Page 5 of Single Mom’s Secret Diary (The Forbidden Reverse Harem Collection)
Wyatt
I can’t keep my gaze off Avery as she saunters out of my lab behind Ezra. Fire burns under my skin, wrapping around my muscles and blanking my mind in a way I’ve never experienced before. The heat will not retreat, even as I will it to.
But fuck, the way she closed her eyes and took the tiniest bites of that truffle. How she rolled it around in her mouth to inspect it, to dissect it, to pinpoint every single ingredient in my formula has undone something in me that I simply can’t describe.
I want to see her do it again. And again.
I want to test her. See if I can trick her. Check to see if she’s as good as she seems.
It has nothing to do with my job, though. I don’t know what to do with that.
Trying to shake away the image of Avery’s mouth, the fan of her dark lashes across her cheeks and the four freckles dotting her nose, I clench my hands at my sides with a want to do anything else.
Laurel, my food technician, sets her clipboard down on the lab table with a sigh. I’m not sure what the stern look on her face means accompanied with the long exhale of air, but it’s different from her normal.
“Why don’t we get these out of the way?” She reaches for the tray of chocolates, three untouched and one half-eaten by Avery.
I grab it out from under her and turn. “I’ll take care of it.”
This reaction is strange. I know it before I see the widening of Laurel’s eyes and the way she jerks back. I’ll add it to the list of the weird things my body is doing in response to Avery and the few minutes she spent in my space.
I take the tray to my office and slide it into the small fridge I keep there. Stalling for a second, I tuck away the weird lack of gravity lingering in my guts and return to the lab.
Laurel has her clipboard in hand again, obviously waiting for me.
“What?” I don’t mean for the word to come out so clipped.
She stiffens. I nod to the clipboard and whatever business she’s here for.
She’s the one who keeps my lab organized, tending to the minutia I don’t really care about—taking inventory, adhering to standards for storing my ingredients, cleaning equipment, doing paperwork.
I mean, I care that it gets done correctly.
I simply don’t want to be the one to do it.
That’s why I have Laurel. She does it all for me. And she does it well. I rarely have to reprimand her.
“I need you to go through the new ingredients today. We need to test and rate them before we can proceed with the new project. And our new supplier of vanilla beans has sent samples as well.” Her pen taps against her clipboard as she checks things off mentally.
“What happened to our old supplier?” I ask, although I’m sure she’s told me before.
“They had contamination in their last harvest that didn’t meet our standards, so we’ve had to pivot.”
Nodding again, I remember her mentioning that. Vaguely. “Fine. Let’s start with the vanilla.”
Her heels clack against the sealed concrete, a distinct sound that always signals her coming and going.
The minute it takes her to retrieve the samples is a minute I spend replaying the way Avery’s hand felt in mine—small, soft, warm.
The zap that tingled up my arm at the contact.
How she smiled at me with the smallest corner of her full mouth and didn’t shrink back at my abrupt comment about HR.
How she agreed with me about it and moved us along.
Every little detail of her swirls around me like a suffocating weighted blanket that I can’t rip off.
Laurel’s clicking heels draw me back to the otherwise empty lab. Fuck, this feeling is insufferable.
She has six vanilla beans in petri dishes that she lays before me. First, I pull the magnifying lens over them, checking their color and crystallization. Laurel does the same.
We smell and squeeze, cut them open, and scrape the pods to taste. Laurel prepares a section of each to make extracts.
Once we’re done, I check her notes and add my own. “Keep the remnants in their dishes and put them on my desk. I want to see if our new technician comes back with the same notes.”
“You want to test her again, don’t you? If only HR heeded your request to be part of the hiring process.” Laurel’s hand finds my arm, and my gaze narrows in on the contact. She rarely touches me, and only ever out of necessity.
I flinch back. “Yes. That would have been preferable.”
Standing, I gesture her back to the storage room. “What’s next?”
“The new carrier oils.”
I wave her off and sink back into myself. Avery’s eyes close in my mind, the small bite she takes, the slight softening of her features as she tastes one of my chocolates. A sharp breath punches into my lungs.
What does she taste like? Those rosy lips, that pale caramel skin, the softness between her thighs. Heat returns to my body, tunneling down my chest to my cock. I wipe a hand across my jaw and mouth.
People rarely stir these kinds of thoughts. A few women in my past slipped into my bed and then out of it. But it’s never been anything I put much stock in chasing. Never been a need that I desire much help to satiate. It’s more of an annoying task for maintenance.
But this—the obsession with seeing Avery make that face again. To discover the other ones she can make. To know if she enjoys the flavors I created.
Heel clicks wipe away most of the lingering thoughts plaguing me. It makes the process of testing and tasting each new ingredient all the more tedious. Would it still be that way if Avery performed this task with me instead of Laurel?
The hard twist in my stomach is hard to interpret, but the answer seems to be an easy yes .
“Did you want me to save these samples as well?” Laurel asks as she scribbles my last notes on her paper.
“Yes.” I stand again. “Is there anything else?”
Her slow blinks stall me momentarily from stalking away. “No. I’ll inform you if anything else arrives for us to look at.”
“Good.”
“I’ll be in the store room if you need me, Wyatt.” Her voice softens on my name, and I bite my cheek, cringing as I turn and march into my office.
If this feeling—this desire —won’t go away, I’ll go challenge it. Taking the competitor’s chocolates I’ve been studying from my fridge, I take one that I’ve labeled “Spiced Mayan” and carry it in a paper cup up to Avery’s office.
Every step I take sends unhelpful questions at me. Why am I doing this? Why can’t I stop myself? What is the point of this? Will she make the same face she made when she tasted mine? Will she enjoy this one more than the one I created?
The knock on her door doesn’t shut down these questions, but when she lifts her hazel gaze up to take me in, everything inside me goes silent.