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I tried again. “Bolillos.”
He nodded, still grinning at me.
“Christ,” I muttered under my breath. “You’re going to ruin my German.”
12
We’d setup my laptop on the coffee table as our tv screen, and I pulled up my streaming accounts so that we could pick something that wasn’t one of the six movies that Taavi owned and had already seen a million times. After going through a bunch of movies, Taavi asked to watchBilly Elliot, so we put that on while we ate last night’s leftovers.
When the movie ended, I went back into the kitchen to dish up bowls ofcapriotadaand vanilla ice cream, then started up the movie I’d picked. It was one I’d seen a million times—Turner and Hooch. Yeah, it was a little on the nose for an ex-cop and his canid shifter boyfriend, but I didn’t particularly care.
Thecapriotadaturned out pretty good. I had plans on how to improve it, despite Taavi’s insistence that it was the best he’d ever had.
I gave him a skeptical look. “You seriously expect me to believe that some random German-descended elf managed, on his first try, to make a Mexican dessert better than your Mexican aunt?”
He laughed. “Okay, fine. But itisgood. And besides,” he looked up at me with a smile. “This is the first time someone’s made it just for me.”
I brushed that stray lock of hair out of his face, tucking it behind his ear. “It will be better next time,” I promised.
He smiled at me from around the spoon he’d used to scrape the last bites from his bowl. “But it won’t be thefirsttime,” he replied. “This is special.”
I kept back the snarky comment about whatkindof special, feeling my ears turning pink. Instead, I just shrugged. “I’m glad you like it.”
No, we are not going to talk about what a dork I am.
Finished with dessert, I tucked my feet up, leaning my elbow on the side of the futon, while Taavi lay down on his side, resting his head on my thigh, his broken arm on his side. I absently stroked his hair with one hand while we watched, spending as much time watching him watch the movie as I did actually watching the movie.
Like I said, I’d seen it a million times. I hadn’t seen Taavi see it.
I was pretty sleep-deprived, so I was half-drowsing by the time it ended, and Taavi was the first to get up and tell the computer to not jump to the next thing it thought we might like.
“Do you have to go feed Pet?” Taavi asked me softly, staring at the computer.
I stirred, my sleepiness making it hard to focus on what he was saying for a couple seconds. “Nope. I left her extra food. Just in case.”
He turned to look at me, and I couldn’t really read his expression in the dim glow of the screen. “So you don’t have to go?”
I sat up, shaking my head. “Not unless you want me to—I mean, if you want to get some sleep—”
He softly closed my laptop. “No.”
Faint light filtered in from outside his grimy window, and I could see him studying my face, his vision probably a lot better in the dark than mine.
And then he leaned forward, bringing our lips together, slow and sensual, teasing, sending shivers through my body. He leaned back, a frown on his face. “Should I stop?”
“Absolutely not,” I answered, leaning forward to press my lips to one corner of his mouth, then the other, then his un-scraped cheek, his jaw, down the side of his neck to where the tattoo rose along the column of his throat.
When he didn’t stop me, I slid my hands down to gently tug aside his collar so that I could reach his collarbones, then the hollow between them.
His hand ran over the back of my skull, his fingers sliding into my hair, and I took it as an invitation, pushing aside the open front of his flannel shirt. I felt him suck in a breath, but he didn’t speak, so I kept going, placing a line of kisses down his chest, my lips tingling against the heat of his skin.
He leaned back against the other side of the futon, and I followed, careful of his broken arm as I trailed kisses across the dappled pattern of the circular Maya tattoo on his chest.
I wasn’t thinking. Thinking had gotten me into a fucking mess, and I was done with it. Done trying to psychologize why Taavi couldn’t possibly be interested in me, done trying to convince him that he didn’t want me, done trying to convince myself that I shouldn’t want him.
Because I did.
Oh, Jesus fucking Christ, I did.
