Still hoping to lighten the mood, I joked, "I don't remember being this close to my roommate in college. Maybe our dorm room was a little bigger."
Water sloshed against the sides of the tub and more spilled out onto the floor as he wrapped his legs around me. All the times we'd been together, I'd never noticed how long his legs were. They barely fit inside the tub.
"Do you know this is my first time in this bathtub?"
"That makes sense since your legs are almost too long for it."
I ran my palms over his knees and down his shins, feeling the soft hair against my skin. I'd always loved how masculine men's legs looked when there wasn't too much hair so they looked like grizzly bears or too little that I'd wonder if my legs had more when I forgot to shave for a few days. His had the perfect amount in all the right places.
"I think the designer naturally thought we'd sit the other way since the real view is out the window," he said as he moved my hair off my shoulder. "I like this way better."
"Staring at an empty shower?"
He gently pulled my head back to rest on his chest and ran his fingertips across my forehead. "With you."
Two words and he made me want to forget all my insecurities, all my worries about not being enough. He kissed the top of my head, and almost as if he could read my mind, whispered, "I like how you make me feel, Nina."
I said nothing, knowing he probably wanted to hear me say I liked how he made me feel. I wanted to say something—to tell him that I'd never felt anything like how he made me feel—but I couldn't. If he rejected me there, as I sat naked in his arms, or worse, said nothing in return, everything I feared would finally be true. I couldn't handle that.
His arm rested across my collarbone, and I bent my head to place a kiss on his wrist. I hoped he understood how much I loved hearing that I made him feel something good or special. Closing my eyes, I let myself enjoy his body pressed against mine and his strong arms around me. We sat so still the water stopped moving, as if we both wanted to stop time and just revel in this one moment. Finally, he sighed deeply and a tiny ripple slowly moved the water forward until it lapped against the front of the tub and the tops of our feet.
"I could sit here for the rest of time," he whispered in a faraway voice.
I brought his fingers to my mouth and kissed the fingertip of his forefinger, which had begun to wrinkle in the water. "I think you'd get all pruney."
He chuckled and kissed the top of my head again. "Then we'd be pruney together."
No matter how I tried to make the situation light and easy, he always brought it back right to center, right to the core of who he was. Either he said little and indicated less, or he spoke and made me want to forget everything else in the world but him.
He'd been right about the duck. It was delicious, and I did love it. I wondered if things happened the way he wanted them to simply out of his sheer desire to have them happen that way. Some people seemed to be able to manifest their desires like that. In the short time I'd known him, it had merely taken him expressing his wish for something to make it occur. Over and over, I'd seen him get what he wanted, but I couldn't say it was due to power or manipulation.
Life just seemed to give him what he desired.
And what he desired that night was me. We'd barely pushed aside the plates when his mouth was on mine, urging me to meet his passion with my own. My body was thrilled, but my mind found his changeable ways confusing. As we'd eaten, he'd said no more than five words, acting more like my boss than my lover. When I expressed how much I liked the duck, he merely smiled, saying nothing in return and continuing to eat. Then, like someone had turned on a light inside him, he looked over at me and he was that man who couldn't get enough of me again.
He led me over to stand in front of the floor to ceiling windows in the living room, and the view of the city below took my breath away. I stood just inches away from the wall of glass, my usual fear of heights pushed aside by the beauty of what lay before my eyes. High above Manhattan, the entire city seemed to be laid out in all its glory. "It's gorgeous, Tristan. It must be impossible to get to sleep knowing this is here all for you to see every night."