Chapter 7
HOLLY
Just think about it.
Danny’s words, what happened in the supply room, are all I can think about. It’s been five days, but they play on repeat inside my head. Five days, during which I’ve fought the tug of those words. Five days where I’ve battled my body and something much deeper, denying them what they want.
I can fill your gaps, Holly. Let me be your respite, Holly.
Damn it all. I tell the man all I have is gaps, and he offers to fill them.
He offers me respite. He couldn’t have chosen his words better if he tried.
If he’d said he wanted to fuck my brains out for eternity, he’d be much easier to ignore.
Frankly, I don’t need another person wanting something from me.
But he hadn’t. He’d offered himself to me. In service to me. To be my port in the relentless storm that is my life. A place to lay my head and forget for a while in the snatches of time life affords me.
Those words are like music to my ears. Like drums. My ex had made everything about him, so Danny is a revelation.
And then there’s the way he says Holly. It’s cute and sexy when he calls me Doc, but holy cow, when he says Holly? Breathing it out like it’s some kind of sacred word? Something precious? It weakens my knees and wraps glowing fingers around my heart.
But… I can’t. No matter how tempted I am.
There’s only one thing worse than not throwing caution to the wind and taking Danny up on his offer.
And that’s the thought of taking it up and having him tire of filling my gaps because I’m boring and vanilla and always at work after three or six or twelve months.
And then he’ll end it, which will be awful because my heart would be involved, and I don’t need to be dealing with a broken one on top of everything else.
Better to deny myself now, while I don’t know what I’m missing, than let it drag on.
Because he’s absolutely right – there is more than fucking between us.
No matter how much I try to deny it, the way my heart flip-flops when I see him is not normal.
Worse, I think he feels the same way.
Which is, of course, preposterous and will be ignored. I don’t have time for a flip-floppy heart and I’m really good at denial. Even if just sitting here thinking about him has my nipples hard as bullets and an ache as jagged as the Rocky Mountains between my legs.
I have two precious days off, and I’m supposed to be studying. There are papers and open textbooks strewn across the coffee table. But all I can think about is Danny pounding me against the wall at work, me all but naked, and him all but clothed.
A sudden knock on my door startles me so much I actually jump a little.
My pulse instantly accelerates. Danny? Could it be him?
Maybe the cloud of oestrogen hanging around my apartment has finally reached him on the sixth floor, and he’s decided to pay me a visit?
To stop waiting for me to make the first move?
Eep!
Despite my resolve, I’m not sure I can resist another overture on his behalf and my pulse trips, and my legs tremble as I rise from the couch and head to the door.
When I reach for the knob, my hand shakes.
It’s ridiculous how my body quakes, but it refuses to be quelled because it’s him.
I don’t need to look through the peephole.
It’s him. I know it is.
‘Hey,’ he says as the door swings open, cool and calm as you please, looking better than any man has a right to in jeans that cup and mould, in a sweater that clings and moulds, his dirty blond hair looking like it did after I’d twisted it all up when he was fucking me in the storeroom at work.
Sex hair.
My face warms thinking about how wanton I’d been. Was it only five nights ago? ‘Hey.’ My hey is far less cool and calm, my pulse tripping.
Shoving his shoulder casually into the jamb, his eyes rove over me like I’m wearing a string bikini instead of baggy track pants and an NYU T-shirt that is old and sloppy and faded and is currently sporting a coffee stain over the left boob area.
Of course.
Unperturbed, he holds up a grocery bag dangling from his fingers. ‘Hungry?’
I have no idea what’s in the bag and I hadn’t been particularly hungry, but with him in my doorway I am suddenly ravenous. And not necessarily for food.
This is not good.
‘I’m studying.’ Must. Not. Get. Distracted. By. Hot. Drummer. With. Sex. Hair.
He shrugs, a smile lifting the corners of his mouth. ‘Gotta eat though, right? Some carbs and protein to help you concentrate. And it’s lunch time.’
‘I… wasn’t going to stop.’ There’s a bag of Cheetos with my name on it in the cupboard.
‘No need to. You keep going – I’ll cook. I’ll plate up, I’ll clean the kitchen and leave you to it. You won’t even know I’m here.’
A smile plays on his mouth and I barely suppress my eyeroll. Like that was even remotely possible. ‘You and I both know that if you cross this threshold there will be sex.’
