Page 17 of Deep Feelings & Shallow Graves

Jennifer

I float through the front door. Not walk. Float. Because apparently, all it takes is one good kiss from a morally grey mortician to scramble my brain like supermarket eggs. The cheap kind. Over-handled. Probably cracked.

I should eat. I do eat. Something. I think it was toast. Or maybe the sponge I left by the sink. Same mouthfeel. Same total lack of taste. My tongue’s too busy running replays of Edgar’s mouth on mine like it’s hosting a late-night infomercial: “But wait, there’s more!”

I need sleep. I have a date in the morning. A date. Casual breakfast. No big deal. Just eggs. Just a man with sunbeam smiles and ditch-digging forearms who makes me laugh like it’s his religion.

My brain is melting.

I strip out of Edgar’s jacket with the reverence of a cultist handling sacred robes. Then I sniff it. Deeply. Like a deranged murderess in heat. Zero shame. I practically purr.

“This is fine,” I mutter, already crawling into bed like I’m escaping the consequences of my own bad decisions. “This is totally, rationally, emotionally fine.”

Spoiler: it is not fine. But I bury my face in his jacket anyway and let the scent of sandalwood, and sensual food choices lull me straight into horny little denial coma.

I don’t remember dreaming. Either I was too tired, or too mentally fucked to retain it. Which is tragic, honestly, because let’s be real, it was probably me and Edgar in a coffin, making questionable use of his tie and a velvet-lined cushion.

Shit. I need to get up.

I stagger to my feet like a newborn deer with trust issues as my mind drifts to Blake.

“He’s just sweet,” I say, trying to soothe my rapidly spiraling heart rate. “Sweet. Not dangerous. A soft cinnamon roll.”

A vivid, stupidly vivid flash of his forearms while he dug up my garden hits me like a tactical assault.

“Okay. A sharp-edged cinnamon roll. That’s fine. Totally manageable.”

It’s just a casual breakfast. Two innocent words. Harmless. Utterly undeserving of the internal Category Five crisis they’ve triggered.

And yet my bedroom looks like it’s been ransacked by indecisive raccoons high on espresso and anxiety. Clothes everywhere. Piles. Layers. Entire timelines of aesthetic identity. Is she cozy academia? Is she flirty farmer’s market? Is she accidentally about to proposition a man over scrambled eggs?

“It’s just eggs,” I whisper, clutching a sundress like it’s a detonator and I’m seconds from horny self-destruction. “It’s just eggs.”

Outfit number six is a romper that shows exactly the right amount of thigh. Or the wrong amount. I don’t know anymore. Maybe he’s a leg guy. Maybe he’s a neckline guy. Maybe he’s into women who look like they’ve fought a poltergeist in their closet at six a.m.

God, I’m sweating. From panic. Or lust. Possibly both. Probably both.

I’ve buried men with less emotional turbulence. Hell, I am the turbulence. So why is Blake making me feel like I need a parachute?

I literally complimented his ass one time and the man short-circuited like a broken Roomba. Blake adores me. Worships the ground I walk on with gooey, golden retriever devotion. I could probably flash a knee and he’d run headfirst into a screen door like a malfunctioning retriever drone.

And it’s just breakfast. Casual. Safe. Harmless.

So why does it feel like I’m about to be cross-examined in the Court of Hot Men and My Terrible Choices?

I open the sliding door to let the morning breeze in while the coffee pot hisses like it, too, is judging me. The sun is warm. The air smells like wet grass and mild panic.

I look to Gary, the smug, ceramic bastard of a garden gnome perched by the door.

“Gary,” I whisper like we’re in a spy thriller. “Be honest with me. Do I look like I’m trying too hard?”

Gary, stone-faced and bearded, says nothing. As usual. Passive-aggressive little fuck.

“You’re a bad friend, Gary,” I inform him with the gravitas of a woman betrayed.

Gary doesn’t blink. Because Gary doesn’t have eyelids. Or empathy. Or fashion sense.

I pace back to the mirror, heels clicking like I’m entering a boss fight.

“It’s just eggs. It’s just eggs. It’s just eggs,” I chant like it’s a binding spell, adjusting my dress straps for the ninth time.

“Definitely not a high-stakes romance breakfast with an emotionally complicated golden retriever in man-form. Nope. Just eggs. Purely poultry-based. No feelings. Just food.”

