“Brian was thirty-one when he broke off our engagement!”
Reece listened closely.
“Mom decided I was a hopeless cause after seeing those thirty-one rocks!”
Reece reached across the table for my hand. I pulled away.
“Before you, I was thirty-one and single! And not by choice! I don’t have the best track record with that number. Happy?”
Silence.
“Have you ever considered the tide might be changing?” Reece asked.
“Is that, like, a beach quip?” I asked.
Erica laughed.
“It just happened that way,” Reece said patiently.
“Well, do tell me how the tide is changing,” I said.
“You’re thirty-one, and you met me,” Reece pointed out.
I snorted. “You really think you’re something, huh?”
He grinned. “I must be if you adopted me.”
“Wait, what?” Noah asked. “Adopted?”
“Bailey didn’t tell you I’m a foster kid?” Reece asked. He cleaned a rib bone in three bites.
“Umm, noooo,” Erica said. She stared at me.
“Yeah. I’m a foster kid. And she adopted me,” Reece explained, pointing the bone at me.
“Oh my God,” Erica whispered. “Oh my God, it’s so sweet!”
“I know, right?” Reece said.
I considered him. “Are you always this open with people?”
“These aren’t people. These are my friends,” he countered.
“Fine. Are you always so open with friends you’re still getting to know?” I asked.
“I just wanna belong, Bailey,” he said softly. “I wanna belong in your world with your friends and your hobbies and your gardens. That’s all. I wanna know everything about you, even if I have to bully it out of you. Put you on the spot. Make you uncomfortable. ‘Cause I can’t get enough of you.”
Noah instinctively put his arm around Erica’s shoulder. He pulled her close and kissed her temple.
“All right,” I sighed. “We’re all friends here. Ask me anything you wanna know.”
***
“How were your urges today?” Reece asked later that night as we watched TV.
I noticed the glint in his green eyes. I’m no fool. He was itching for me to tell him I tapped something so that he could tap my ass. Hard.
“What urges?” I replied, affecting confusion.
“That’s cute,” he said. “Now tell me.”
“It was a good day,” I replied. “Sorry to disappoint you.”
“That doesn’t disappoint me at all. I want you to have good days. I want every day to be a good day.”
I rested my head on his shoulder. It wasn’t in my nature to cuddle, but something about the way he interacted with me compelled this new urge to touch him. Constantly.
I voiced my discovery.
“I want to touch you all the time,” I said. “You’ve made me develop a new urge.”
“Well, that’s a good one, though. Right?”
“I’m not sure I know the difference,” I confessed. “All of them feel good when I’m succumbing to them because they ease my anxiety.”
He kissed my forehead. “Are you still feeling anxious all the time?”
“No, not lately.”
“Then I think it’s a good urge. But just to be safe, we’ll play it both ways,” he said.
I lifted my face to his. “What do you mean?”
He stood up and pulled me off the couch.
“Reece?”
He knelt in front of me and unbuttoned my pants.
“Reece, I’m not really in the mood.”
“I didn’t ask.”
My mouth dropped open. I watched him slide my pants down my legs. I stepped out when he instructed. I just did what he said, just like that, because somewhere along the line it became easier to not make decisions. Perhaps that was why my OCD was becoming more manageable. I didn’t have to think about it. I didn’t have to make the decision not to tic. Not to arrange and sort and categorize. I simply let Reece take the lead.
“So this is something new,” Reece said, looking up at me.
“What’s new?”
“What I’m about to do to you,” he replied.
My heartbeat quickened.
“You developed an urge, see? And that’s not good for your OCD. You don’t need to keep stacking the deck. You need to be eliminating.”
My mouth quirked up.
“Buuuuut,” he went on, “the urge is a rather good one. Since it involves me. You touching me, to be exact. So you see how this is quite the conundrum? Do I reward you or punish you?”
I shrugged.
“Yeah, I think it’s gonna have to be both,” he decided, just as he ripped my panties off.
“Please don’t spank me,” I pleaded. “It’s too cold, and my ass will burn, like, double.”
“Oh, I’m not spanking you,” he replied. “Now go climb up on that table.”
“Seriously?”
“Mmhmm.”
“You know, other women would tell you to fuck off,” I said.
“You aren’t other women. Plus, you know you’re gonna get something out of it, too. I’m wise to you, missy. You like to play victim, but I make you come every time.”
Point taken. I walked to the kitchen and climbed on the table, crisscrossing my legs Indian style.
“What the hell is that?”
“Is what?”
“You’re not sitting like that,” Reece said.
“Well, you didn’t tell me how to position myself,” I argued.
“Get on your hands and knees,” he said.
“But Reece, that’ll hurt my knees,” I said.
“Exactly.”
I sighed and pulled myself up on my hands and knees. I blushed at the blatant exposure of my bare ass in the air. Reece flipped the switch in the kitchen, and suddenly my modesty multiplied by a hundred. I moved to sit down again.
“Don’t you dare,” he warned.
I froze. “I’m feeling vulnerable,” I whispered.
“Good,” he said.
“I don’t want you to see me like this.”
Every subsequent statement sounded like a plea: Let me sit down. Don’t look at me. Turn off the light.
“Why?” he asked. “You’re so beautiful. If I were you, I’d walk around naked showing that off all the time.”
I smiled uneasily.
“Your * is so pink,” he observed. “I like that.”
“Reece . . .”
He gently touched my soft folds, and then I felt his mouth on them. A light kiss.
“I like you in this position. I can see everything. Your ass spread wide. It’s—” I yelped when his hands grabbed my ass. “—perfection.”