Page 49 of At First Smile
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Bite
Pen
T he decadent scent of cinnamon, vanilla, and turkey bacon waltzes up the stairs and fills my nostrils. Smile stretched across my face, I wrap a towel around my head and slip on my terrycloth robe. Slippers on my feet, I pad downstairs to find one of my favorite scenes.
“Am I still dreaming or is there a shirtless man cooking breakfast in my kitchen?” I coo, stepping behind Rowan and wrapping my arms around him.
“I’m not shirtless.” He laughs.
My hands coast beneath his T-shirt. “Not yet,” I purr.
“I can fuck you or feed you. Sadly, we don’t have time for both.”
The way “fuck” rolls off his tongue makes my vagina clench. The physical connection between us sizzles as much as the bacon frying in the pan.
No man has ever read my body like Rowan, knowing exactly what I need and how to give it to me.
Whether it’s hard demanding thrusts or languidly diving deep within my body, he always wrings every last drop of pleasure out of me.
He can fill my ears with dirty words as he fucks me or lather me with sweet kisses as he makes love to me.
It doesn’t matter because once sated and spent, he tucks me into his chest and whispers, “I love you, luv.”
“So, fucking or food.” I grin. “Are you making French toast?”
“Yep.”
“Feed me, please.” I nuzzle the space between his shoulder blades.
“I don’t know if I should be complimented that my French toast is better than sex or severely disappointed in my sexing you up game.”
A wet nose brushes against my leg and I let go of Rowan to greet GB. “Good morning, handsome.”
“She chooses French toast over sex with me and now leaves me for the dog,” he jokes.
It’s amazing how quickly we fell into this little routine.
It’s been a month since we first exchanged I love yous in Toronto.
It’s been two months since we started dating.
Rowan and GB spend most nights here, except last week.
With training camp starting, we thought it would be best for him to stay at his place.
I didn’t want to be a distraction. Of course, I insisted GB stay with me.
We made it four nights before Rowan came back. It does involve an hour drive for him to get to the Bobcats’ training center each day, but he doesn’t mind. He uses it to listen to our current audiobook buddy read.
“Mmm,” I moan, the swirl of sweetness from the agave drizzled French toast floods my tastebuds. “Yeah, I was so right to choose this over sex with you.”
“Keep this up and there’ll be no more sex for you, period,” he teases, his light eyes meeting mine over his coffee cup.
“Really?” Freeing my foot from my slipper, I run it up his calf.
“ Pen .”
“What?” I bat my eyes.
“Do you want to make us late?”
“Who, me?” I place my hands on my heart.
“We don’t have time for this,” he says, bemused.
With a cheeky expression, I slide my finger across my plate, the pools of syrup coating the tip. “You’re probably right.” I lift my finger to my mouth and slowly lick before slipping it past my lips, sucking as I make tiny mewling noises, “So, good.”
“Christ, woman,” he groans.
“Aunt Bea used to say good men will fuck or feed you, but great men will do both.”
“ She said that?”
“Something like that.” I lean in and slip my hands beneath his shorts, caressing his thigh.
“Pen.” He pulls me into his lap.
“Eep!” I giggle. “Sir, we don’t have time for this.” My tease is half-hearted.
“Exactly.” He takes his fork and spears a bite. “Which is why I’m putting a stop to it. Now, eat.”
“So bossy this morning.” I take the offered food.
“Says my very sassy girl.” He grabs a piece of bacon from his plate.
Like it’s nothing, we proceed to eat from his plate, me on his lap at the kitchen table.
“You l ove my sass.” I lick syrup from my lips.
“Pen, I love everything about you.”
A fizziness bubbles through my veins.
“Well, except for this new-found obsession you have for buying GB clothes.”
“But he loves it!” My gaze drops to GB in the green shirt with tiny pineapples dotting it that I’d put on him while Rowan finished cooking breakfast.
“Does he?” Rowan’s head tilts and eyes look past me. “That dog will do anything to make you happy.”
“Like someone else I know.” I fork a bite and offer it to him.
“Guilty as charged.” He takes the bite.
“Well, I’ll be in jail beside you.” My heart swells.
Each day I fall just a little more for this man. It’s like I dove into the ocean and just as I think I’ve reached the bottom, there’s more to go.
“Also, I think it’s the relief that’s making me extra sassy.”
The interviews for the director of voluntary services position wrapped up yesterday.
No matter what decision is made, I can breathe.
I know I did the best I could in the interview, and I’d knocked it out of the park the last month as interim director.
