Nothing But the Truth: Chapter 1

Tongue-Tied and Oh So Squeamish

Alicia

I sat across from my academic advisor, an old white lady with short gray hair and horned-rim glasses by the name of Professor Davidson, as she stared at me in disbelief. We were in her office, a cramped, claustrophobic affair with cheap tiling and worse carpeting, barely better than a cubicle with a see-through glass wall on all sides. Her desk was a mess, but I was too, so at least I fit in. And I would need to fit in here, both in this office and Grace University in general, if I wanted to stay. If I wanted to get as far away from my family as possible, preferably never seeing them again as long as I lived. 

Professor Davidson pinched the bridge of her nose, then spoke in her thick southern drawl, “So let me get this straight: you want to write an expose on the largest, most influential business frat west of the Mississippi. And your source is-”

“A pledge, who I have every intention of keeping anonymous,” I said. “Gotta protect my source.”

“And how did you meet this young man?”

“He asked me to have dinner with him.”

“And it hasn’t occurred to you at any point that a college-aged boy just asked you on a date because he thinks you’re pretty?”

“Professor, with all due respect, that’s not really on the table for someone like me.”

“Someone like you?” Professor Davidson asked, a clear note of skepticism in her voice. 

“A trans woman. Obviously. What else would I mean?” I said as a spike of irritation plunged into my chest. God, I hated having to explain this shit to people, even though it was blatantly obvious.

Professor Davidson took off her glasses and sighed. “Look, it’s not a bad idea. But it’s… Well, it’s ambitious for someone like you.”

“Someone like me?” I grunted, the spike plunging deeper, closer to my heart.

“A cub reporter,” she clarified. 

“Oh. Right. Well… Regardless, I think there’s a story here. If you don’t think I should pursue this, if you really think I should write about something else for the scholarship, I’ll do it, but… I have a feeling about this.”

She sighed deeply. “Alright. I’ll sign off on this. But I expect regular updates. And you’ll have to turn in whatever you have by the end of the fall semester, even if this turns out to be a dead end. Understood?”

“Yes ma’am,” I said. 

I stood up and left my advisor’s office, my future starting to look just a tiny little bit brighter. But, the thought occurred to me, I should probably explain all this a little bit better. 

Let’s back up a bit, so I can tell you the story of how I met the love of my life. 

18 Hours Earlier

When a random guy walked up to me and said I was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen and he just had to go out with me, my first thought was to laugh in his face because c’mon, have you seen my trans ass? It was depressing. My second thought was ‘he’s working some kinda angle here.’ My third thought was ‘my Lois Lane senses are tingling.’

It wasn’t even that I was opposed to something like this happening, on a conceptual level. I was a grown… Okay, semi-grown… Okay, legally an adult, heterosexual… Mostly heterosexual (like, ninety-five percent heterosexual) woman of nineteen years of age with NEEDS. Sexy needs. Ooey-gooey romantic needs. But like… When you’re trans, the rules are different. When you’re trans, you’re nobody’s first choice. Well, usually not: obviously, sometimes, people like me found love, usually with other people like me. But still: we weren’t really the demographic that got the opening hook of a romcom thrown at us in real life. So you can imagine my surprise when… Well, this shit happened. 

It also wasn’t even that the guy was bad looking; just the opposite, in fact: he was tall and slim, with short brown hair and some intriguing facial scruff, clear skin and ocean-blue eyes, dressed in a charcoal-colored suit and a blood-red tie, he was… Maybe not exactly my type, a bit pastier than I normally went for, but under normal circumstances I’d file him in my brain under the label of ‘dangerously pretty.’

It was mostly that I’d never seen this man before in my life, and he’d chosen to walk up to me as I left my support group dressed in a dysphoria-hoody and baggy jeans that were more rips than denim, my hair still wet from the shower and unbrushed, tomorrow’s stubble making an unwanted early appearance on my face and neck. Perhaps I was just cynical (I’ve certainly been called that, in addition to fatalistic, defeatist, depressing, miserable, and joyless) but somehow I doubted I was the most beautiful girl he’d seen today, let alone in his whole life. 

Still: maybe it was lack of sleep talking, maybe it was the bishie-boy good looks of the man saying it, or maybe it was the fact that I was a week into my sophomore year and I still hadn’t figured out my article for the journalism scholarship I was applying for, but I decided this might be a thread worth tugging on. 

