“I was going to wait for you to get home.”
Corinne turns to face him. “So dinner’s not ready. Nothing is ready?”
“It’ll just take a few minutes. You can grab the stuff for the salad, I’ll start the water boiling.”
“Never mind.” She gulps cola. Without looking at him, she grabs her bag and disappears down the hall. The bedroom door shuts.
Irritated, Reese follows. She’s already gone into the bathroom, stripping out of her shirt to stand in her jeans and bra, brushing her teeth. Hair pulled into a ponytail. She’s gorgeous.
But when he moves behind her to kiss the back of her neck, Corinne pulls away. “What?”
She gives him a look in the mirror and bends to spit toothpaste into the sink. “Tired. Hungry. I’m going to grab a nap before work. I’ll eat there.”
“But I made dinner.”
“You’ve been home all day long,” Corinne says without turning, her lip curled. “You didn’t make dinner. The only thing ready is the sauce, and I put that on the stove this morning before I left for class.”
“I was filling out résumés. I worked out. I was busy, and there wasn’t any point in making the pasta if you weren’t home yet.”
She pushes past him and into the bedroom. He follows. The bed is covered in laundry he’d been folding, and when she turns to look at him, Reese feels her contempt like a punch to the gut.
“You know, when I agreed to let you live here, it was with the understanding that even if you couldn’t pay rent, you were going to do all this other crap.”
He has been doing all the other crap. Most of it, anyway. He’s doing his best, at least, and most of the time, he’s done a pretty damned good job of it. “I’m not a housewife.”
“No shit.” Corinne snorts soft laughter that doesn’t sound at all like she’s amused. “Whatever, Reese. I’m going to try and get some sleep.”
He grabs up the laundry she’s about to toss to the side. “Hey, that’s clean.”
“Then put it away!”
“You don’t just throw it on the floor, Corinne!”
“I wasn’t going to throw it on the floor,” she snaps. “I was moving it over so I had room to get under the blanket. Maybe if you had put it away, I wouldn’t have to.”
“I can’t believe you’re being pissy with me about this,” Reese says as he tosses the clothes into a basket. “What the hell?”
Without a word, Corinne slips into the covers and turns away from him, her dark hair a tangle on the pillows. Muttering, Reese puts the laundry basket on the chair. He doesn’t want to fight with her, not about this or anything else.
Pulling his shirt off over his head, then shucking his jeans, he quietly gets into bed behind her. Pressing to her back, he slides a hand around between her legs. Making her come will make her feel better. Let her sleep. Orgasms are good, right?
“Stop,” she says after a minute, and when he tries again, she sits up to twist around. “I’m not in the mood.”
“Fine.” He sits up too. “I just wanted to make you feel good.”
“Then pay attention,” Corinne mutters. “I’m not a blow-up doll, okay?”
“Sorry. I guess I’m just a bad boy,” he says, trying to tease. To be light about it, bring the conversation back to neutral ground and not anger. “Maybe you need to take me in hand?”
“Wow.”
“What?” he asks, totally pissed off himself, now, because as far as he can see, she’s being unreasonable.
“Is that all this is to you? What are you trying to do, make me mad so I’ll punish you, so you can get off?”
That’s not it at all, but he’s not about to say so. Not when she has that look on her face, which confuses him but also makes him even angrier. She points at the basket of laundry.
“Go fold that. Put it all away. Go make dinner.”
He’s already getting out of bed, but hesitates. “I’m not a servant, Corinne.”
Her eyes flash and her voice is cold but lacks that undercurrent of sexual tension that usually would have his cock twitching. “I told you to do something. I expect it to be done.”
“Yeah, well, you know what, you can fold it yourself.” With that, he gets off the bed and leaves the room.
The water’s boiling in the kitchen, but fuck that, he turns off the heat without adding the pasta. He wants to go for a run, work off all this anger, and he strips down to his briefs in the kitchen. At the sound of her behind him, he turns, hands on his hips. And yeah, he notices how her gaze takes in his body, how she looks at him, and no matter how pissed off he is, he takes a gleeful, smug satisfaction in the glitter of her gaze.
“What?” Reese holds out his arms. Confrontational. Tensing muscles, putting on a show to be sure she notices the ridges of his muscled belly—all this time at home without finding a job has left him a lot of hours to work out. He knows she loves it too, the way his body’s changed.