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“Right,” she responded. Since it looked like they were finished eating, she gathered the food and utensils and took it to the kitchen. Another glorious room. She and Cap had loved cooking together and had once talked about what their kitchen would look like.
He’d created it.
“Like it?” he asked.
She turned at that. He had hold of the top of the doorway and was leaning on one leg. He was barefoot. She could see the muscles of his stomach between his t-shirt and the jeans he wore unbuttoned at the top.
Goddamn the man was hot.
“Like what?” she asked, lost.
He smiled at her slowly and her blood began to pump harder through her veins. “The kitchen?”
“Yeah, it’s like I pictured it would be.” She was truthful because to be anything else would give him ammunition. The last thing he needed was more of that. She coughed against a suddenly dry throat. “Can you, um, put your arms down or something? You know just stop standing there looking like that?”
He did as she asked but his gaze grew intense. She looked down at her own feet. She needed a pedicure. Tears came unbidden to her eyes at that. She and Olivia used to get pedicures together. It was like clockwork, every two weeks. She’d never sit and gossip with Olivia again. No more pedicures.
Cap came toward her, reaching for her face. He stroked a single digit down her cheek, picking up a tear on his finger and bringing it to his mouth. “Don’t cry. It kills me when you cry,” he said.
She reached for him then, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and just holding on as the sobs took her unprepared.
He wrapped her in his arms and pulled her legs up around his waist. Then he set her on the bar and pulled back so he could look into her face.
“I didn’t mean to look however I was looking,” he told her.
She laughed, dropped her arms, and wiped her tears. “It wasn’t you. I miss Olivia. Running these last couple of years I wasn’t able to grieve for my sister. Now that I’m safe and standing still it just hit me hard—she’s gone.”
“Holland is the same way. I see him looking at her picture in his wallet sometimes, tears in his eyes,” Cap said.
“He loved her, yeah?” she asked him.
“Yeah,” he responded firmly.
She reached for him again and let him wrap her in his arms. She cried until there were no tears left.
“I swear if you wipe your snotty nose on my shirt we’re gonna fight,” he said.
Her nose wasn’t snotty but she wiped it on his shirt just to piss him off.
He laughed instead.
Then he cupped her face and kissed her. Softly at first, a testing of her lips to see if she was receptive. She sank into him, bringing her hands up to his chest and digging her fingers into the tight muscles. He’d been her rock at one point. She could lean on him now too. She felt it in her soul. Over and over, he stroked his tongue into her mouth, tasting her then withdrawing. She followed his lead, giving as good as she got, and before too long, her hands were tangled in his hair and his were tangled in hers.
He tasted of Indian food and the beer he’d drunk with dinner. It was glorious. She wanted more. She sucked his tongue into her mouth and mimicked the act her body desperately wanted her to see to fruition. He groaned and then he was licking a path down her neck, suckling at her pulse point.
She moaned.
“Not like this,” he suddenly said and pulled away.
She mourned the loss of his heat and kiss. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have attacked you.”
He cupped her cheeks in his big hands. “You’re welcome to do it any time you want, but right now, I’m not going to take advantage of your grief.”
“Let me down,” she told him and slid off the bar. “This can’t happen, Captain. It damn near killed me last time. I won’t be hurt like that again.”
Cap held his hands up away from his body. “I’m not ever going to hurt you again.”
Ava nodded. “I’m not going to let you,” she said as she left the kitchen.
