I gestured for him to come over as I finished setting the food down, and was about to go back to the kitchen for my glass when Patrice gracefully reached over and grabbed it then stood up to join me.

He was such a big man. His size was intimidating, but he moved like a dancer. He took very good care of his body and he was careful with his gestures. I could watch him for hours. In a few strides he got to me and handed me my glass.

“Here you go.” He smelled crisp and like the ocean, and I wanted to run my nose up his neck.

“Still using the same cologne?”

My voice sounded just on this side of breathless, because that scent, of the cologne and his skin, brought me right back to some of those nights we had together last summer. Me slowly roaming over his body, then straddling him to take him inside me. My nose buried in his neck, his arms tight around me as we moved together. No one had ever made me feel like Patrice did.

“Yeah, same one.” His voice pulled me out of the incendiary image and when I looked up, the heat in his eyes said he at least suspected where my mind had gone.

“It still smells amazing on you.” We stood there, bodies tight and alert, from the proximity as we both looked at our plates set on the table. I remembered that first night we were together, how he’d picked me up and laid me out right on this table and fucked me within an inch of my life. Patrice could make me feel so good, it was hard not to go back to wanting that when he was this close.

After another second of hard staring, Patrice pulled out a chair and gestured for me to sit. This was another thing about Patrice that always charmed me. He was so courteous.

I bit back a smile as I sat. “You’re always such a gentleman.”

He lifted a shoulder and took the seat across from mine. “My mom was pretty intense about manners. She had this thing about needing to show ‘the kind of people’ we were. When we moved here we had a hard time. We were black and refugees. There wasn’t exactly a welcome wagon if you know what I mean. So we needed to always be beyond reproach.” He laughed, but there was no lightness to the sound. I put my fork down and tried to stay as still as possible because I knew in my gut that this, Patrice talking about his past, did not happen very often.