her, nuzzling gently into her neck. “If I cuddle into you, will that bother you?”
“No? Why would it?”
“Some people don’t like being cuddled unless they’re postcoital.”
“I don’t promise I won’t be reading half the night if I can’t sleep, but if that won’t bother you, then I’m not worried.”
She made a sweet little sighing sound as he brushed his lips over the pulse point at the base of her throat. “If it bothers me, I’ll turn over.”
“Okay,” she said.
In a way, it was as deliberate as they’d ever been about going to bed. Nearly every night, there had been sex of one kind or another, and this casual undressing and climbing between the covers—it felt different to him. Domestic, maybe. Soft. Zoey wasn’t quite meeting his eyes, either.
She was beautiful, naked. It was different than sexy, different than being someone he desired. She was calm and quiet, the tips of her breasts soft, the pale skin of her chest light, not flushed with arousal. When she met his eyes, it was a different sort of need that he saw. He pulled back the covers and opened his arms to her. Instead of facing him, though, she turned around, snuggling into his chest and letting him envelope her in his arms.
It was good , he thought, as his cock stirred sleepily against the warm flesh of her ass, to be the protector. To be the one who could keep her safe.
When she spoke, though, her voice crackled with something that threatened to tear them apart. “I feel poor here,” she whispered.
He didn’t know what to say. Compared to him, she was poor. She was destitute. Compared to some of the people he’d seen in the city, she was as far above them as he was above her. That comparison wouldn’t help her right now. It took more than he anticipated to fight off his defensiveness and just listen to her.
She shifted for a moment, like she might turn to face him, but she didn’t. “I didn’t feel this way back at your place in New York,” she said, after a bit. “I don’t think it’s you. But this place. This city. Those—that man, staring at me, like I was so far beneath him. Like he wouldn’t cross the street to piss on me if I was on fire.”
“I’m not trying to excuse it,” he said, “but things are different here. One of the weird things about the U.S. is that everyone wants to be middle class. Lower middle class, upper middle class—we’re really upset about calling ourselves rich or poor sometimes. And here, that’s never been the case. People define themselves by their jobs, and being in service is still considered, by some, to be better than being in trades.” He shook his head. “I can have the agency send someone else.”
“There’s an agency that hires Jeeves?”
He chuckled at the literary allusion. “There are indeed. More than one, in fact.”
She was quiet a while longer. “No. I don’t want him to get in trouble. But I just—I needed to tell you, I think.”
There were a million things he thought of saying. Apologizing for his life, or telling her that it would all be okay, or offering to give her anything she needed—but she shifted her hips, he swore it was a deliberate motion, and his tired cock was hard, pressing into her soft flesh. “Minx,” he whispered.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, in the naughty tone he’d learned she used when she wanted him to pinch her and push her and make her whimper. “I thought you were too tired.” Another shift and a grind, and his cock was sending happy sensations to his head, but his head was so close to offline he could barely think.
“Honestly, princess, I’m so exhausted I don’t know if I could come, and there’s nothing less sexy than a skinny dude falling asleep with his dick going limp in you. But I tell you what…” He ran a hand over her thigh, pulling it back, hooking her knee back over his so that she was spread open in front of him. He
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