I forced out a giggle, stitched a coy smile onto my face, and batted my eyelashes. I thanked God I’d done my vocal exercises already today, then said, “Why thank you, kind sir. Such a gentleman.”

“A lady like yourself deserves one,” he winked, and it sent an ache of primordial need shooting down my back and into my loins. Damn. This fucker was good… Well, mostly good. He kept clenching and unclenching his fists, like he was trying to burn off an excess of nervous energy. Was he… Was he actually afraid I’d shoot him down? Ridiculous. Guys who looked like him didn’t get nervous when asking out girls who looked like me. Hell, they didn’t ask out girls like me, period. Which raised the question, once again, of ‘what is happening right now?’

He continued, teeth worrying his lower lip for a fraction of a second. “What’s your name? Please, I have to know. I won’t be able to sleep if you don’t tell me.”

Laying it on a little thick there, loverboy, I thought as I leaned against the side of the marble building situated on our tiny little college campus. The quad was arranged around a beautiful green lawn, each of the corners serving a different purpose for student life: the library, the cantina, the chapel, and the student services center. That last one, the white four-story building with black windows and clear-glass doors, was where the queer support group meetings were held every Wednesday night here at Grace University. In theory, if this guy had been looking for me, it would be relatively easy to figure out I’d be in this place at this time. 

Time to keep pulling. “Alicia Hernandez,” I said, offering up my hand for a shake. 

Of course, his response was to take my dainty brown hand in his enormous pale one and drag the knuckles towards his luscious mouth, his lips pressing against my digits. It would’ve worked better if his hand didn’t have a slight tremble to it. “Charmed.”

I blushed. I’m not proud of it, in fact I’m incredibly ashamed of it, but under any other circumstances this might have honestly worked on me. “What’s your name, handsome?” 

“Caden Monroe,” he replied, the lamppost above him flickering on as thin shards of starlight began to peek through the miasma-soaked night sky. His eyes were… Damn. He was all sparkly. I was gonna have to be careful here if I wanted my journalistic integrity to survive whatever this bullshit was. 

“That is like… An aggressively white name you got there, dude,” I said. 

He blinked, and then his nose crinkled and his dimples showed as he laughed. Cute, I thought, and then immediately shoved the thought down. I was working right now. Wouldn’t do to get distracted. “You got me there, it absolutely is,” he said, scratching at his temple and breaking off eye contact. “Uh… Listen, I’m sure this a lot to throw at you all at once-”

“Yes.”

“But uh… Have you had dinner yet?”

This time, I blinked. “You offering to buy me dinner?”

He beamed, which did a lot for me. Ugh stupid pretty boy with his stupid pretty eyes. “I might be. If your answer is yes.”

“What if my answer is no?”

“Then I’m offering to have dinner with you but not pay for your food.”

The smile wasn’t forced this time: I had to hand it to this guy, if the plan was the charm and con me, he was doing the first part relatively well (in spite of himself, and the massive bundle of nerves he was clearly hiding underneath that tight-fitting suit). But what was the con… “Sure. You can buy me dinner.”

“Awesome!” he said, punching the sky with his southpaw. 

Pfft, getting a date with me is not that exciting, dude. You’re being super obvious, I thought. But then he grabbed my hand and started pulling me towards the cantina, practically giddy with excitement, and I was more confused than ever. 

Our cantina was all plain black linoleum and overhead lights and marble walls, row after row of booths lining the dining area. Seriously, there wasn’t a single regular table in this place. I guess that did give us more privacy while I interviewed this weirdo, so at least there was that. 

He gestured to all the different food stations: Italian, Thai, Mexican, American- lots of variety, most of it terrible. “Pick whatever you want.”

“Wow. Pick whatever I want out of a menu of prison food. You really know how to show a girl the world,” I snarked. 

“I mean, I’d have invited you over for a home-cooked meal, but that felt a little forward.”

“Everything about this is forward,” I pointed out, eyebrows raised. “Do you not live on campus?”

“I live with my sister, like… Three blocks from here?”

Intriguing. “And who’d be cooking this home-cooked meal? You or your sister?”

“Me. Kira’s at her girlfriend’s place tonight.”

Also intriguing. And on the microscopically slim chance he was really trying to get into my pants… Well, see the above-mentioned stuff about my having needs (sexy needs). “Tell you what: lemme text my roommate real quick, and then we can walk over to your place and I’ll see what your culinary skills are like.”

“Tight!” he exclaimed, punching the sky with both fists this time. 

