“Yes.” I was hovering, but no aspersions ought to be cast on account of my hovering. She knew how I felt about coconut before she made the cake. Nothing about my hovering should have been surprising.
“You’re coconut crazy. For your birthday, I’m going to get one of those coconut bras.”
I blinked and then stared at the most amazing woman on the planet (not a controversial claim). “That would be so awesome.”
She chuckled, wiping her hands on a towel.
I was already reaching behind her for the plates. “Are you finished? Can we eat—”
“Na-ah,” she pushed at my chest, backing me out of the kitchen. “Not yet.”
“What?” I sounded panicked because I was panicked. I’d been forced to watch her bake for the last three hours, the alluring aroma of toasted coconut and baked coconut permeating the air.
And now we weren’t going to eat it? Perhaps she was a closet sadist.
I can work with that.
Marie steered me into the bedroom. “I want you to take off your clothes.”
I immediately removed my shirt and then unbuckled my belt, not needing to be told twice. “Please tell me we’re going to eat that cake naked,” I bent to her ear and whispered while I unzipped my pants, “off each other.”
“No.” She shivered, then she added, “Maybe. I don’t know. Possibly.”
I kissed and then bit her neck.
She shivered again. “Okay, yes. We can do that. But first,” she braced her hands on my shoulders and held me away, “first you need to lie on the bed.”
I lifted an eyebrow at her command and the nervous tremor in her tone. “Marie . . .”
“Please?” She was biting her lip now and had dropped her hands from my arms, twisting her fingers. “I need to do something and I need you to lie down.”
I inspected her. She was definitely nervous. “Okay. Fine.”
Stepping out of my pants, I lay on the bed as instructed, tracking her every movement as she reached into her nightstand with lightly shaking fingers and pulled out a length of rope.
She reached for one of my hands and I stiffened. “What’s the rope for?” She’d never tied me up before.
“It’s not rope, see?” Marie trailed the edge of it over my abdomen, placing her knee on the mattress next to me. “It’s knit, and made of silk and bamboo.”
“It’s fancy rope.”
“Now we won’t have to ruin your ties.”
“I don’t consider them ruined.”
She huffed. “It’s very soft.”
“It’s soft, fancy rope.”
Marie set her teeth and glared at me. “You’ve tied me up. Why can’t I tie you up?”
“After months of being regulated to the friend zone, I don’t like the idea of my movements being restricted.”
The side of her mouth lifted, but her glare persisted. “Listen, just give me five minutes, okay?”
I examined her, the stubborn set of her jaw, and her appearance of anxiety. “Why are you nervous?”
She huffed again. “You’ll find out once I tie you up.”
“You’ll release me if I ask?”
“Of course.” She touched my wrist again and this time I allowed her to secure me to the headboard. Once that was done, she reached for my other wrist and tied it as she straddled my waist, her breasts—sadly still encased in her dress and bra—were in my face.
Testing the knot twice, she jumped from the bed and searched the second drawer of the nightstand. Apparently finding what she was after, she straightened and faced me, her hands behind her back, looking very serious.
“Matt.”
“Valkyrie.”
A hint of a smile relaxed her features as she sucked in a large breath. “So, we’ve been dating for a while.”
“Not long enough.”
“And I—I—what?” Her face fell. “What do you mean not long enough?”
“Just that we should have started dating sooner.”
“Oh.” She nodded, the movements of her eyebrows telling me that my words had disconcerted her.
I crossed my ankles. “Why aren’t you naked?”
She shook herself. “Oh. No reason.”
“Then why am I naked?”
“Because I didn’t want you to be suspicious.”
That made my eyes widen and made me suspicious. “Suspicious? About what?”
“Stop rushing me. Let me say my thing.” Marie stood straighter and lifted her chin, her eyes darting over my body. “And stop doing that.”
“Doing what?”
“Flexing your . . . muscles.”
“I can’t help that muscle. It sees you and flexes all on its own.”
She slid her teeth to the side and cleared her throat, her eyes now studiously focused on mine. “So, as I was saying, we’ve been dating for a while now and I think things between us are going very well.”
That made me frown. “That’s a severe understatement of fact and is therefore an imprecise ascribing of value.”
She must’ve liked my argument because she grinned. “I’m glad you feel that way.”
“It’s not a feeling, it’s a fact.”
Marie laughed. The sight and sound had me relaxing further on the bed.
“Okay, so it’s a fact. And given the facts, I think it’s time we moved—or at least we considered moving—on to the next step . . .” her smile dwindled until it left her eyes absent of humor and full of hopeful anxiety, “. . . in our relationship.”
Before I could question her meaning, she placed one knee, then the other on the bed and knelt next to me, withdrawing a blue velvet box from behind her back. I stared at her, not masking my confusion, as she opened the box and revealed a set of gold square cufflinks with engraved wavy lines.
“One is sine, the other is cosine. One is you, and one is me.” Her typically melodic cadence was now tight with nerves. “Marry me?”
I stared at her—at her spectacular eyes, presently both gray and green—my mouth embarrassingly agape, finally managing to say, “You . . . ?”
“Want to marry you.” Her voice broke, wavered, but she nodded with certainty. “I love you, Matt. I love you completely. I want to spend the rest of my life with you and I hope that you—”
“Stop.” I shook my head, closing my eyes, squeezing them shut. “Damn.”
This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen.
Seven months.
I’d been carrying that ring around for seven fucking months.
And she distracts me with coconut, gets me naked, ties me to a bed, and proposes.
“Damn.”
I felt her shift on the bed, heard her breathing change, and my eyes flew open. To my everlasting regret, the hopeful anxiety in her expression had been replaced with confused hurt. Thus, my growl of frustration couldn’t be helped.
“No, Marie. No. Don’t make that face. Don’t have those thoughts. You don’t know—listen, stop. Grah!” I pulled against the bindings, wanting, needing to reach for her.
But I couldn’t.
Because she’d tied me up with soft, fancy rope.
Taking a deep breath and releasing it carefully, I lifted my chin towards my pants where they lay discarded on the floor. “Can you bring me my pants?”