She’s unconvinced and he can’t blame her. He can’t figure out how to go from a first kiss tomoreafter spending half his life convincing himself they could never be more than friends.
Kara begins stirring the mixture he hasn’t helped with one bit. In an attempt to do something, anything, he dips a hand into the bag of flour, grabs a pinch between his fingers and flings it directly at her.
She pauses, face blank and speckled with powder. For a moment he’s worried he fucked up even further by trying to make her laugh when they’re too far gone for that, but then her eyes flare with mischief and he’s treated with retaliation.
“Oh, it’s on now.” She grins brightly.
“Is it? I dunno, I don’t think you—”
The flour spills out across the counter and he gets a face full of it a second later, effectively cutting off his playful taunt. They waste perfectly good supplies tossing them at each other like children. He has no regrets. He’ll dump the entire bag on himself if that’s what it takes to keep her smiling.
She likes to play, too, which is something he never really considered about her. She’s a serious person most of the time, or so he thought. It’s moments like this that remind him of the teasing banter they shared back when they were younger, how easily she’d light up at the chance to poke and laugh, especially at his expense.
Somewhere along the way, they both lost the ability to embracefun, and for good reason. Lately, she’s all about following him into a game. Likes to be chased more than anything. That’s abundantly clear when she darts around the kitchen to escape him and shrieks with joy when he follows. It isn’t the first time they’ve done this, but he enjoys it just as much as he did back in that fancy kitchen of the second community she took him to.
Has anyone else gotten to see this side of her? Has she kept it all hidden just for him?
He grabs her around the waist and claims victory. His lips find the curve of her neck, dropping a kiss there before his courage fades. What he doesn’t expect is the ridiculous snort that escapes her when he gets a mouthful of flour off her skin and starts coughing it over her shoulder into a puffing cloud.
“Are you okay?” she laughs, her stomach contracting in fits and starts where his arms hold her snug. “Don’t inhale.”
“I’ll live.”
They’re a total mess. If anyone saw them now, they’d assume they were snorting lethal levels of cocaine and leaving the evidence all over themselves. His mouth feels like sandpaper, but it’s worth it when she leans back against him with a sigh, wrapping her arms over his to keep him in place. He’s ready to stay just like this for however long she’ll let him. Then it gets even better when she turns in his hold, wiping white powder off his lips with a careful thumb.
“Wade? Kiss me again?”
It’s the best request he’s ever heard in his whole life, delivered in the most gentle whisper that urges him forward.
He goes slow this time, maintaining the control he lost before. There’s only a chaste hint of pressure at first, just enough to feel her, but he’s not prepared for the dryness of leftover flour. It threatens to turn a second kiss into another coughing fit before she expertly swipes a warm tongue along the seam of his lips, clearing the way. Then everything is simple again.
Each raw gasp she offers when her body arches up asking for more, nearly convinces him he could be good at this again. She’s built him up so easily that it’s perfectly natural to lift her onto the counter with two hands gripping that tight ass. The way she spreads her legs for him quickly to step in between has his cock hardening at light speed. He’s tempted to shove everythingwithin range onto the floor so he can lay her back against the cool granite instead.
Then the oven goes off, signaling it’s hot enough for the muffin mix.
She groans, rolling her forehead against his before dipping a finger into the batter behind her. That playfulness is gone now, replaced with a hooded gaze that turns expectant and heated while a tapered finger offers him a taste.
“Hungry?” she says, her tone smothered with innuendo.
Is he ever.
Quickly, he engulfs the digit down to the second knuckle and swirls his tongue on the way back up, hoping she’ll understand that he’s more than willing to put it to good use in other, more exciting places. He has had plenty of time to imagine exactly what he’ll do to her if ever given the chance, and he intends to bring those fantasies to life soon.
Forgetting the muffins sounds like the only option right now, but the oven beeps again in the most obnoxious way and she dips her head in defeat. “Food first?”
“Food first.”
He just hopes they’re on the same page about what happens next.
* * *
They’ve eaten their fill of muffins that didn’t turn out half bad before taking separate and surprisingly shy baths out in the creek. He’s not so dense that he isn’t keenly aware of why they’re washing up before relaxing. Sure, they need it. But the implication of getting naked together has been loud and clear all day, and they both prefer smelling nice when that happens.
These in-between moments have him confused and uneasy.They sneak up when he’s certain they’re gone for good and he’s got no idea how to handle it. In all the daydreams where he allowed himself to imagine what their first time might be like, he always pictured it as rushed and frantic, like a dam finally breaking and sweeping them away in its path. The truth of it is that they’re both so different now that the only way forward is to take it slow and careful or risk the fallout.
It might be a good time to warn her that this may not be satisfying for her the first time. She’s probably figured it out already, but just to be safe, he should explain in explicit detail just how unprepared he is and how fucking jittery he feels at the possibility of disappointing her.
She has had an image of him in her mind for so long, and he’s about to shatter it.