Yeah, this guy was way too adorable to be real. Which my ego didn’t love: it would’ve been nice if some well-dressed, queer-friendly, outrageously pretty boy with the personality of a labrador retriever legitimately wanted to wine and dine me of all girls; but this could be very, very good for my journalistic future. There was a story here, something to investigate, and as an aspiring investigative journalist, how could I say no to that. 

I fired a quick message over to my roommate, Natasha, saying that if I didn’t text again in two hours I’d most likely been murdered and she was within her rights to make a true crime podcast about me. And then, away we went. 

His hands were soft around mine, only a few minor callouses and chipped nails indicating he worked more than a day in his life. The trembling was still there, but it had reduced considerably since he put his hand around mine. He pulled me down the sidewalk, past the parking lot, away from the back gate and out into the quaint domestic neighborhood surrounding our southern California campus. A tiny little green bungalow came into view at the end of the street, right before things shifted into a commercial district, no car in the driveway and no lights on inside. He fished through his front pocket with his free hand and retrieved a key, unlocking the door and beckoning me inside. 

Okay. Hopefully this was the beginning of my investigation, and not the investigation into my death. There was no way he was trying this hard for me of all people. If I were, like, a childhood best friend whom he’d been crushing on since fifth grade, maybe I could see loverboy here pulling out all the stops to woo me, but like… I could not recall meeting him at any point previously. Unless I was severely concussed and nobody told me, the odds that we’d ever run into each other beyond, like, maybe standing in the same line for coffee once were microscopic.

“Welcome to Casa Del Monroe,” he said, flicking a light switch as we walked inside. The front door opened right up to the kitchen. It was modest, but still nice: black appliances and brown hardwood floors, a rectangular wooden table near the back before the hallway led out to the rest of the house. It was sparsely decorated but for a few framed photos on the teal walls: him and his sister presumably. She didn’t look much like him: black hair chopped into heavy bangs up front, skin even paler than his, goth-makeup all over her face to compliment a septum piercing and a pair of eyebrow-studs on her left side. Only thing they shared were the blue eyes. 

I pointed to a picture of them that looked maybe a year or two old: he was wearing graduation robes and holding a diploma, and she was beaming at him with what looked like pride. She appeared to have about a decade on him, maybe more. “Is this-”

“Yeah, that’s Kira,” he said, walking over to the stainless steel fridge and interrogating its contents with his eyes. 

“Don’t see your parents in any of these pictures,” I pointed out. 

“That’s because they suck and I hate them. And the feeling is mutual,” an unmistakable edge of anger to his voice.

“I… See,” I said. “Is there a story there?”

“There is,” Caden said in a flat tone, retrieving a packet of ground chicken and a bag of unchopped vegetables (a red bell pepper, a yellow onion, and a roma tomato) from the fridge and setting them on the counter. He reached into a cabinet above him and pulled out a sleeve of rigatoni. “Pasta good?”

“Uh… Yeah, pasta is good,” I said. Deflect much?

“Cool! There’s a jar of pesto in the fridge- could you grab it for me?”

I found it quickly and brought it over to him while he filled a pot up with water and then turned the electric stove on high. “Thank you, gorgeous,” he said, still smiling at me. It definitely looked forced again, not entirely reaching his eyes. His eyes which, once again, were darting about as if they were looking for somewhere, anywhere else to focus.

Part of me wanted to roll my eyes, ask him directly what the hell was going on here, but given how he’d avoided me asking about his parents, given the odd cocktail of angst and terror swirling about inside his brain, I doubted a direct line of interrogation would be very effective. Maybe it would be better to play along, see if I could… 

I gulped. No, there was no way this would work. I was not nearly hot enough to seduce information from this guy. 

“Is there anything I can do to help?” I asked as he pulled a knife from a rack and started chopping the bell pepper on a cutting board. 

“Yeah, actually, that’d be great,” he said. “Would you mind pressing some garlic? The press is in that drawer over there, and the garlic is in that bowl on the table.”

Hmm. Well, at least he wasn’t a control-freak like most guys were. I’d only had two boyfriends, but they’d both gotten real anal real fast whenever I tried to help them with anything. 

I crushed and peeled the garlic on the table, then put it through the press and into a bowl while Caden started sliding chopped vegetables onto an olive oil slicked pan. His hands were steady now that he had something to do with them. “Do you cook for yourself a lot?”

“It’s cheaper than a meal plan,” Caden said, adding the raw pasta to the boiling pot. “Same with living here instead of on campus.”

