I had the portafilter in one hand and the tamper in the other, still half asleep, when his arm came around my waist and hauled me backward so hard the tamper went skittering across the counter.
Grounds everywhere. In the sink, on the stove, in the little crack by the toaster I will be finding them in until Christmas.
“Brett, the machine isn’t even hot yet—”
“Then it can wait.”
His chin was on my shoulder. His other hand was already under the waistband of my sleep shorts, rough palm flat against my stomach, working lower, and I could feel him through his boxers, hard against the small of my back. He’d been awake before me. He’d been lying there deciding.
I tried to turn around and he pinned me against the counter edge with his hips. Grounds crunched under my elbow. My cheek was an inch from the dripping group head, which was making that tiny pre-heat tick, and I could smell the beans, bitter and dark, and under it his sleep-warm skin.
“Don’t move,” he muttered, and slid two fingers into the wet mess I’d been all night, because he’d gone down on me at midnight and neither of us had cleaned up.
I held the counter. I counted the ticks of the machine. By the time the little green light came on I’d stopped counting and was biting my own wrist so the neighbors wouldn’t hear.
He came on my lower back and wiped it off with the dish towel. The nice one.
“Now make the coffee,” he said.
My hands were shaking too hard to tamp. He drank it gritty.
