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“Twice is how many times I’m going to make you come before breakfast.” He waggled his brows, and she laughed, evading his grasp.
“Uh-uh. I need food before you plunder me again.”
“The bread’s for later, by the way. Don’t want you overloading on carbs first thing.”
“How about second thing?”
Right on cue the bread maker dinged, and she went over to take it out of the machine. She noticed how long the timer had been set for, and her chest twanged at the thought of him slipping out of bed to start the bread before coming back upstairs to serenade her out of sleep.
It was so different than the life she’d shared with Rob. Not only had they not hugged much anymore, they’d rarely cuddled in bed or spent lazy mornings just puttering. The bed had become merely a place for sex. Mornings together meant joint isolation—her with the newspaper and last night’s sports scores, him with a run on the treadmill in front of the TV. Even when they were in the same room, they weren’t ever connected. Not like how she felt with Justin.
“It’s just because it’s new,” she muttered.
“Talking to yourself?” he asked as he plated a stack of pancakes and handed them to her, along with a jug of real New York maple syrup. “I’ll cut the bread for later. You eat.”
“I want to help.”
“You are helping.” He pulled out a chair at the table and lightly pushed her into it. “You’re brightening up the whole place just with your smile. Now sit.”
She sat and sniffed as if she hadn’t nearly purred at the chunks of cherry smeared with chocolate in the golden batter. “You know, Julia Child was bossy too. Is that a necessary personality trait of good cooks?”
“Good?” One brow winged up. “I’m excellent.”
“You sure are.” A smile curved her mouth as she picked up her fork.
“Now it’s up to Kylie Thrice, by the way.” He shifted back to the bread machine. “You’ll be coming thrice after breakfast, since you’re such a hungry thing.”
She couldn’t argue with that.
Breakfast lasted more than an hour. They fed each other just as they had the morning before. As much maple syrup ended up on their clothes as in their mouths, but even that was fun too.
No one made her laugh like he did. No one listened to her ramble about her parents and her brother and the friends she’d drifted away from in recent months as they’d all gotten coupled up and her coupledom had grown to feel more like a straitjacket. And no one reached across the small table to stroke her hair out of her face with fingers so gentle they barely whispered across her skin.
With a touch, a look, he caressed her inside and out.
Together they cleaned up the kitchen while drinking cups of rich, strong coffee and exchanging kisses that ranged from teasing to intense. She’d never known there were so many varieties before, but that day he offered them to her. He taught her about light kisses that scarcely warmed her lips, about deep, soul-stirring ones that knotted her up inside and made her lift on her tiptoes to hold on to his mouth.
She couldn’t get enough of him, and he knew it from the sparkling glint
in his eyes as he held her at arm’s length all afternoon. As affectionate as he was, he didn’t take things further than kisses and occasional touches as they sat on the couch and scrolled through his list of DVR’d games. Luckily one of them included Duke’s latest matchup, and since she wasn’t a fan, she expended a lot of her excess energy screaming at the TV.
He just laughed at her, the lines of tension she’d seen fanning out from his eyes the day before seeming to disappear. His bruises were still there, but even they seemed better.
Maybe she could be as good for him as he was for her.
“So I’m curious,” he said once they’d turned off the TV and curled up on the sofa. “How’d you end up bartending? You went to school for journalism, didn’t you?”
She sighed and fingered the thin gold chain under the collar of his sweatshirt. “Yeah, and I worked in the field for a while, covering city council meetings and the usual political scandals. I thought I wanted to work on the crime beat, but detailing all the horrible things people do to each other on a daily basis wasn’t for me. Guess I wasn’t cut out to be a hard-hitting journalist.” She shrugged. “So basically my degree gathers dust while I figure out new and inventive ways to get my customers drunk. It’s a good life.”
He curled her hair around his finger. “You’re as much of a counselor to them as I am to my kids. You just counsel them about their love lives versus whether they should take AP English or Shakespeare 201.”
“Maybe someday I’ll think about writing again. I do miss it sometimes. Some of the stories I covered on the crime beat…” She shuddered. “There’s gotta be a book in there, either fiction or nonfiction.”
“You could write a book to help people. The bartending psychologist.”
She laughed. “Right. I’m so in the place to counsel other people, considering my own life. I couldn’t even make a clean break from my ex until his behavior smacked me in the face.”
“So you write down for others what you’re learning yourself.” He tugged lightly on her hair. “You’d be surprised how helping someone else can help you.”
