We moved to the couch with our coffees. Mira sat down first, kicking her heels off and tucking one leg under herself, and the skirt rode up another inch in a way that I refused to believe was unintentional.

I sat on the other end of the couch like a man with self-preservation instincts, which, today, I needed. She watched me do this with a small amused twitch at the corner of her mouth, "You’re sitting awfully far away, sweetheart."

I shrugged lightly, "Strategic distance."

"Mm. From me?"

"From the situation."

She laughed, soft and warm, and took a sip of her coffee. Then she set the cup down on the side table, turned to face me properly, and the warmth in her face shifted into something steadier.

"Alright. Let me say my part first, before I lose the nerve."

"You don’t lose nerve, Aunt." I said.

"I do, occasionally. Around you, particularly." She tilted her head. "Lukas. I want to be honest with you, because I’m too old to do this any other way. I don’t know if I love you as a man yet. I want to be very clear about that. I have loved you as a boy for a very long time, watched you grow up, and somewhere in the middle of yesterday afternoon those two things started colliding in my head, and I don’t have it sorted out yet."

I nodded slowly. I had braced for harder things to land than that. "Okay."

"What I do know," she continued, holding my eyes, "is that I would like to find out. Because the part of me that is sorted out finds you very, very attractive."

"...Define very, very." A part of me was really curious about it.

"I went home last night, sweetheart, and I made myself come five times in a row thinking about you. So." She picked her coffee back up and took an unhurried sip. "Very, very."

I made a sound that was supposed to be a word and came out as approximately half of one.

She watched my face do whatever it was doing with the patient delight of a woman who had absolutely planned to drop that line and absolutely planned to enjoy the result.

I took a deep breath, "Aunt."

"Yes, baby."

"You can’t just say things like that."

Now, I couldn’t stop myself from imagining that picture in my head. My beautiful aunt laying in her bed with a hand in...Stop it! Damn it!

She smiled, easily seeing through him, "I can. I just did. I’m thirty-six, Lukas. I am not going to pretend my body doesn’t exist for the sake of your blood pressure. We are both adults. I assume we are going to talk about adult things like adults."

"...Right. Okay. Fair."

"Mm."

I took a sip of my coffee mostly to give my hands something to do. ’My aunt just told me she had a five-orgasm thinking-about-me session and is now sipping coffee about it. Functional adult. Stay functional. The functional adult does not malfunction in front of the woman who can talk about her own orgasms before lunch.’

"So," she went on, leg shifting, the skirt riding up that one more inch, "what I want to do is figure it out properly. Which I cannot do at a distance. So I am formally asking you, sweetheart. Would you like to date me."

I stared at her. "...Date you."

She nodded, "Yes, properly and exclusively, on my end at least, until further notice. I’ll give you everything I have. My time, my resources, my world, my body when we get there. All of it." She smiled the small private smile that I’d only ever seen her do twice before. "I would like to be the woman you come home to."

It took me about three seconds to land on the right joke for the moment, and when I did, I committed.

"...So basically you’re asking to be my official sugar mommy."

She laughed hearing that, "Yes, sweetheart. That is exactly what I’m asking."

"Just so I’m clear."

"Crystal."

"Cool. Cool cool cool." I repeated it many times. Wow! So now I am Jake Peralta too.

’I have unlocked the official sugar mommy contract. Achievement: confirmed. Genre: validated. The harem-MC hall of fame just opened a wing in my name.’

I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding, set my coffee down on the side table, and looked at her properly. The teasing shape of her face stayed, but underneath it, I could see her waiting.

She was performing calm, but underneath the performance she was nervous, and I had not seen Mira nervous in my entire life.

I decided to be honest with her, "Aunt."

"Mm?" She hummed, not trusting her words at the moment.

"My feelings are mutual." I admitted it.

She blinked. "...Mutual."

"Mutual. I like you. I want to do this. Yes."

The performing calm cracked.

She moved across the couch in a single fluid motion that I genuinely did not see coming, and before my brain had finished registering the words she’s moving, she was in my lap, knees on either side of mine, both her hands fisted in my collar, and her mouth was on mine.

It wasn’t a careful kiss. It wasn’t a figuring this out kiss. It was the kiss of a woman who had been waiting for that one specific sentence and was making up for the entire delay all at once.

Her perfume, her weight, the heat of her thighs on either side of mine, the way she made a small yes sound into my mouth on the second kiss and the way her hands shifted from my collar to my jaw and then up into my hair — all of it hit me at once.

I responded in the only sensible way, which was both hands at her waist, then her hips, then up under the back of the cream blouse where her skin was bare and warm.

She gasped against my mouth and pressed in closer, and the skirt that had been riding up all morning gave up and rode the rest of the way up in a way that meant most of her thigh was now bare against my legs.

Her hips moved. Just once, a small slow shift in my lap, and I felt every nerve I owned line up to pay attention.

I tried to calm myself and whispered, "Aunt."

"Mm."

"Aunt, hold on."

"Don’t."

"Hold on."

She pulled back just enough to look at me, breathing uneven, lipstick smudged at one corner, hair coming undone where my hand had been in it.

"Lukas. If you tell me you’ve changed your mind, I am going to have to kill you, just for emotional consistency."

"I haven’t. I promise. I have things to tell you. Important things. Before we go any further. Please."