“Your sister can afford a house in Los Angeles but not to pay for college stuff for you?”

“Our grandma left us the house,” Caden shrugged, turning to face me. “She was a professor at our school- it’s the only reason I can afford that place.”

So he wasn’t a trust-fund brat like I’d guessed from his suit and his general vibe. At least, assuming he was telling me the truth, which he obviously wasn’t. But… Hm, there was something oddly sincere in those blue eyes of his. “Were you close?” I asked softly. 

His smile faltered, but returned with a sad, diminished air. He nodded. 

“I’m sorry,” I said. 

“It’s okay,” he said, barely above a whisper. 

The seduction maneuver wasn’t going great thus far. Best to move to something lighter. “So, uh, what’s your major?”

“Business management,” he said. 

Yeah, that mapped. “Any particular reason?”

“Money,” he said plainly, stirring the vegetables in the pan and tossing on some salt and pepper for seasoning. 

My sympathy lessened a bit. Of course that was why. No passion, no real ambition, just plain old American greed. “Fair enough,” I forced myself to smile, taking the wooden spoon from his hand and stirring the veggies myself. 

“What about you?” he asked. 

“Journalism.”

“Nice. How’d you pick it?”

“I believe the truth will set us all free,” I said. 

“Righteous.”

“... Righteous?”

“What?”

“Just not really a word I’m used to hearing people say unironically.”

“Yeah, I’m not crazy about irony,” he grimaced. “It’s had its day in the sun, and now it can rot in the dark.”

Huh. “You’re just… Full of surprises, aren’t you?”

“I mean, we did just meet. Everything I say and do will be a surprise for a while.”

“Point,” I said. “What other surprises you got?”

He smirked. 

“What?”

His smirk deepened. 

“What?!” I demanded, stomping my foot and putting a hand on my hip. The pasta finished cooking, and he drained the pot in a colander over the sink. 

“Pass me that olive oil?” he said. 

“Not until you tell me what other surprises you have in store underneath that pretty package of yours.”

“I mean… It involves a pretty package.”

“... You’re making a dick joke,” I realized. 

“Yes, Alicia. Yes, I am.”

“Yeah, well, every guy says they’re packing a lot more heat than they actually are,” I said, handing him the oil. 

He splashed it onto the hot pot, then dumped the ground chicken in and let it sizzle. “As a general rule that’s true, but I think you’ll find I live up to my own hype.”

I spooned in the garlic paste, then added the pesto as well to help give the chicken some flavor. “Oh, so you have hype, then? You gotten a lotta feedback?”

“A bit, here and there,” he said, adding some salt and red chili flakes to the meat. 

“Well then you better not be selling me a false bill of goods.”

“Is that your way of saying you wanna find out?”

My cheeks heated, hotter than the stove, hotter than a wildfire, hotter than the damn sun. A mental image ran through me, of me unzipping his dress pants and tugging them down and releasing the one-eyed monster hidden behind his undies. Getting down on my knees, kissing it to life, slowly taking it-

I shook my head. Damn progesterone was making me horny. I’d just started on it a month ago, along with upping my estradiol and spironolactone dosages, and net gain was significantly bigger boobs and hips but also my libido shooting through the proverbial roof. Also, it was making me baby-crazy, but that wasn’t anything terribly new for me. 

“Is that a no? Did I lay it on too thick?” Caden said, having the audacity to look and sound downright bashful! Ashamed, even!   

“You’ve been laying it on too thick all night, dickhead,” I said, poking him in the chest. 

“I mean, it’s worked so far, hasn’t it?” Caden said, grinning nervously. 

Yes, but not for the reasons you think. “Look, Caden, you’re sweet and all, but you gotta admit this is a lot. I mean c’mon: you just saw my badly-dressed trans ass walking out of the student services center, fell in love at first sight?”

“I never said that,” Caden said. 

“Then tell me how we got here,” I raised an eyebrow, taking the pasta and dumping it into the pan with the sauteeing vegetables. “And if you say ‘we walked here’ I will leave right now.” 

He laughed again. Dammit, he was convincing. Maybe it was because he was laughing at himself. “Okay, okay. Someone I know told me about you. Said I should shoot my shot with you. That we… We might get on pretty well.”

“Someone you know? Who? A friend of yours?”

“Friend is a strong word,” Caden said. “He’s… Well, he’s not my frat brother yet, but he will be soon.” 

My eyebrows shot up again. Gears turned inside my mind. “Which frat?”

