But my insecurity won out and I asked the other thing I’d been wondering. “Why are you not freaking out right now?”

He lifted an eyebrow, looking a bit amused but mostly surprised at my question. Like he couldn’t believe I’d actually asked. He stared at me for what seemed like a very long time, his eyes not angry, but very intense as he considered his answer.

He turned onto his side, his face pillowed on his strong arms.

I did the same and it felt so intimate, like we were face-to-face.

“I’m tired of not letting myself have the things that I want.”

It took him so long to respond I was momentarily confused by what he said. Then it sunk in.

I was what he wanted.

I chose not to dwell on the fact that doing this with me had come as the result of some sort of battle he’d won against his common sense.

Again against my better judgement I opened my mouth. “Hearing you call me an object of your desire is doing things to me, Professor Denis.”

That look on his face, like he was caught between finding me utterly fuckable and somewhat obnoxious, made the butterflies in my stomach come out to play once again. But he didn’t answer, just let the information he’d volunteered sit there between us.

I decided to retreat then, feeling scared of pushing him to a place where he would pull up his defenses again.

I wanted this Patrice, my Patrice, around just a little longer, so I went back to safer waters.

“So dinner was uneventful, then?” He lifted a shoulder and then brought his arm under his head, making those big muscles shift and flex when he moved.

“Yeah, my mom’s husband is out of town this week at a conference, so I missed him.” He chuckled at that for a second and then dipped his head.

“He helps run interference with my mom whenever she gets militant about my locs or tattoos, going to church, my nose ring, wearing sweats or whatever thing I’m doing that drives her crazy.”

His tone was light but there was a tightness in his jaw, which told me that maybe it bothered him more than he’d like to admit.

“She doesn’t like your tattoos?”

Another shrug. “She thinks they give people the wrong idea of the kind of person I am. Like they’re going to make assumptions based on that.”

My gut instinct was to make a joke. Whenever anything came a little too close to heaviness or baggage between me and Patrice, I quickly lightened the mood. Never giving him a reason to feel weighed down when he was with me. I didn’t want to now. I wanted to know.

“Do they?”