I hummed my agreement.
“That positive attitude of yours must be contagious, boss.”
“Fuck off,” I said. “Did you ice the cinnamon rolls yet?”
“Almost done,” he said, nodding at the other prep table.
“Good, I’m starving.”
When the rolls were ready, we went out front and Tyler loaded them into the display case.
“Made you a macchiato,” Chase said and blinked at the mug. “Possibly? And Tyler, here’s your cappuccino. Also possibly.”
I laughed and took the mug. The aroma was perfect. I took a sip. “This is great, Chase.”
“It’s whatever,” he muttered.
He was prickly today but not as antagonistic as usual, so I was taking that as a win. I nodded at his mug. “Have you found a coffee you like?”
“This is steamed milk and the cocoa powder that I’m supposed to sprinkle on the cappuccinos,” he said. “By the way, we’re almost out of cocoa powder because I used most of it for this. Do I do the orders for coffee stuff or do you?”
“Write it on the board in the back,” I said. “And we’ll get some decent stuff to make hot chocolates with. You like those, right? I mean, that’s pretty much what you’ve made.”
Chase shrugged. “Okay, yeah.”
“Thanks for the cappuccino, man,” Tyler said and headed to the back again.
I reached into the display case and picked a cinnamon roll up with the tongs and held it out to Chase. “Breakfast?”
He grabbed it as fast as a raccoon raiding a trash can.
“And remember what I said last night,” I told him. “Stick around after your shift, and there will be leftovers to take home.”
He rolled his eyes and said through a mouthful of cinnamon roll, “I’m not fucking you for leftover Danishes, Lee.”
I blinked at him, heat rising in my cheeks. “That’s—that’s not?—”
He swallowed and very deliberately drew his finger through the icing on his pastry, then darted his tongue out to lick his finger clean. He smirked. “But I’ll probably fuck you for more of these.”
“Uh,” I said. “Well, okay then. Noted.”
And then I walked into the wall beside the doorway when I attempted to leave and spilled my macchiato all over myself.
CHAPTER 9
CHASE
Could you still call it hate fucking when you weren’t sure if you hated the guy anymore or not?
I pondered this question as Lee railed me in the walk-in after work one afternoon. My back was wedged up against a bag of flour, my legs were wrapped around Lee’s waist, and his dick was shoved so far up my ass that I was pretty sure I could taste it. And I wasn’t complaining. Well, I was, but not about that part.
“Come on,” I urged him. “Fuck me harder!”
Over the past couple of weeks, we’d gotten into the habit of fucking every afternoon. It was a pretty good habit, actually. We locked the store up, waited until Tyler had left, and then I jumped on Lee’s dick. There were worse ways to kill a few minutes, for sure. And it usually was just a few minutes. It was hard, fast, and dirty as hell.
Just how I liked it.
But yeah, I was pretty sure I didn’t hate Lee anymore. Like, I was even starting to think about everything that had happened since I’d begun working at Gobble de Goose, and okay, maybe—maybe—Lee hadn’t been being a condescending prick when he’d shown me how to work the coffee machine and brought in thecheat sheets for me. Maybe he’d actually been trying to help me out not just to show me up, but because it was the decent thing to do? It still didn’t sit right, but I was slowly coming around to the idea that it might have been a me problem instead of a Lee problem.