“Delta Gamma Alpha Sigma Omega,” he said without missing a beat. 

The business frat. Made sense, given his major. It was an elite, highly-exclusive fraternity, known for its ability to make or break people’s careers in the corporate sector. Networking, backroom deals, endless schmoozing: that was the kind of thing that place led to, in addition to the obligatory wild parties. But there were rumors about them, unsavory ones: mostly about hazing. They’d had a few scandals over the decades, humiliation gone way over the line, bordering on straight-up torture. The rumor, of course, was that it had never really gone away. It had just gotten a bit more hush-hush. 

Caden here wasn’t in the frat yet. He was a pledge. And given his stated aspirations towards wealth, he would logically be willing to do whatever it took to gain entry to the boys’ business club. 

“What did this frat bro tell you about me?” I inquired. I needed to probe deeper into him before he tried to probe any deeper into me. 

… Heh. Phrasing. 

“Just… Showed me your picture and said ‘I think she’d be a good fit.’”

He sounded honest. He looked honest, if nervous. I wanted to believe he was honest because dammit I was horny and it would be really nice to get laid with a cute boy who made me a home-cooked dinner. But the best lies were the truth, and there was no way anyone would ever try this hard for me of all fucking people. I wasn’t done pulling on this thread. 

“And you agreed with him?” I said. 

“I’ve yet to find anything untrue about his statement,” Caden said, wafting the chicken as it browned under the heat. 

“Dude. C’mon. I look like shit.”

“You don’t, you just look like a girl who overslept.”

“But I’m tr-”

“Yeah, you’re trans. So what? My sister has dated trans girls. I’m up to speed on the concept. You’re a girl. Boom.”

A note of airy lightness played inside me, leaving a sweet resonance behind. Dammit. Stay the course, Alicia. Don’t get distracted. “So you like messy, unkempt women? Because I am capable of dressing like an adult.”

“I just like nerdy girls.”

“How do you know I’m-”

He pointed directly at my Demon Slayer hoodie. “Basically, you’re my type. I’ve yet to see any evidence to the contrary.”

“Oh. Okay,” I giggled. It was a real giggle that time. Dammit dammit dammit-

“So, are you a ‘eat at the table’ girl or a ‘eat on the couch and watch TV’ type of girl?” he asked. He was evading my questions. Something was going on here. Best to keep playing along. I needed him to trust me. He’d open up if he thought I was into him. Which I was not, thanks very much. I just needed him to lower his guard. 

“Let’s watch a movie,” I said. 

“Sure!” he chirped. “What kind?”

Let’s see if I’m really your type, dickhead. “Do you like horror movies?”

“I fucking love horror movies!” he said with a billion-dollar smile. If only he could cash in on that, he’d be set for life. 

I couldn’t help myself as I got hit with an excited flutter. “Okay, cool!” 

“You pick.”

I blinked. “Seriously?”

“Yeah,” he said, brow furrowed. “What?”

“No, it’s just…”

“Just what?”

“Usually when I say I like horror movies, guys either don’t believe me or try to man-splain them or something,” I said. 

“Well… Uh… Sounds like you have bad taste in guys?” he said, then cringed as soon as he said it. “You know, besides me, obviously.”

“Obviously,” I said flatly. “In your case it remains to be seen.”

“How am I doing so far?”

“Better than average, though I can’t help but feel you’re compensating for something.”

“... Was that a dick joke?”

“You tell me?” I winked. 

He chuckled, those bashful dimples making another appearance. “Yup. Definitely my type. Exactly my type.”

“Mean girls?”

“Funny girls. It just so happens that a lot of funny girls are mean to me. I’m just a natural butt of the joke, I guess. But you seem like you can at least make the joke land.”

I shimmied a little bit where I stood, batting away a mental image of giving him a cheek-kiss for his kind words. This was all still too weird. I couldn’t get swept up in it. I needed more information. Some more threads to pull on. Anything to avoid getting caught in the very obvious trap. Some easy form of contact, proof I wasn’t being led on, would be a good place to start. “I’ll pick the movie if you give me your phone number.”

“I think that can be arranged.” He handed me his phone. “Pass-code is 4876.”

I took the phone, entered the code, and started typing in my number into the new contact option. A notification came in. A flash of text appeared, from someone dubbed ‘Big Dog.’ It read ‘I am pleased to see you’ve made contact with your assignment. Try not to fuck up for once.’

There it was. That was all I needed to see. Any guilt for what I was about to do evaporated in an instant.

