Something's Come Up by Michelle Pace, Andrea Randall

tone was stale but her face was victorious.
    Several minutes and one comical conversation with the doorman later, we let a rapidly sobering Adrian into his apartment. He chugged several glasses of water and started making himself an omelet. I told him we’d be back if we heard the smoke alarm. Steph graced him with a little side hug on the way out. Apparently bygones were just that.
    “He rallies nicely,” Steph mused in the elevator. “Nice trip down memory lane, though.”
    I pulled my head back. “With Adrian?”
    “Yeah.” She shook her head with a nostalgic smile. “He just reminds me a lot of my dad.”
    Steph crossed her arms and leaned against the wall. Adrian had stirred up some history she’d done a damn good job of compartmentalizing. No matter how recent it was…like Kevin. I had no intention of bringing up the ex-boyfriend that brought her to my door. All that mattered was that she came to me specifically, and I would make damn sure she got what she came for.
    I yawned as I opened the apartment door, which caught Steph’s attention.
    “Tired, old man?” She dramatically swayed her hips as she strutted past me.
    “You’ve been begging for spankings all night. I thought a young girl like you would have outgrown those by now.” I smirked, but she shrieked.
    “Look at the window!” Steph scampered in her giant heels all the way over to the window we’d been fucking against before Adrian interrupted us with his high school drama.
    I made a few long strides to catch up with her, wondering what she was looking at. Steph stood in front of the window with her finger pointing a third of the way up the glass, to where her ass had rested against the window. And, there for all of us to see, was a faint ass print situated in picturesque glory between two hand prints from when I’d had her bent over.
    “Nice.” I widened my eyes purposefully, licked my lips, and turned back to the kitchen in desperate need of a drink.
    “Nice? No, that is so not nice. Jesus, my ass is huge! Get that shit off there. I’m not that girl.”
    Facing her again, I strode slowly in her direction. “Seems to me you are. In fact, I know you are. I’ve never had any woman up against that window.”
    “I call bullshit.”
    “Call whatever you want.” I shrugged. “It takes a special breed to trust nothing between my cock and the harbor but a little bit of glass.”
    Steph dropped her finger from pointing at the offending window, the fire in her eyes back to the same burn they’d had before our little field trip to Barnstable.
    “Thanks for taking that ride with me tonight.” I lifted her hand, kissing one knuckle at a time.
    “The ride’s over? But we hardly got past the kiddie ones.” She tried to tease, but her voice shook a little as she smiled nervously at my lips on her hands.
    I threw my head back, sighing and groaning at the same time. “Come on, Steph. Be serious for like half a second.”
    “I’m dead serious.”
    I fixed my eyes on hers like a laser. “I’ve missed you, Red.”
    She broke her gaze from mine for a split second, looking to the floor then back up. “The girls around here don’t do it for you, huh?”
    “Oh…they do it just fine. What they don’t get to do, is this.” I picked her up in a cradle hold with little effort. I could bench three times her weight easily.
    “What is this ?” Her arms were tightly around my neck and I could feel the heat coming off of her body.
    I opened my bedroom door and slid her carefully out of my arms onto my oversized bed. “They never, ever get to come in here.”
    She sat up on her elbows. “You’ve never had a woman in this bedroom before? What’s that, the male version of not kissing on the mouth, Pretty Woman style?”
    I shrugged, unbuttoning my shirt as I stared at her mouth.
    “Why me, then?” She knitted her eyebrows with what looked like genuine confusion as she delicately slid her feet out of her shoes.
    Once her clothes were on the