Page 47 of (My Accidental) Killer Summer (Summers in Seaside)

forty-six

. . .

Elle

By the time I hit the kitchen, he’s already got the griddle out, the coffee brewed, and the radio low.

The house smells like fresh coffee and melted butter and a version of my life I’ve been missing so hard I don’t quite know how to identify it.

Noah wears low-hung sweatpants that show off that same v-line muscle I ran my tongue along just hours ago, and not much else.

He flips a pancake with his wrist and gives me a look like, “ don’t even try to pretend you’re not impressed. ”

“I live to be impressed,” I deadpan, pouring coffee. “You remember we have two children who are like night dwellers in people suits before eight a.m., right?”

“Can’t wait,” he says, and God help me, he means it.

The twins stumble through the front door moments later. Jill appears first, hair a beautiful disaster, hoodie trailing from her fingertips behind her like a queen who lost the parade map. “Why did I think an in-school suspension was better again?” she grumbles, then stops dead. “Holy shit.”

“Language,” I say automatically.

Noah lifts the spatula in salute. “Morning, Jillybean.”

“Daddy.” Her cheeks go pink. “Are you— Did you— Why—Are you making pancakes?”

He waggles the spatula. “Suspension special.”

“Is that a thing?” she asks, suspicious and hopeful.

“It is today,” he says.

Jaq shuffles in next, hoodie up like the sunlight offends them. They clock the pancakes, the coffee, Noah at the stove, and inhale like a vampire who just found an open artery. “We doing… breakfast… together?”

“If by ‘we’ you mean ‘you inhaling food like a python,’” I say, “yes.”

“Can mine be—” They stops, corrects mid-sentence like they rehearsed it in their head. “Uh, round.”

Noah’s mouth tips. “Super round,” he says gravely. “Absolutely not heart-shaped like Jilly-beans. Those are for saps. No offense, bean.”

Jaq nods, satisfied. Jill snorts. I pretend I’m not melting into a puddle on the tile.

We eat at the table without phones. Someone (me) burns the first batch of bacon reminiscing about the night before, and someone else (Noah) claims he prefers it that way. Jill tells a story about a girl on the swim team whose mom keeps a spreadsheet of eligible boys with columns.

Columns??? Who does that?

Jaq argues that P.E. shouldn’t count as a real class because dodgeball is traumatic. Noah listens like he’s starving, and their voices are the only thing to satisfy.

After, he insists on doing the drop-off, which somehow turns into a parade.

He walks Jaq to the curb with a hand at the back of his neck like he used to when backpacks dwarfed him.

He talks to Jill about her suspension and doesn’t lecture; he asks questions that make her roll her eyes and answer anyway.

We come back to a kitchen that looks like a breakfast grenade went off.

Noah rolls his sleeves and starts in without being asked.

He fixes the squeak in the pantry door that’s been haunting us for months with a spritz of WD-40 and a glare that could exorcise demons.

He tightens the loose handle on the junk drawer.

He replaces the burnt-out bulb in the stairwell I’ve been ignoring because life is a triage unit.

Then does the same with the bulbs in the garage.

I take a long shower that includes a lot of thinking, shaving, primping, and reminiscing. When I’m out and dressed for the day, I find him in the kids’ bathroom.

“That’s hot,” I say, watching him reach, stretch, disappear under a sink to terrorize a trap that gurgles like a dying walrus and reattach water lines who forgot their purpose long ago.

“Plumbing?” He grunts. “Or acts of service?”

“Yes,” I say. “Seduction by either is a thing.”

“Yeah?” His head pops out from under the cabinet and gives me a sheepish smile.

I nod. Feeling reckless. Sexy. Free.

I reach under my sundress and shimmy my panties down my thighs.

“Are you doing what I think you’re going?” He asks, a hopeful look on his face.

I bite my lip and nod again.

His sweatpants begin to tent. Making me feel powerful and in control. He starts to move from under the sink.

“Uh-uh, Detective Grant. Don’t move.”

“Detective, huh?”

I pull the band of his sweats down in front just enough to free his cock. Then I straddle him and run my already slick pussy along its length.

“Oh fuck, Elle.” He grabs my waist. I take his hands and put them back under the sink.

“You can hold the big pipe under there if you need your hands on something,” I say, already breathless.

I run my hands under his t-shirt and along the hard ridges of his chest and abs, loving the feel of how they jump under my touch. Then I reach between us to grab his cock and position it at my entrance, rise to my knees, and sink down on him with a groan.

God, he feels good.

“I need to touch you. Please let me touch you,” Noah begs.

“Touch me and I stop.” I rotate my hips with each rise and fall. Gyrating and undulating until I find that one spot that is going to bring me right to the edge.

“Oh God, Noah.”

“Elle, baby, so fucking beautiful. You take my breath away.” He’s panting.

I don’t think I’m too far from the same. I pick up my pace, more back and forth than up and down. A different feeling but no less potent.

“I’m going to come, Noah,” I cry.

“Get it, baby. Come all over my cock. Take what you need.”

My core clamps down around him as I my orgasm comes barreling forward. The force trying to push him from me.

“Fuck, yes,” Noah moans. “There you go baby; you take it all.”

His words are like an elixir. Permission. Fuel to the fire. My body starts to shake and I can’t control my movements.

“Noah, please.”

“You need my help, baby?”

I can barely nod. I’m edging so hard I can’t think. Can’t react. Can’t breathe.

He grabs my hips to hold me and pistons up.

Hard. Once. Twice. And we’re gone. Done.

Crashing over the precipice together into total oblivion.

I’m keening, sounds coming out of me I’ve never heard before.

I didn’t know I was capable of. Noah sits up and pulls me into his chest, still pumping his hips.

“Oh God! Oh God! Oh God!” His movements slow as he spills into me. “Fuck, Elle.” He buries his face in my neck, breathing hard.

I’m incapable of words. Of thought. I forgot how fanfuckingtastic quickies can be.

I press a long kiss to his pec as he smooths my hair.

“I gotta say, beautiful, I’m really digging how we are ‘just todaying’ today,” he says.

“Me too,” I whisper into his chest. “Me too.”