I finished entering my number and name, making sure not to show I’d seen anything. I handed him the phone. He sent off a text of his own, and my phone dinged in response. 

Caden said, “Just so you know, I’m giving your contact the sub-label of ‘just my type.’

More like just your assignment, I thought. Dickhead.  

I put my hand on his chest and kissed his cheek. He turned so damn red, like holy shit that was some hardcore blushing. “Hopefully you’re not my type, though,” I said, caressing the spot my lips had just touched with the back of my hand. “As we’ve established, my taste in men isn’t the best.”

“Well then, let’s take it one step at a time, see how I do,” he said, this look on his face like ‘holy shit that just happened what do I do now oh fuck.’ “I’d like to do what I can to win you over.”

Gonna be an uphill battle, assclown, I thought. “You’re doing great so far,” I said. 

“Cool,” he grinned. “Go pick out a movie. I’ll finish getting dinner ready.”

“Cool,” I echoed. 

I found my way to his living room, a comfy place with plush carpets and two full-sized couches. I figured out the television set up after a few minutes, searched up which streaming service had Invasion of the Body-Snatchers (the ‘78 one, obviously), and then queued it up. 

“Few more minutes,” Caden called from the kitchen.

“Can’t wait,” I said. 

‘Big Dog’ was almost certainly someone in the frat. The assignment presumably meant me. An ugly girl who he’d been told was ‘a good fit.’ Only question was for what? This had to be how they got away with hazing now, making it about other people instead of the pledges. Testing their loyalty through manipulative bullshit. So what was the end goal? 

I searched up the frat on my phone, and looked through their calendar. Logically, if the assignment was to romance a girl they’d picked out for you, there had to be some kind of event, right? I’d seen that movie before: take an ugly girl to the dance, crown her queen of the losers or some asinine shit like that. It was the only conceivable reason why they would pick me. Why he would pick me. I was an assignment. He was using me. 

But I could use him right back. 

I would get to the bottom of this. I would find out everything I needed to know. And then I would write the mother of all articles, expose the boys’ club’s dirty secrets, get the scholarship, become financially independent, and never have to deal with my shitty family again.  

And the fastest way to accomplish all that was to get this guy eating out of the palm of my hand. I mean, sure, I wasn’t exactly the most conventionally seductive type, but it couldn’t be that hard. Guys only cared about one thing, and if I could make him think I was offering, the rest would fall into place. Obviously. 

Caden came into the living room with two plates of pesto pasta, a few sets of cutlery and some napkins as well. He looked at the screen as he sat down, then said, “Holy shit! You picked my favorite movie!”

“This is your… This is your favorite movie?” I titled my head. 

“Fuck yeah it is,” the nervousness dissipating, replaced with an earnest, dorky enthusiasm. “I’ve seen like five times.”

“Damn. That’s… Three more times than me,” I said, swatting away flickers of excitement on my end. “Did you know that they didn’t tell the actress in the final scene-”

“What Donald Sutherland was gonna do? Yeah!” Caden exclaimed. 

He sat down next to me, putting the food on the coffee table, and offered me a fistbump. I was tempted to return, but I decided to push a little further. Right now, I had a golden opportunity. Time to ingratiate myself. Time to secure my source. 

I grabbed a fistful of his shirt, pulled him close. 

“Uh… Whatcha doing there, Alicia?” he said, adorable redness returning to his pale face. 

“Kissing the cook. Obviously.”

And before he could offer a response, I went for it. My lips were on his, electricity bursting between us as the world fell away. All that mattered was the two of us melting into each other. He ran a hand through my wavy black hair, twirling a strand of it, gently probing inside my mouth with his tongue. I let him in, running my hand up and down his chest while he took a handful of my hip and dragged me close. We stole breaths between kisses, fleeting reminders that anyone other than the two of us existed as we damn near consumed each other on the spot. I pressed into him and he pressed into me and I felt his heart beating above his ribs and wanted to hold it in my hand. And I wanted to let him hold mine. 

When it was over, and our foreheads were pressed together, and we were both clawing at the air for breath, a rhythm of terror sounded inside my mind as I recognized just how utterly horny I was now. 

“Holy shit,” Caden whispered. “Did… Did you feel that? That felt like a spark.”

“Yeah. It did,” I said, reminding myself that he had an assignment and now so did I. Reminding myself that I needed to stay on task, and not get swept away in this nice little fairy tale I’d randomly found myself in. I just hoped my libido got the message.