Knock knock.

My soul detaches from my body like it just filed for divorce.

I stagger to the front door like I’m heading into battle. Open it.

And there he is.

Blake. Standing there like the poster boy for awkwardly perfect morning sex you didn’t plan for. Smile crooked, hands stuffed in his pockets, sun lighting up his cheekbones like God’s doing thirst traps now.

I forget how to breathe. Fully. Entirely. Because apparently, this is what “just eggs” looks like now.

Blake in a Henley. Soft gray, clingy in all the right places. His hair’s a little damp and messy like he’s run a hand through it too many times, and he smells like sunshine and nervous sweat and my entire goddamn undoing.

“Hey,” he says, voice all sheepish warmth and boyish promise, like we didn’t spend yesterday elbow-deep in what I swear to God were femurs.

“Hi,” I say. Except it comes out more like a squeak. A breathless, horny mouse squeak.

His eyes scan me and when they hit my thighs, linger, his ears go pink.

“I, uh, brought juice?” he offers, holding up a glass bottle like a peace treaty. “And those little spinach-feta things you said you liked from the bakery.”

I’m going to combust. Right here. Just disintegrate into a puff of horny shame-dust and existential dread. Who does this? Who shows up with my favorite breakfast, looking like a spread in Domestic DILFs Quarterly, and still acts like I’m the intimidating one?

“Come in,” I manage, stepping aside before I do something completely unhinged, like lick his collarbone.

He ducks past me with a shy smile and that devastating blush, like he didn’t bend over in front of me last week and accidentally show off the ass of a man who exists solely to ruin lives and fix porch lights. My knees do something weird. Soft. Boneless. Treacherous.

We move into the kitchen like it’s neutral territory, even though the air’s already thick with something humid and trembling. I set the coffee pot to refill. He fidgets with the juice bottle. Neither of us speaks.

I can feel him behind me. The heat of him.

The way his presence drags at the edges of my self-control like a tide tugging at sandcastles.

My heartbeat’s doing tap-dance choreography in my throat.

I stir sugar into my coffee like I’m performing a ritual, except I’m the virgin sacrifice and the priest has great forearms.

“It’s just eggs,” I murmur again, mostly to myself.

“What?”

“Nothing.” I turn, and he’s closer than I meant him to be. Or maybe I’m the one who stepped in. Doesn’t matter. We’re sharing air now. He smells like citrus and helpless admiration.

His eyes drop to my mouth. I see it. I feel it. That ripple in the air. That stillness before a decision.

My whole brain short-circuits.

He’s not going to kiss me. Which is unacceptable. Because if he doesn’t, I will start scream-baking again, and I’m out of vanilla.

I swallow, eyes dragging across his lips, then down, neck, collar, that faint scar on his arm I’ve never asked about but always want to trace. He’s trembling a little. Not visibly. But I can sense it. A held breath. A coiled thing.

And me? I’m past the point of no return. I’m spiraling. I’m starving. I’m going to ruin us both.

“Blake,” I say softly, like a secret. Or a spell.

His eyes snap to mine, wide and open and just a little bit wrecked.

I lean in, watching his pupils dilate like a man seeing the gates of heaven and hell and not caring which one he falls into.

“You don’t want just eggs,” I whisper.

He swallows. Hard. “No,” he breathes.

I kiss him like I’ve decided he’s mine. Because I’m tired of pretending I haven’t spent the last week imagining this exact moment, except in those versions, I was cooler. Less frantic. Less starving.

His lips are soft and startled and hungry, and when I press closer, he makes this little noise, half-whimper, half-prayer, and I lose the last thread of composure I was clinging to.

I bite his bottom lip. Just enough to make him gasp. And then I pull back. Because I want to see him.

Blake’s pupils are blown wide, his mouth flushed and slick, and there’s this dazed look in his eyes like I’ve just rewritten the laws of gravity.

“Holy shit,” he whispers. “Jennifer.”

My name in his mouth sounds like worship and ruin and a problem he’s delighted to have.

I run my thumb along his jaw, and it trembles. Not his jaw, him. The whole man vibrates like I’ve hit some tuning fork in his soul. His hands hover near my hips, unsure, achingly polite.

“Touch me,” I whisper, leaning in again. “You can touch me.”

