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He didn’t respond to her statement. Instead, he focused on the wound, moving her hand around to see the cut from different angles.
“Do I need stitches?” It was clear she hoped his answer would be no.
He tore a paper towel off the roll and wrapped it around her finger, squeezing. “No.”
She let out a sigh of relief, and her gaze moved from my father’s hands to the pot of chicken stock on the stove that was boiling softly. “Preston, can you turn the heat down? If the broth reduces too much, it’ll make the risotto salty.”
Um, what?
“That’s what you’re concerned about right now?” I asked. Not the fact she’d nearly sliced off the end of her finger?
She glanced at me like I was the one being weird. “It’s just a cut. Once the bleeding stops, I’ll be fine to keep going.” Her focus returned to my father. “Any chance you have a latex or nitrile glove I can use?”
He glanced over at me, perhaps to check out how I felt about this, but I had nothing.
She’d gotten hurt, and that had rattled me. Like, a lot.
Seeing her in pain had caused my heart to go out of rhythm and a cold sweat to break out across my skin. And the sight of her bleeding had pumped all this adrenaline into my system, and it was still there in my stomach, making me uneasy.
Her cut had upset me a hell of a lot more than it did her. Why the fuck was that? Was she stronger than I was, or . . .
Fuck.
I’d gotten all worked up because I liked her. Shit, I liked Sydney way more than I should.
My dad cleared the uncertainty from his throat, drawing my attention. “There are some gloves in the study.”
He’d said it with the intention for me to go and get them, and it felt like I had no choice but to respect what she wanted. Wasn’t it my fault for distracting her? I turned to head for the study at the front of the house, only for her voice to ring out.
“But turn down the heat on that burner first,” she said.
Despite her injury, Sydney had no problem preparing the shrimp risotto, and doing it with minimal help from me. Luckily, she’d managed not to get any blood on the cutting board, and once my dad finished bandaging her finger, she’d slipped on a blue latex glove and got right back to work.
It was like the cut—which had to hurt—didn’t bother her. It had barely slowed her down.
And that was so fucking impressive.
She was tough and in command when she was at the stove, and her confidence was a massive turn-on. Not that I didn’t like the shy version of her during our lessons, but if this determined, self-assured Sydney came out to play while we were having sex? I’d be fucking done for.
As I predicted, right as she was finishing the dish, my father got called in. He said goodbye to us on his way out the door, then tossed me a look I couldn’t read. Had he recognized Sydney and was wondering what the fuck I was doing with my best friend’s sister?
If so, he didn’t have any room to judge. When he’d gotten together with Cassidy, they’d kept it a secret from me for months.
But his look could have been something else. Maybe he was curious about this beautiful girl who’d taken command of our kitchen, and wondered what the fuck she was doing with me.
After the delicious dinner she’d made us, I’d been adamant that she let me handle the clean-up. She’d sat at the table, sipping on the wine that was left over from cooking, and watched me scrub pans and rinse plates.
“I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anything sexier,” she said, “than Preston Lowe loading a dishwasher.”
I laughed. “You need to get out more.”
When it was done, she finished her wine and descended the stairs into the basement with me right on her heels. She moved at a fast clip, like she couldn’t wait to get in there, and, shit, neither could I.
Once she’d walked into my room, she pulled her phone from her pocket and set it on the table beside the couch, and I’d barely made it through the doorway before I was on her.
I kicked the door closed behind us and it slammed loudly, making her jump. But it wasn’t enough for her to break our kiss. I had a hand up under her shirt, cupping one of her tits through her bra, and the little sound she made when I squeezed got me hard as quickly as the snap of a pair of fingers.
She lifted her arms when I grabbed the bottom of her shirt and began to tug it up, making it easier for me to strip it off her. She wasn’t wearing the virginal white bra this time. It was a basic black one, but it was still sexy as hell. I jerked one of the straps down, making her tit tumble out, and I bent to capture it in my mouth.
