and therefore a second chance of sorts for their parents, if one were to be cynical about it, but she was also a girl.

Her parents’ approach clearly hadn’t done her any favors in some respects. To give her credit where it was due, though, she had managed to get away, and had come to a different continent no less, thereby ending her parents’ machinations and designs over her and making her own life instead. Even with the attendant fear that had to be part and parcel of leaving home for the first time, and which was likely only exacerbated by the culture shock, she had done it.

Although my mouth was full of blueberry crepe, my heart felt slightly swollen with a surrogate pride for her achievement. I’d done what my parents had wanted me to do, I’d followed their plan and path until they had all turned into dead ends, and I had regretted it ever since.

“How did you sleep?” I asked, casual conversation not coming naturally to me.

“Good. I think I’m getting used to the room, which is lovely. I’m just not quite used to so much perfection.”

“Ah, I see.”

I did, actually. It was all a matter of comparison as well as degrees. I was glad she was adjusting. Not in the least because she was going to be here for a while. It had already been a week, and things were already getting more comfortable as we tried to get used to each other.

Cohabitation could be a hard adjustment in the best of situations, which this certainly wasn’t, thanks to the pandemic and the unexpected quarantine. Her increasing comfort pleased me more than I might have expected and not only because of a possibly misplaced sense of gallantry.

Tags: Jamie Knight Romance
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