His hands settle on my waist like I’m breakable. I am not breakable.

I grab his wrists and drag them down over my hips, my thighs, letting him feel exactly what I want him to think about for the rest of his life.

He exhales like I’ve knocked the wind out of him. “This is real?” he breathes. “You want this?”

“I’m about five seconds from fucking you on the kitchen floor, Blake,” I say, fingers twisting into his shirt. “So unless you’ve got a complaint, I’d start moving.”

He stumbles over a nod, already following me when I turn. Good boy.

I lead him down the hall, walking slow because I know he’s watching. I can feel the reverence in his gaze, the panic, the disbelief. He’s undone already and I haven’t even taken his clothes off.

Yet.

I pause at my bedroom door, then turn back to face him.

He nearly crashes into me. His hands go to my waist again, steadier now, but his breath still comes shallow.

“Jennifer,” he says again, softer this time. Less question, more devotion.

And that’s when I realize he’s not just nervous. He’s falling. He’s looking at me like I’m not a warning sign or a mistake or a terrible idea he’s going to regret tomorrow. He’s looking at me like I’m his.

I inhale sharply, pulse skittering. That’s dangerous. That’s…

I silence the thought with another kiss. Deeper, hungrier, less about control now and more about distraction.

If I think too hard, I’ll stop. I’ll shut down. I’ll lock myself in the pantry and eat sugar cubes until my hormones pass out from emotional exhaustion.

But not right now.

Right now, I want to feel something that doesn’t come with regret and blood under my nails.

I want Blake.

I back into the bedroom, tugging him with me, pulling until he stumbles past the threshold and then I close the door behind us, sealing us inside this soft, sunlit trap I’ve built for myself.

“I want you,” I say. “But only if you want this too.”

His hands shake as he cups my face. But his voice is solid. “I’ve wanted this since the first time you laughed,” he whispers. “I just didn’t think I deserved it.”

That’s enough to make something inside me fracture and rewire itself all at once.

I kiss him like I’m grateful. I kiss him like I’m afraid. I kiss him like I could be something other than a storm waiting to swallow him whole.

And when his fingers slide under my shirt with trembling reverence and his breath hitches like it hurts to touch me, I know it’s time.

I reach down, take his hands, and guide them higher. Over my ribs, to the swell of my breasts. I’m not wearing a bra. I wasn’t thinking. Or maybe I was. Maybe I knew exactly what I wanted the moment I pulled that sundress on and whispered just eggs to Gary like a goddamn liar.

Blake groans. It’s soft, but raw, like the sound punched out of him by surprise and heat and too many nights thinking about this.

His thumbs brush over my nipples through the thin cotton and I gasp, hips tipping forward, body answering before I can pretend I’m still in control.

“Oh,” he says. A little helpless. Like he’s watching stars blink into existence in my collarbone.

“Yeah,” I breathe, already dragging his shirt up. “Off. Now.”

He helps, fumbling it over his head, and suddenly it’s just…

all there. The chest I’ve ogled over the fence.

Strong and sun-kissed and stupidly pretty.

I run my hands over him like I’m mapping a new continent.

His skin is warm. A little damp with nerves.

I want to bite him just to see what sound he makes. So I do.

His breath stutters as my teeth graze his shoulder. Not hard. Just enough to mark him.

“Jesus,” he says, voice cracking as I press a kiss to the place I bit.

I step back, just enough to grab the hem of my dress and pull it over my head.

Blake stops breathing. Fully, entirely, again. His hands hover like he doesn’t know if he’s allowed. Like I haven’t already offered him a guided tour of my thighs and ruined any pretense of innocence.

I take one of his wrists and bring it to my waist. “Blake,” I say, raspy. “I’m not a bomb. You won’t break me.”

“But you,” he swallows hard. “You mean something.”

That’s the moment I almost lose it. Because it’s not just lust. It’s not just adrenaline or the high of making the first move. He means this. He means me. And suddenly I’m not just fighting off my own chaos. I’m trying not to cry while half-naked in front of the sweetest man alive.

I lean in and kiss the corner of his mouth. “You’re allowed to want me,” I whisper. “You already have me.”

His arms go around me like they were always meant to. Like they’ve been waiting.

And when he lays me back on the bed, hands worshipful but hungry, I don’t feel scared.

I feel chosen.