Only You by K.T. Quinn

24

Molly

The Day With The New View

We were in the kitchen making dinner. Donovan was prepping the veggies while I flattened the chicken breasts with a meat mallet.

“That’s right,” Donovan said lustily while mixing the coating ingredients in a bowl. “Give that meat a pounding.”

“Oh, now you want to be dirty?” I teased. “Not earlier when I was on the pool table, ready to go?”

“Who’s being dirty?” he replied in a deep, overly-sexual voice. “I’m giving you instructions on what to do with my meat. I like how you’re beating it. You’re really going to town on it.”

I pinched some flour from the bowl and tossed it at his face. His rumbling laughter filled the kitchen.

Days ago, Donovan claimed to have the willpower of a saint. I didn’t realize just how true that was until he went down on me in the lounge. Afterwards I was as wet as could be and ready to go. I grabbed his shirt and pulled him toward me. I spread my legs and felt his cock just inches from me. It was impossible to ignore, a thick bulge inside his jeans that was brimming with potential.

I was ready. I wanted him. And I knew he wanted me too.

Yet he smiled at me and walked away. Just like on the balcony.

Donovan’s comment about appetizers and leaving people wanting more? It wasn’t just a stupid metaphor. It was the truth. Because right now, while we were making dinner, my body ached for him. I wanted him so badly I could barely stand next to him.

And it infuriated me that his tactic worked.

But I didn’t want him to know that. I wanted to play it cool. So I teased him, and laughed, and eye-banged him while we made dinner. He knew his way around the hotel kitchen like he had worked there for years. I enjoyed watching him, too. There was nothing sexier than a man who was totally in his element.

He coated the chicken breasts in an egg bath, then the flour mixture, then grilled them in a pan. When the food was done I grabbed a bottle of wine from the pantry and we carried the plates out of the kitchen and toward the elevator.

“I thought you said we weren’t eating on the balcony,” he told me.

I pressed the button for the fifth floor. “We’re not.”

Donovan frowned. “There’s nothing up there but hotel rooms. Are we breaking into the penthouse or something?”

“Nope!” I repeated cheerfully.

“Then what are we doing?”

“You’ll see!”

We got off on the fifth floor and went into the stairwell. There was a ladder leading up to a hatch in the ceiling, with a sign that said: ROOF ACCESS.

I handed Donovan my plate and climbed the ladder. It took eight guesses before I found the key that unlocked the padlock. I pushed open on the hatch. It was heavy, and the rusty hinges screamed like they hadn’t been opened in months. The hatch made a loud CLANG as it finished opening, revealing the dark sky above.

I climbed through the hatch and then reached down to take each plate, then the bottle of wine. After Donovan followed me up the ladder, he picked up his plate and gazed around.

“Wow,” he breathed.

The roof was flat and covered with industrial air conditioners, but there were red brick crenelations around the outer edge. The border was a meter wide, so we could sit on the edge without fear of falling over the side to the plaza below.

“Good call, babe,” Donovan said.

“Why thank you, dear,” I replied, as if we were two people playing house rather than prisoners in a hotel.

Donovan chewed on his food while gazing around. “We’re only thirty feet higher than our balcony, but the view is so much better.” He pointed. “That’s the dome on Saint Peter’s Basilica.”

“And we can see a lot more of the Colosseum,” I said.

We ate in happy silence for awhile, taking turns drinking straight from the bottle of wine. The wind ruffled Donovan’s dark hair, and he squinted out at the city.

“I have a question,” he said. “You just inherited your mom’s boutique last year, right?”

“Uh huh,” I said with my mouth full.

“What did you do before that?”

I paused to swallow the chicken. “It’s boring.”

“Before I inherited the boutique, I was a logistics analyst for a lumber company.”

Donovan blinked. “Okay, I was wrong. That’s so boring I don’t even know what it means.”

I laughed and took a pull from the bottle of wine, savoring the puckering dryness as it ran down my throat. “The company transported lumber around the Midwest. I helped facilitate the transportation on an order-by-order basis. Making sure shipments happened on time, finding ways to improve efficiency by combining certain shipments, moving stock around to our different distribution centers so none ever ran out of a certain type of lumber. That sort of thing.”

