The corner of his mouth twitched, like he was fighting a smile. “How am I looking at you?”
“Like you want to kiss me,” I whispered. “Which isn’t fair, because I have vomit breath, and you can’t kiss me when I have vomit breath.”
He definitely smiled at that. “One second.”
He moved to slide me off his lap, but I clung to his shoulders. “Wait. Don’t leave.”
But he still set me on the cool tile and pried my fingers from his shirt. “I’m not going far. Wait here.”
He smoothly rose to his feet, having shed his tux jacket and loosened his bow tie earlier. He walked to the vanity, and my stomach settled as he got out a toothbrush and ran it under the running faucet. The room was silent aside from the quiet brush of bristles as he added toothpaste. Finished at the sink, he returned and sat with his legs crisscrossed in front of me. “Open up, Darling.”
In reflex, I opened my mouth, wide-eyed as he guided the toothbrush inside before… brushing my teeth?
“What are you doing?” I mumbled around the toothbrush, the words almost unintelligible.
Cade focused on the task at hand, taking care to get each individual tooth. “You said I can’t kiss you when you have vomit breath.”
My jaw dropped, but I was quick to close it before any foaming toothpaste dripped out.
Cade was going to kiss me.
That was basically what he’d said, right?
I blinked way more times than was healthy at this new development. I didn’t know what to do. My hands felt like they’d lost their purpose in life and were in the way now.
So I just sat and stared at Cade while he single-mindedly brushed my teeth with the same attentiveness he gave to any other task.
Except this one was intimate. And straight into butterflies-raiding-my-stomach territory.
When he finished and pulled the toothbrush back, my pulse spiked as anticipation lit my veins.
“Wait,” I whispered, suddenly nervous. I swallowed—something I was pretty sure you weren’t supposed to do with toothpaste, but I wasn’t about to spit it out in the toilet. “I need mouthwash, too.”
I wasn’t risking him tasting even a hint of vomit on me.
Cade chuckled and rose to his feet. He tugged me up with him and carried me over to the sink—which I found a little overkill, because I could still walk.
He set me in front of the vanity—facing the mirror—while shadowing me. Cade’s eyes snared mine in the mirror as he reached around me for a small bottle of mouthwash. Holding my gaze, he pulled a tiny cup with fish on it out of a drawer. My heart thundered in my chest, and I watched in silence while he poured a generous splash into the cup before handing it to me.
I tried not to be too eager about taking the mouthwash and swishing it around my mouth as the air between us grew charged.
Keenly aware of how close he stood, I skipped gargling and just bent over to spit it out. Heart palpitations overwhelmed me, and my hand shook as I set the tiny cup down.
This was it.
“Okay,” I whispered, forcing my eyes up to meet his dark gaze again. “I’m ready.”
Cade’s hands settled on my hips, and he slowly turned me around until my lower back met the cool edge of the vanity—with his presence impossibly closer. One hand trailed up to my neck, his thumb tilting my chin up. Our eyes met, and that spark of attraction flared again, my breath hitching.
Cade leaned in, my eyelids fluttered shut, and anticipation threatened to consume me, until…
His lips pressed against my forehead.
I frowned in betrayal.
…He’d kissed myforehead?
a new cuddler in town
