Cleaning away the remnants of dinner this late at night always felt strangely intimate.
The house had gone quiet hours ago. Outside, the windows reflected darkness back at us, broken only by the occasional distant streetlight through the trees. The kitchen light above the stove was dim, casting everything in soft gold and shadow.
Including him.
Especially him.
I was rinsing plates while he dried them beside me, moving around each other with that comfortable rhythm people only get after enough time together. Little touches. Hips brushing. Fingers lingering for no reason.
And unfortunately for him, I was in exactly the kind of mood that made me impossible.
It started small.
A teasing comment. A look held a little too long. Brushing against him when there was more than enough room to walk around.
He tried ignoring me at first.
That only encouraged me.
“Oh, so now you’re pretending you don’t want me?” I asked innocently while reaching around him for absolutely nothing important.
His shoulders tensed slightly.
Success.
“You’re trouble,” he muttered.
“You like trouble.”
He gave me a look then. The kind that immediately sends heat straight through your stomach and makes you reconsider every life choice that led you there.
Naturally, I doubled down.
I smirked while drying my hands slowly. “What? Cat got your tongue?”
That did it.
He turned fast enough to make me squeak as he backed me against one of the kitchen cabinets with a solid thud, hands braced on either side of me.
“There she is,” he murmured, voice low and dangerous in that way I loved far too much. “Thought you were being very brave tonight.”
I was trying very hard to keep my composure.
Failing spectacularly.
He leaned closer, just enough to make my pulse jump.
“You keep pushing me like this and I might start thinking I can do with you as I pleas—”
Suddenly, from the living room:
“I DIDN’T QUITE CATCH THAT.”
We both froze.
The Google Home lit up across the house.
And then, as if possessed by some deeply unfortunate spirit, it immediately started blasting an upbeat love song at full volume through the speakers.
For one perfect second we stared at each other in absolute silence.
Then I broke.
Completely.
I folded forward laughing so hard I had to grab the counter to stay upright, tears instantly forming in my eyes.
“Oh my god,” I gasped between wheezes. “It heard you!”
He dropped his forehead against my shoulder, laughing so hard his entire body shook.
“I swear to god,” he muttered, voice cracking with laughter, “I’m unplugging that thing.”
The music kept playing obnoxiously loud through the house while both of us completely lost whatever tension had been building.
I was bent over laughing hard enough that my stomach hurt, and he eventually slid dramatically down the cabinet until he was sitting on the kitchen floor staring into the void like a defeated man.
“You know,” I managed between breaths, “I think this technically means you were dominant enough to intimidate artificial intelligence.”
That absolutely finished him.
He laughed so hard he had to cover his face with both hands while I stood there trying not to collapse entirely.
And honestly?
The ridiculousness of it somehow made the moment even hotter.
Because the tension never actually disappeared.
It just got tangled up with laughter.
Which, somehow, felt even more intimate.