Donovan tilted his head back, closed his eyes, and started snoring loudly. I tossed a piece of chicken at his face, which bounced off his nose and left a red smear of sauce.

“I told you it’s boring,” I said with a laugh. “But it was a paycheck. I guess I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t enjoy going into the office every morning. That made it easy to quit my job when my parents died, and then start managing the boutique.”

“What did you want to be?” he asked. “Growing up, I mean. Fireman? Astronaut?”

“That’s the problem: I never really knew what I wanted to be. I got a degree in business and assumed I would figure out my passion along the way, but it never fell into place.”

“What about your siblings?” He paused. “I guess I should first ask: do you have any siblings?”

“For someone who came all over my fingers the other night, you don’t know much about me.”

He gestured with his fork. “Hence the question.”

“I’m an only child. No brothers or sisters. I have a boatload of cousins, though.”

“I’m an only child too,” Donovan said. “Growing up, it sucked.”

“How so? I liked being the only one.”

“We moved around too much,” he explained. “I struggled to make friends because we never stayed in one place. Dad always got a new assignment after a year or two. If I had a brother or sister, then at least I would have had someone to play with. Someone who I was moving with, rather than moving away from.”

I touched his arm. “That’s really sad.”

He shrugged like it couldn’t be helped. “That’s why I want kids. Two or three. So they can play with each other, no matter what happens.”

I perked up. “You want kids?”

“Someday? Absolutely,” he replied. “I want to watch my sons or daughters grow up, take their first steps, learn to talk. I want to teach them how to ride a bike, and how to cook, and help with their math homework even though I suck at math.” He looked out at the Colosseum and nodded. “I think I would be a good dad.”

“I’ve always wanted kids too,” I said. “Even though I couldn’t figure out what I wanted to do for a career, I always knew I wanted to be a mom. That’s kind of why I broke up with my last boyfriend. He did not want kids, not even a little bit.”

Donovan shrugged. “All guys say that, but most change. I didn’t think I wanted kids until a few years ago, as I got older. Now I’m certain I do.”

“He wasn’t going to change his mind,” I said with a wry shake of my head. “We broke up because he booked a vasectomy appointment.”

“Oh, damn.”

“Yeah. He had this weird paranoia that all women wanted to trap men by getting pregnant. When I told him he shouldn’t make a permanent decision like that while he was young, he flipped out on me. Said that my resistance was proof that he should get the vasectomy. I broke up with him when he asked me to drive him to the doctor, hah.”

“What a dick.”

“And not where it counts,” I agreed, putting my hand on Donovan’s thigh. The outline of his cock was right on the edge of my fingertip.

“Careful, Feisty,” he said. “Don’t start something you’re not prepared to see through to the end.”

“Maybe that’s exactly what I want to do,” I replied.

“I’ve got cookies baking in the oven,” he pointed out. “I need to take them out in… six minutes. So unless you think we can beat the clock…”

I gave him a coy smile. “What would we do with the other five minutes and forty-nine seconds?”

Donovan grunted. “Ouch. I’ll have you know I can last at least three minutes.”

“You didn’t the other night.”

He roared with laughter. “You’ve got me there. But no, we’re not having roof sex. That’s not how a first time should be.”

“How should a first time be?” I asked.

“You’ll see.”

“When?”

“When you’re ready,” he replied.

I scoffed. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve been ready several times.”

He shook his head while smiling. “Good things come to those who wait. And trust me: it’ll be worth the wait.”

I rolled my eyes and turned away to admire the view. “I definitely want to come back to Rome.”

“You may not be aware,” Donovan said slowly, “but you’re actually in Rome. Right now. As we speak.”

“This feels like it doesn’t count. I want to come back when I can actually see things. The Colosseum, Vatican City, the Sistine Chapel. And I mean really see them, up close. Not from a distance.”

Donovan nodded while gazing out at the city. “Yeah. I really wanted to take a tour of the Colosseum.”

I sighed and collected our plates. “After we take the cookies out, what do you want to do tonight, darling? Put the kids to bed, then watch a movie in the lounge?”

He was still staring off.

“Donovan?”

“I don’t want to stay in tonight,” he said. “Let’s go out.”