He grins then, his blue gaze smug. So sure of himself. So cocky. The man is so damn easy in his skin it takes my breath away. He looks like he’s never doubted himself in his life where I constantly overthink everything.
‘Nope.’ He shakes his head. ‘This is the getting-to-know-you phase of our relationship. We’re not doing sex.’
I blink at his bold pronouncement. Also… relationship?
His grin broadens. ‘Don’t look so disappointed, Doc. I’ll start to think you only want me for my body.’ Then he eases off the jamb and brushes past me into the apartment, the aroma of basil, bread and body – brash, swaggering, buff body – filling my senses.
‘Chicken pesto pasta work for you?’ he calls over his shoulder. ‘Any allergies?’
My tummy rumbles as I stare at the space Danny had filled seconds prior, the empty corridor the only thing in my line of vision now. Sighing, I resign myself to the torture of him in my apartment, cooking for me, and shut the door.
Danny is hard to ignore as sizzling onions spice the air. The table from which I am working is only a few feet from where he slices and dices, my tea towel slung casually over his shoulder, which is hot in ways I wouldn’t have thought possible.
He’s as good as his word, not saying anything, just shuffling around, finding what he needs, dragging out pots and setting water to boil on the stove top, concentrating on the job at hand.
But that doesn’t mean he’s not distracting as all giddy up.
I’m supposed to be reviewing an anatomy subject, but Danny Colton’s anatomy is far more interesting.
I wonder if I asked, would he strip off his clothes so I can study the flex and glide of what I know to be perfectly delineated muscles?
Sneaking glances as he works, I can see the shift of his biceps and triceps, the bunch of his deltoid, the undulation of his abdominals beneath the snug fit of his sweater.
Combine that with mouth-watering aromas rising from the pan and Danny’s utter competence in the kitchen and I’ve been staring at the same page since he entered.
By the time a bowl of chicken pesto pasta drizzled with olive oil and topped with cheese is in front of me, I’ve taken very little in, not even the cursor that blinks at me from the laptop screen.
‘For you, ma’am,’ he murmurs with a cheeky little bow and a flourish of his hands. ‘Get that into you.’
He smiles at me and I can’t help but smile back. I didn’t know I had such a thing for competence, but a man who can cook is ticking all my boxes. Add to that fix a heating problem, mend some rotting stairs and dish out a handful of orgasms and I’m going full kink.
‘I made plenty extra,’ he says as he heads back to the sink and flicks on the faucet. ‘Enough for a couple of takeout containers so you have some meals in the fridge ready to go the next few days.’
Well… hell. Not fair. Good to look at, excellent with his hands and considerate.
He squeezes detergent into the water and I realise I’m being rude.
The man just cooked for me; the least I can do is show some appreciation.
‘Danny… stop.’ I reach across the table and grab up the mess of papers.
‘Sit,’ I say, stacking them in a neat-ish pile on top of the textbooks, which I push to one side. ‘Grab some. Eat with me.’
‘Nah.’ He shakes his head. ‘I’ll just clean up and leave you to your study.’
I sigh. His understanding only makes me feel shittier about ignoring him. Or trying to, anyway. ‘Come on, please? I should take a proper break from all this so why not join me?’
I suddenly feel desperate that he doesn’t leave.
Having him here in my kitchen has been distracting, yes, but also quite…
homey? Something I haven’t realised I’ve been missing.
I’ve lived by myself for the past two years, and the company – having someone nearby indulging in the purely domestic duty of cooking a meal – has been unexpectedly nice.
It reminds me of doing my homework around the dinner table with my brother and sister, my father – the chef in our house – whipping up something delicious smelling, my mother helping us if needed in between packing orders for her Tupperware gig she did for years to bring in extra money to our barely-getting-by household.
Having Danny in my kitchen, I realise, feels like family.
‘Well, it looks pretty good, even if I do say so myself,’ he says with a slow smile, then reaches into the wall cupboard and grabs a bowl.
I take my first bite of pasta as he sits his ass in the chair opposite me so I won’t ogle the way his jeans pull taut across his quads.
And I am in gastronomic heaven. Earthy flavours of garlic, onion and basil mix with the tartness of lemon, the sharpness of parmesan and the succulent juiciness of the chicken, which practically melts in my mouth.