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Fifty-four
Henley
“You want to shower?” I say it like I have noidea what he’s talking about. Like I don’t even know what a shower is. “Here?”
“Yeah,” he says, giving me one of his smart-ass smirks. “Unless you have some sort of objection to allowing the hired help to use your facilities.”
The hired help.
Because that’s how I make him feel.
Because it’s how I’ve treated him since the moment I slid onto that barstool.
I retrieve his bag. Carrying it to him, I hold it out, and he takes it with a carefully guarded expression like he’s sure I’m going to tell him to get the hell out. Like he expects me to reject him. Maybe even wants me to.
“Guest bathroom is through there,” I say, indicating the hallway that splits off the kitchen in the opposite direction. “Towels are under the sink.”
Thirty minutes later I hear the guest room door open and the soft slap of bare feet on my hardwood floor. I concentrate on incorporating my dry ingredients into my wet, counting every turn of my whisk rather than risk a look at him.
As soon as he disappeared into the bathroom, I ransacked my kitchen, gathering ingredients. When I called my concierge for flour and maple syrup, I think I actually heard him squeal with excitement.
“When I said I wanted pancakes—” Conner leans in over my shoulder, so close I can feel his breath, warm and minty, on my neck. “I didn’t mean I wanted you to make them.”
Under the clean scent of soap, I can smell him. Warm leather and axle grease. My nipples go tight under my sweater. A rush of warm pools between my legs. One deep breath of him and I’m ready to rip his clothes off.
It’s as nerve-racking as it is embarrassing.
“Then you should have been more specific,” I inform him, folding whipped egg whites into my batter. A few days ago, he had me pinned to his kitchen floor with his mouth between my legs after somehow persuading me to masturbate in front of him, and I’m nervous because he breathed on me.
I need professional help.
Yeah, you do.
Isn’t that why you came back to Boston in the first place?
“You alright, Daisy?” He slides into the space next to me, turning to lean his back against the counter, bringing our faces to within inches of each other. His proximity makes it impossible for me to look at him. “You look a little flushed.”
He’s laughing at me. I can hear it in his voice. He knows what having him this close is doing to me. What it makes me think about.
Makes me want.
“I’m fine.” Scowling at my pancake batter, I slide my bowl down the counter a bit, closer to the stove. Away from him.
I follow it, and he follows me.
I scoot over again. So does he.
“You sure you’re okay?”
“Yes.”
“Then why are you running from me?”
“I’m not running from you, I’m making you your goddamned pancakes,” I snipe back because I am running from him and he’s an asshole for pointing it out.
“Careful.” He reaches out and lifts the tail end of my braid off my shoulder to weave it between his fingers. “You keep talking to me like that, I’m going to end up giving you an encore kitchen performance,” he says, giving my braid a playful tug.
“Not after you tracked mud all over my floor, you won’t.” I reach up to slap his hand away, and he catches it, pulling me against him, bringing us even closer. The air between us thickens and heats the moment we make contact.