She snuggled into my arms and I could hear the smile in her voice when she said, “I guess Fatty Rab will have to make room for me then.”
“There’s no way that dog is sharing a room with us. You only get one dog in your bed, baby, and that’s me.” I had half a mind to call up Rebecca and beg her to take care of Fat Rabbit for a few days more, giving Perry and I plenty of time in this faux-honeymoon period, but I knew I’d start missing the stinky bastard sooner or later.
“And you’re one bad dog,” she teased.
“Woof, woof. Give a dog a boner.”
She giggled and smacked my arm. And that’s why I loved this woman. She let me say the stupidest shit, and on occasion, actually found it funny.
There it was again. That word, that feeling of sinking, falling, drowning. Good, wonderful, delicious, scary. I was going to have to get used to it. I was going to have to start being okay with being in love and hope to hell she’d start to catch up with me.
“Hey, Perry,” I said, kissing the top of her head. Fuck she smelled amazing, like sex and vanilla.
“Mmmm?”
“What are you doing tonight?”
She turned her head and smiled up at me.
“Besides you?”
I grinned. “Baby, doing me is always and forever a given. It’s like Newton’s law of gravity, or Amazon taking over the world.”
She pursed her lips playfully, as if she had no other option, as if she’d ever turn down my cock again. “Good to know. Then I don’t know what else I’m doing tonight. I was thinking about unpacking…”
“Unpacking here, right?” I didn’t know if it was a stupid question or not, so I had to ask.
She stared at me for a few beats. “Yes, I’m unpacking here.”
“And here, in this room, our room…not the den?”
She nodded. “If you’d like.”
I sat up and adjusted myself so I could look at her better. “Perry…you know what I’d like, what I want. I want you to stay here permanently. I wasn’t joking with that making me your home business. As cheesy as it sounded, I fucking meant it.”
“I know,” she said, her eyes softening, sky blue in the morning light.
“I don’t want you in the den. I want you in this bed, forever. I want to be with you. Not just as a partner, not just as a friend. I want us to be together, to be one, to be…I don’t know, a fucking couple.”
She rubbed her lips and I had the urge to kiss her hard enough to make her see just how I felt. Finally she said, “I want those things too, Dex, I do. I just…I want to take it a bit slow. I’m just…” She trailed off and exhaled loudly. I could see the worry on her brow and knew I was coming on too strong for her right now. Perry had other things to consider instead of just me. She was my everything at the moment, a challenge to overcome. But she’d just been uprooted from the only home she’d ever known, been ostracized from her family on account of me, and was dealing with the ever-looming threat of becoming someone like her grandmother. In my impatience, I had forgotten all that.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, stroking her head. “I’m getting ahead of myself. Seriously. I know you’re going through so much shit right now, and if I could carry all of it for you, baby, you know I would. Take all the time you need. You know I’ll be here.”
She gripped my arm hard and looked up at me with questioning eyes, as if she didn’t really believe that.
“It’s fine,” I reassured her. “Let’s just start with you, right here with me, and go from there.”
A smile slowly spread across her lips, her eyelids lowering seductively.
“I’ll go first,” she said. What a fucking little horndog she turned out to be. She started running her hands down my chest and stomach, marveling at my muscles, before groping my dick. “You’re hard again.”
“I’m always hard,” I told her, leaning back and closing my eyes, succumbing to her touch. “Another constant you’ll have to get used to.”
She began stroking me back and forth, her grip enticingly firm. If she wanted to take it slow, I could think of a million ways to make the time pass.
***
It was around noon when we finally dragged ourselves out of bed. We showered together, another slippery session that had me coming in her mouth, before she booted me out, telling me she had to beautify herself. When I was with Jenn, the beautification process usually took half the day—shaving, waxing, scrubbing, sanding, welding—so I let Perry be and went about tidying up the apartment.
There was a knock at the door that had me puzzled. I knew Perry and I could be pretty vocal, so I hoped it wasn’t a prudish neighbor, irate that I was getting some and they weren’t. But then I heard a snuffle and a scratch at the door and knew the person on the other side was the opposite of a prude.
I opened it and saw Rebecca in the hallway as a white devil darted through my legs and scampered into the apartment, his claws scratching up the hardwood floors.
“Hey sweetheart,” I told her with a grin as Fat Rabbit tore about the living room in circles.
She smiled tightly, looking a bit off. Oh, she looked as fucktastic as she usually did—tight dress, fishnets, Betty Boop shoes, a Louise Brooks bob. But she wasn’t wearing her trademark red lipstick, and that was strangely troubling. It was like seeing Homer Simpson without those two squiggly lines on the top of his head.
“I’ve been trying to call you,” she said, her English accent sounding clipped, and stepped in and walked past me. She heard the shower running and raised her brow. “Perry’s still here?”
I looked at her askew. “Why wouldn’t she be?”