Outside the MVP Foundation’s partnership, which came in pre-me, and Sasha later revealed was more coincidence as they’d been working with Jamal for several weeks prior, I’ve established a volunteer program with a local high school and secured donations from several businesses.
“They’d be idiots not to select you.” Rowan’s palm squeezes at my waist.
“True,” I say saucily. “If they don’t, they don’t.”
“ Still ?”
“Still.” I sigh. “I really hope they choose me.”
My false bravado fools nobody at this table, especially Rowan. He’s so in tune with me. Even if he doesn’t know exactly what goes on in my head, he’s able to discover my emotions, the hidden and not-so-hidden ones.
“When do you think you’ll hear?”
“Nelson wants to decide by Friday.”
“Then Friday I’m taking you out somewhere special.”
“What if I don’t get it?”
“I’ll still take you out somewhere special.” He folds me into his chest. “Only we’ll have dessert for dinner, all the dessert.”
Shifting in his lap, my hands slide up and cup his face. “Now, I kind of hope I don’t get it.” My fingers trace his smirk.
“Luv, you can always have dessert with me.”
“You are my dessert.” I press a soft kiss to the center of his chest. “My healthy breakfast.” I kiss the column of his throat. “My afternoon cup of tea.” His chin. “My vegetables.” The corners of his mouth. “All the things.” The center of his forehead.
“Fuck it.” With swift movement, he drives to his feet and carries me out of the kitchen. “We can be late.”
I was only twenty minutes late for work, which isn’t a big deal since I’ve never been late.
However, Rowan hit the tail-end of L.A. rush-hour traffic, making him forty minutes late for practice, which means he could be fined.
Something he insisted was worth it as he bent me over the side of the couch and drove into me.
Me: How much is that second round in the shower going to cost you?
Rowan: No fine.
Me: No punishment? Relieved emoji.
Rowan: I didn’t say that. Carlson is old school, so I have to stay late to run drills and clean the locker room.
Me: Still worth it?
Rowan: Fuck yes emoji.
A loud giggle rolls out of me with his totally made-up written-out emoji. I wrap up my text exchange with Rowan whose break is ending.
His penance will have a ripple effect, meaning he won’t be home for dinner tonight since he’ll need to stay later than planned for a meeting with Gillian and Yasmine, Axel’s manager. Gillian arrived two nights ago and starts as Axel’s chef next week.
“Can I get this signed?” Devon plops something beneath the closed circuit TV on the small table next to my desk.
“Sure.” I swivel in my chair towards the screen and roll my eyes. “Seriously?”
A print copy of the LA Press sits on the tray and is magnified in high contrast white on black. A headline reading Love at First Sight? runs above a picture of me and Rowan.
There’s been moderate interest in our relationship.
After the initial social media post, a few outlets requested interviews.
It’s still strange to us that anyone would be interested, but Sasha says we have all the makings of a romance that the public loves to root for.
He’s famous. I’m not. I’m a disability advocate.
He’s famous for being an able-bodied athlete.
Most of the attention was supportive. There’d been a few stories speculating that the relationship was a ploy to revamp Rowan’s reputation until pictures from the MVP Foundation event of Rowan, his arms around me, as we walked to his car and some of us kissing outside the Lawson Agency taken before our appearance in Toronto surfaced.
A pissed-off Sasha found out that the pictures were taken and leaked by Greg’s assistant, who’d also been the person to tip off reporters that Rowan Iverson and his new social media influencer girlfriend would be arriving at LAX.
They’d thought they were helping protect one of Greg’s clients.
It solved the mystery and Greg’s assistant was fired. Despite me and Rowan protesting, Greg explained that he needs to have complete trust in his staff. Even if the leaks helped, it violated our privacy, which the Lawson Agency has zero tolerance for.
Continuing with our “on our terms” stance about our relationship, we declined all the interviews.
We’re not hiding or pretending, but just living our lives.
We post things to social media. Not a lot, but some things.
We go out in public. I plan to be at all Rowan’s home games and a select few away games.
We get some attention, but nothing too destructive to our daily life together.
Despite our declining interviews, several outlets ran stories about us, but that’s died down after the Dodger’s star pitcher proposed to his famous popstar girlfriend last week after she’d sang the national anthem at his game.
“Aren’t we old news, now?” I groan. “Also, this article is like two weeks old.”
“True, but one of our older volunteers had it and asked me if you’d sign it,” Devon says sweetly, handing me a twenty/twenty pen from my desk organizer. “Make it out to Hazel.”
“Isn’t Hazel your grandma’s name?”