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I cursed and turned, seeing that the pot was, indeed, boiling over.
I made a mess of his perfectly clean black cooktop.
Hurrying to clean it up, I didn’t see him come up behind me until his arms were snaking around my middle.
“I dreamed about this, you know,” he teased, his lips skimming against my neck, sending shivers down my spine. “You, in my kitchen. Me, watching you cook.”
I looked up and over my shoulder at him, a smile on my face as I said, “Sounds kind of sexist.”
He squeezed, his forearms going up underneath my breasts to squeeze me tighter.
Not too tight.
Not tight enough to hurt either him or me, but tight enough to cause me to squeak out a laugh.
“Not sexist,” he disagreed. “I just always wanted you here. In my house. Doing mundane things that showed you were comfortable around me. You know… mine.”
I turned the macaroni down, then reached my arms up until I could curl my hands around his neck, being careful not to touch the burn from that bullet that was still bothering him.
God, any time I thought about Sareen shooting him, even if we hadn’t been together at the time, I wanted to commit murder.
“Am I?” I found myself asking him.
“Are you what?” he wondered, leaning forward so that his forehead rested against the bun that was on the top of my head.
“Yours.”
The words felt like they were ripped straight from my soul.
His.
God, I wanted to be his.
I shouldn’t want to.
A, he was a rich dude that was way out of my league. To the point where I was a guest in his house and felt like I was living in some Hallmark movie.
B, he was an admitted stalker. The man literally stalked me for years. I should be upset by that. But I wasn’t.
And C? Well, C was actually not my fault. It was my family’s. They’d all but beat into me that I was worthless. Not my dad or anything, or Salem at that. But the rest of my family? My mom? My brother? Mirabel?
Yeah, needless to say, I’d done a lot of thinking I was worthless since I was young.
It wasn’t something that I could exorcise just because I wanted to.
It was a slow process.
“What has you thinking so hard?” he asked. “Did you not hear anything I just said?”
It was then I’d realized that I’d zoned out.
“No,” I admitted. “I was thinking about my family.”
“The good side, or the bad side?” he asked carefully.
“Bad,” I admitted. “My mom. Sister. Brother.”
He growled, and it was the sexiest thing I’d ever heard.
“I wish I could rip them from existence and erase every single sign that they were ever on this planet to begin with,” he grumbled darkly.
I smiled then, patting his forearm soothingly as I said, “They’re nothing to me now. Obviously, since you haven’t met them. They haven’t been a part of my life for a long time.”
And wouldn’t ever again if I had my say.
“And since you weren’t listening earlier, this is real. The things I feel for you are real,” he told me, his voice a deep rumble into my right ear. “If you’re willing to date your stalker for real, that is.”
Was I willing to date my stalker?
Heck yeah, I was.
I wasn’t stupid.
Daddy didn’t raise no fool.
“As long as you don’t ever stalk anyone but me, I think I’ll be okay with that,” I told him honestly.
And I was.
I was totally okay with dating Easton.
In fact, there were now fluttering butterflies in my stomach that were sending nervous excitement through me at his words. Dating Easton McKennick.
I was dating Easton McKennick!
He squeezed me for about two seconds longer, then let me go to turn and hit the stop button on the microwave before saying, “Noodles are done.”
I looked at him over my shoulder as I reached for the pot. “How did you know that wasn’t for the chicken in the oven?”
“Because there’s a timer on the oven.” He laughed.
I snickered as I walked to the sink with the pot where I’d already set the colander.
He took care of the chicken, since that was the next timer to go off, and together we worked in companionable silence.
That was until he saw me starting to pour milk from the jug straight into the pot of macaroni.
“What are you doing?” he stopped me with his hand on mine.
I looked at him with raised brows as I said, “Making the macaroni.”
He shook his head, horror washing over his face.
“You’re one of those?”
I blinked. “One of those?”
The stricken look on his face had me pausing in surprise.
“The people that don’t read directions!” he cried out, throwing his hand in the air.
I set the carton of milk down and stared at him with surprise. “Well… not when I know how to make shit!”
He shook his head as he walked to the drawer that held the measuring utensils, then walked back toward me.
