My Billionaire Cashback System! I Get Paid for Investing in Beauties

Rose didn’t answer right away.

She looked at him, then at the table, then at the window, the way she did when she was searching for the right response and coming up short.

Adrian looked at his bowl. The cereal had gone soft.

He stood up and carried it to the sink. "If you’re hungry, I can make something."

"I’m fine."

"I’m not offering out of charity. I’m just pointing out that the option exists."

She gave him a small smile. "Not everyone turns into a glutton at four in the morning."

"Being hungry isn’t a character flaw. It’s a biological function."

"I’ll let you keep telling yourself that."

Adrian turned the tap on and rinsed the bowl. He set it in the sink and turned back.

Then paused.

Rose had moved. Not dramatically. She hadn’t crossed the room. But somewhere between him picking up the bowl and setting it down, she’d closed the distance by enough that he actually noticed when he turned around.

She wasn’t doing anything in particular. She was just closer.

He processed that for a moment, then let it go.

"You know," he said, "for someone who claims not to be hungry, you’re very invested in what I’m eating."

"I’m invested in whether you have any self-control at all."

"I finished the workout first. The cereal was a reasonable sequel."

"A reasonable sequel," she repeated.

"In context."

"What context?"

"The context where I was awake at two in the morning with nothing to do."

She started to reply, then reached toward him almost absentmindedly, her hand moving toward his shoulder before her fingers found the fabric.

She stopped.

Her expression shifted.

"You’re still damp."

Adrian glanced at his shirt. "Hmm."

"Adrian." She looked up at him. "Why are you sweating?"

"I already told you. I worked out."

"I know you worked out. I meant why do you still feel like you just walked out of a gym."

He rubbed the back of his neck. "I showered, but I was probably still running a little hot after the session. It happens."

Rose stared at him.

He watched her process this. Watched something move behind her eyes that wasn’t quite the reaction he’d expected from pointing out a basic physiological fact.

Her gaze dropped briefly to his shoulder, then came back. Somewhere in the two seconds that followed, a faint color appeared on her face.

"I knew you worked out," she said, very deliberately.

"Yes."

"I just wasn’t thinking about it that way."

Adrian let that sit without helping.

She looked away for a moment. "Why would anyone exercise at four in the morning?"

"Three, technically."

"That doesn’t make it better."

Rose kept her gaze. "If you worked out at this early," she said slowly, "and you finished not too long ago..."

"Yes?"

She looked at his shirt again.

"You haven’t really showered yet. Not properly."

He opened his mouth. Closed it.

That was technically accurate. He’d rinsed off, but the session had been long enough that a rinse was probably underselling the gap.

"More or less," he said.

Rose looked at him for a moment.

Then, almost as an aside: "We never did take that shower."

Adrian paused.

The one from earlier. The one Rose had deferred, then cancelled, then left somewhere in the architecture of the evening as something discussed but never followed through on.

"No," he agreed. "We didn’t."

She watched his face.

He met her eyes and said nothing. He was fairly confident his expression was perfectly composed.

"Don’t make it weird," Rose said.

"I’m not making anything weird."

She smiled. "Have you forgotten your hentai history?"

"Adrian."

"I’m going to behave completely normally."

She studied him for another moment, weighing the probability of this.

He added, "Besides, sharing a shower is probably more sustainable than the water bill we’d both run up taking separate ones at four in the morning."

Rose stared at him.

Then she laughed. A short, quiet sound, but real enough that the last trace of anything weighted in the room went with it.

She stepped closer.

Her hand came up to his collar briefly, not quite adjusting anything, just resting there for a second before she let it fall. Then she kissed him. Something small and deliberate, not hurried, not complicated. Just present.

When she stepped back, she looked at him for a moment.

Then she turned and walked toward the bathroom. "C’mon..."

Adrian stayed where he was.

He watched her reach up and slip one strap of the slip from her shoulder. Then the other. The fabric landed somewhere near the bathroom doorway. She kept moving without looking back.

By the time she reached the door, she was down to just her underwear, and she stepped through it with the calm of someone who found the whole thing perfectly reasonable.

He stood there for another second.

It would genuinely take a very specific and extraordinary kind of stupidity to remain standing in his own kitchen at this point.

He followed her.

The bathroom was smaller with two people in it.

That was the first thing he noticed, which was not the most useful observation he had ever had. But it was accurate. The space that had seemed fine an hour ago now had a different quality to it. Smaller. Warmer. The kind of room that became aware of itself when you brought someone else in.

Rose reached into the shower and turned the tap. Water hit the tiles and the sound of it filled the space immediately.

She looked over her shoulder at him.

Adrian looked back.

He was doing a reasonable job of maintaining his composure. He was fairly confident about this. He was also fully aware that the margin between reasonable and unconvincing was narrower than he would have liked, and that Rose, who noticed most things, had already done the math on that.

She read something in his expression and her mouth curved.

"You’re fine," she said. "Completely fine."

"I didn’t say anything."

"You didn’t have to." She stepped into the shower and the water ran across her.

He followed, his eyes fixed on her as she ran a hand through her chest and turned over to him.

Adrian paused, as the end of Roses lips tweaked.

"Come closer, hentai..." she said, her cheeks visibly reddening. "let me bath you."

Adrian paused. "Um..."

"...Just take off your clothes." She interrupted him again. "And I’ll do what needs to be done."