This Man Confessed(116)
I stab a piece with my fork and bring it up to my lips. “May I?” I ask, completely serious and with no hint of a smile on my face, which is good because I’m matching Jesse.
“You may,” he says, slicing through his own lamb and taking his first bite. He chews, nods, and swallows. “You can cook, wife.”
“I’ve never said I can’t. I just don’t like doing it.”
“Not even for me?”
“I don’t mind,” I answer coolly.
“I like you cooking for me,” he muses. “It’s kind of normal.”
I pause and place my knife down. “Normal?”
“Yes, normal. Like what normal married people do.”
“Normal, like the wife cooks and the husband eats? That’s a bit chauvinistic.” I laugh, but he doesn’t. He’s still concentrating on his careful cutting and eating. He wants normalcy? Then he should try being a bit normal himself. But do I want him to be normal? He wouldn’t be Jesse if he was normal. We wouldn’t be us if he was normal. I take another bite of lamb to busy my mouth. We’ll never be normal, not completely, and I hope we’re not.
He shrugs, rests his cutlery on the side of his plate, and sits back in his chair, slowly raising his eyes to mine as he chews purposely slow. What’s going on in that head of his? The greenness of his gaze has me engrossed, making me slow my own chews down to mimic his. “Isn’t this normal?” he asks, his voice low and throaty.
“You mean having dinner together?”
“Yes.”
I shrug a little. “Yes, this is normal.”
He nods mildly. “What about if I spread you on this table during dinner and fuck you? Would that be normal?”
My eyes widen a little in surprise. I don’t know why because that would be perfectly normal for us. “Our normal is you taking what you want, when you want it. You can chuck in a meal cooked by your wife, if you like.”
“Good.” He collects his knife and fork. “I like our normal.”
I frown at him. What was the point of all that? “Is something worrying you?”
“No.” He answers far too quickly.
“Yes, there is,” I fire back, and I think I know what it is. “Are you suddenly considering the possibility of no wherever and whenever with two babies around?”
“Not at all.”
“Look at me,” I demand, and he does, but he’s looking at me in shock. I don’t give him a chance to ask me who the hell I think I’m talking to. “You are, aren’t you?”
His shock turns to a glower. “Wherever, whenever.”
“Not with two babies around.” I could laugh at him. He’s suddenly well aware that his possession over my body is going to be curbed. I return to my dinner, delighting in this revelation. “They’ll need a lot of my attention.”
He points his fork at me. Not his knife, but his fork. “Yes, your primary role will be the care of our children, but a close second, and I mean a very close second, will be for my indulgence. Wherever, whenever, Ava. I might need to control my craving for you to a certain extent, but don’t think I’m going to sacrifice devoting my life to consuming you. Constant contact. Wherever, whenever. That’s not going to change, just because we have babies.” He stabs at a piece of lamb and yanks it off the fork with his mouth.
If wanting me to cook for him was chauvinistic, then I have no idea what that little speech would represent. “Even if I’m knackered from night feeds?” I’m poking.
“Too tired for me to take you?” he asks, shocked.
“Yes.”
“We’ll get a nanny.” His lamb takes another vicious stabbing, and I mentally laugh my socks off.
“But I’ve got you,” I remind him.
He sighs and drops his knife and fork to his plate. “You do.” His fingertips go to his temples and start rubbing calming circles. “You do have me, and you always will.” He reaches over and takes my hand. “Promise me you’ll never say ‘I’m too tired’ or ‘I’m not in the mood.’”
“You’re the one who tells me I’m too tired!” I practically screech. “It’s okay for you to knock me back.”
“That’s because I have the power,” he says frankly. “Promise me.”
“You want me to promise you that I’m here for you to take as and when you please?”
He looks away, only very briefly, before returning thoughtful eyes to me. “Yes,” he says simply.
“What if I don’t?” I’m being insolent for the sake of it. I’ll never be too tired for this man, but his sudden epiphany is really quite amusing. He should have thought about all of this before he nicked my pills.