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“Where are you right now?” he growled beside my ear and then sank his teeth into the fleshy lobe.
A sly grin stretched my lips, and he saw my reaction before I could school my features.
“You liked that, hmm?” he asked, but I was pretty sure it was a rhetorical type of question based on the tone of his voice.
He bit me again, only this time on my neck, and I might have actually purred. With that vocal encouragement, Carmen made a trail of bites down the length of my neck until I was almost moaning for more.
He stepped back, and the cool apartment air washed over my flushed skin.
“Now, that’s more like the welcome home I was fantasizing about while we drove here.” He smiled down at me, and for once, I didn’t have a snarky comeback.
Carmen slid his hand down the length of my arm until he reached my hand. With our fingers intertwined, he tugged me deeper into the apartment.
“Come on. I’ll show you the place, and then we can get you settled. Are you hungry? I have some groceries here, but we may have to order in until you can get to the store tomorrow.”
Well, that stuttered my dreamy steps, and I yanked my hand free of his. “What did you just say?”
“I’ll show you the place?” He tilted his head to the side, looking thoroughly confused.
“After that.”
“I’ll help you unpack?”
“After.”
“Dinner?”
At that point, I figured he was intentionally being obtuse, so my hands went to my hips again and I asked, “Why would you think I’m going for groceries tomorrow?”
There were so many things wrong with the statement, I didn’t know where to begin bitching him out.
“Because I’ll be at work all day and you won’t be?” he asked, propping his hands on his hips to mirror my stance. “God, woman. Does everything have to be a damn argument with you?”
“Only when you’re acting like a chauvinistic asshole,” I snapped.
“The comment had nothing to do with me being a man and you being a woman. It was simple logistics.”
He stepped toward me again, and I put my hands up to signal stop. But the persistent man entwined our fingers and pulled my knuckles to his lips.
After kissing each one, he said, “Storm, listen to me.” He dropped his chin to his chest like he was gathering every ounce of patience he could rally. “I’m not the enemy. We’re in this together, right? You can bank on the fact that every comment out of my mouth is not a personal attack on you, and then hopefully we can avoid all this bickering. Doesn’t that sound like a more pleasant existence?”
I huffed in frustration, but he patiently waited. When a few more moments went by without comment from either of us, he dropped my hands and strolled across the kitchen.
“Come on, let’s get your stuff unpacked,” he called before opening a door at the far side of the room. “This is the bedroom. I’ll clear some space in the closet and dresser for you.”
Picking up two of the bags I brought in from the car, I followed after him like a lost puppy. The whole scene was so awkward: not my home, not my stuff, I didn’t even know where the bathroom was.
The master bedroom was smaller than my bedroom at my parents’ home, but I had to remind myself it was pretty typical for apartment living. There was an en suite bathroom at least, so I could work with that. When I saw the size of the postage-stamp closet though, I balked.
“We can’t share this closet, man.” I stood staring into the open doorway and then let out a laugh. I bet the complex brochure advertised it as a walk-in.
“Dare I ask why not?”
“Carmen, look at it. It’s already crowded past a usable limit with your stuff. My things will never fit in here too.” I looked between the closet and my husband two or three times before he said more.
“Okay, I know how we can handle this. I’ll move my stuff to the closet in the other bedroom. That way you can use the whole thing and won’t have to go all the way to the other side of the apartment after you shower.”
“All the way, huh?” I chuckled. If the whole place was a thousand square feet, I’d be shocked. Then in a moment of charity I said, “That doesn’t make sense. Let me just put my stuff in the other room. Then you don’t have to move all yours. It’s twice the work to move your stuff.”
