AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter 5
DANIEL
Oh, I am in so much trouble.
Not that I’ve done a damn thing to keep myself out of it. Inviting her upstairs. What was I thinking?
“Wow. This place is incredible.” Riley takes a few steps into my apartment and away from my hand on her back.
It was meant as an innocent gesture at the bottom of the stairs. I only meant to show her the way. But when she turned her eyes on me and found me watching that ass of hers, so round and ready to grip with both hands, swaying up the stairs with newfound enthusiasm, I couldn’t wait for an excuse to touch her again. And, if I’m being totally honest, I’m looking for my next excuse already.
Which is why I need to call it a night before I find one.
“Riley—” I start, then snap my lips shut as she sheds her smock and drapes it over the arm of the couch.
My heart thuds against my ribs as she approaches the bank of windows on the wall opposite the door we came through. Her torso, thinly-veiled by a pink, spaghetti-strap camisole. The way it hugs her waist accenting the wide curve of her hips. That’s when a thumping pulse in my jeans joins my heart.
“You have a great view of downtown but not a whole lot of privacy.” She scans the open windows.
“Flip that switch there.” I point at the wall to her right. The one shared with my bedroom.
Bringing her to my apartment is bad enough but as the blind falls over the windows, plunging us into complete privacy, there is no end to how much worse things can get.Or better, my brain blurts out as she turns toward me with a sweet grin stretching her cheeks.
“Cool,” she says, her voice lacking any concern for the intimate setting she just created.
I breathe a little easier. How could she be so tempting and so disarming at the same time?
Her mouth drops open looking to my left. “How can you have a kitchen like this and not want to cook everything?”
She’s just here to bake and here I am making a lot of something out of nothing. But the way she’d moved on the stairs. That hadn’t felt like nothing.
“Have you ever even used the oven?” she asks bending over opening the stainless steel door.
“A few times.”
“This countertop bar combo is killer.” She runs her hands over the smooth marble surface. “I don’t have any decent space in my tiny-ass kitchen to roll out dough and stuff. And I can’t tell you the number of ingredients that have ended up on the floor because I can’t set stuff aside properly.”
I can’t help but chuckle. I love how she rambles and says everything she’s thinking.
Riley claps her hands together. “Let’s do this.”
It takes us some time to find all the ingredients and tools I rarely access. As soon as she has everything she needs, I step back to give her space to work.
“Oh, no you don’t.” She grabs my wrist and pulls me back to her side. “If you don’t help, you won’t learn.”
But if I stand too close to her for too long I won’t learn a damn thing that way either.
What the fuck are we doing here?
I should end it now. Complain about being too tired to remember any of it and send her home. But then she lifts her arms over her head, tying up her hair, and exposing a sliver of her belly. Flat but not muscled. I can only imagine how soft she’d feel in my hands.
A moan finds its way to my throat that I fight to keep down as an ache grows between my hips.
Focus, Danny boy.
“It’s late,” Riley says studying my face with her brows stitched together. “Maybe we shouldn’t—”
“No. Please. We already have everything out. We’re halfway there.” No matter how bad of an idea it is for her to stay, I dread having to let her go too much to do the right thing. But if she wants to leave, I have to let her go.
