Page 68 of Want Me
“Okay, I don’t mind cooking when I’m around.” Eric navigated the cart around a chip display. “So you take laundry.”
“Done.” I nodded, swiping a bag of tortilla chips and tossing it in the cart as we moved down the next aisle. Eric grabbed a jar of salsa, holding it up for my inspection until I gave the okay with a nod.
“Grocery store?”
“Not a fan.” And especially not when it was used as a delayed gratification tactic by my boyfriend. Yeah,boyfriend;I’d gotten over that sliver of reservation, too.
“Also not a fan. So we alternate.”
“All right, we’re kicking ass at this so far.” We reached the end of the aisle and moved to the dairy section, where I automatically reached for the skim as Eric reached for the 2 percent.
“Oh man, no way,” I said, staring disparagingly at the carton as he lofted it up. “Them’s fightin’ words right there.”
Eric looked down at the carton and then over to the one in my hand, an equally disapproving expression on his face. “Skim milk tastes like water.”
“Exactly. It’s perfect for cereal,” I countered.
“So why not just use water?”
“Because that’s nasty.” I noticed he hadn’t put the carton of 2 percent back, though. “Two percent is nasty, too, and whole milk is nausea inducing. Too thick.”
Eric pressed his lips together, but failed to suppress a smirk. “Funny. I don’t remember you having any problems with things that are thick. Liquidorsolid.”
I rolled my eyes at him. “You’re hilarious.”
“I’m right. Fine, we’ll get both.” He put his milk in the cart next to mine. “Cleaning?”
“Fuck that. Let’s just not do it.”
Eric laughed. “I don’t know, thinking about you hunched over scrubbing a toilet gets me kinda hot.”
“Ohh, are you into domestic servitude?”
“I might be.”
“That’s too bad for you, then, because I did my time scrubbing toilets and baseboards and floors freshman year.”
“Bet I could persuade you.”
I stared at him until he relented with a chuckle, which was good because he totally could have persuaded me to do all the cleaning on my own. As long as he was watching and there was a serious reward system in place. “We both clean.”
Eric nodded. “Sounds good to me.”
* * *
I putthe groceries away in the kitchen while Eric broke down the few boxes we’d used to haul stuff over from the old house. Glancing into the living room, I studied him as he curled over, dragging an X-Acto knife up a line of tape, the muscles of his biceps and forearms lean and defined. I liked looking at him when he wasn’t aware my attention was on him, and fuck, maybe there was something to the whole domestic business—kink, whatever. Not that breaking down boxes was particularly domestic, but still, watching the methodical precision with which he slit the tape, pulled the flaps apart, then flattened the box before moving on to the next one, quietly focused as ever, yeah, it was giving me a semi.
Also, it was hot as hell in the apartment, and staring at Eric wasn’t helping. I swiped the back of my hand across my forehead, then did it again. I’d set the thermostat to 70 as soon as we’d arrived, but it still felt about 90 degrees.
I frowned, anticipating a call to the landlord in our future. Turning away from Eric and back to the groceries, I stuck a loaf of bread in one of the cabinets, then started shoving boxes of crackers and chips in beside the bread, trying to ignore the heat in favor of queuing up a nice little fantasy of Eric as a mover hopping off a truck, walking toward me with one of those captivating private smiles he seemed so capable of brandishing at will, his mouth opening to tell me to bend over so he could stuff me full of his—
“Jesus!” I jumped as he wrapped his arms around me from behind and snickered. “Can’t believe you got me,” I said, huffing out a light chuckle. “Usually I can tell you’re coming from a mile away.” And I didn’t mean audibly. It was his presence I could feel, that I was always aware of, impossible to explain and one of those things I’d have never believed in until I felt it. Like a quiet link between us. It was both cheesy and true.
He hummed lightly against the sweat damp skin of my neck, and I let go of the box I was holding, reaching up and behind me to sift my fingers through the long ends of his hair. “Shit, you could probably make mecomefrom a mile away,” I muttered, and his chuckle washed over me as the brush of his lips over my skin became one kiss, then two, then a soft suction anchored by a light flick of his tongue. I groaned, forgetting the groceries, the fantasy of him as a mover nothing more than smoke. This was infinitely better: him behind me, the weight of him and his firmness.
Well, while it lasted. Because a second later, it was gone.
“Thirsty?” he asked, and I turned around and nodded, watching as he pulled a couple of glasses from the cabinet and strode to the fridge, scooping ice into them before returning to the sink and filling them. “We forgot bottled water.”