Chapter 20 #2
He’s standing at the kitchen counter with his back half-turned to me, making coffee like he does this every morning and has for years. He’s pulled on a pair of dark lounge pants at some point, thankfully or tragically depending on which part of my brain gets the vote, but he’s still shirtless.
The light pouring in from the tall windows hits him cleanly here, and for a second, I just stand in the doorway and look.
He was gorgeous when we were younger, all feral grace and sharp arrogance, leaner then, all speed and coiled force.
Now he’s massive. That’s the first thing my body always registers before the rest has time to catch up.
Broad shoulders, heavy muscle, narrow waist, the black ink of his tattoos climbing all the way to his neck and over his hands and forearms in patterns I know by touch now or at least intend to know far better.
His hair is a little darker than it was in youth, not enough to lose that striking platinum impression, but enough to make him look less angelic and more dangerous, which on him is saying something.
His eyes, when he glances toward the machine and not at me, are that same impossible ice blue, only older now, harder at the edges and somehow more dangerous because I know exactly what softness they’re capable of.
My lover, I think, and the word lands with enough force to make me almost dizzy.
He catches me staring almost immediately, and that smug grin appears, slow and wicked, as he pours coffee into two cups. “You’re doing it again.”
“Doing what?”
“Looking at me like that.”
I let my gaze travel deliberately over the broad line of his back down to the waist of the lounge pants and back up again because he’s asking for it with the tone alone. “You’ll have to be more specific. There’s a lot to work with.”
He glances over one shoulder at me then, and that grin appears, bright and smug and far too boyish for the man he’s become. “So, you admit it.”
“I admit nothing,” I say. “I’m simply trying to decide whether you were carved by God or manufactured in a lab to make me lose whatever self-respect I had left.”
His grin deepens. “That little?”
“Please. I lost most of it in the first five minutes after you opened the door.”
He turns then, coffee cup in one hand, expression indecently pleased with himself. Morning light catches in his eyes and turns the ice there pale enough to almost glow. “And here I thought it was when I dragged you inside and kissed the soul out of you.”
I cross farther into the room, unable to stop myself from smiling. “That was merely the confirmation.”
“Of what?”
“That my judgment remains catastrophically unsound.”
A laugh slips out of him, completely unguarded. I love that sound more than I should. More than is probably survivable long-term.
He holds out a cup to me. “Coffee.”
I take it and let our fingers brush because I am weak and because he is clearly no stronger about this than I am. The contact is brief, but his eyes flick down to my mouth all the same. “You did this on purpose.”
His brows lift in practiced innocence. “Coffee?” he says as a question this time.
I point to my throat with two fingers. “This.”
His mouth curves again. “You looked good taking it.”
I should be offended. I’m not. Not even a little.
“You’re impossible in daylight.”
“You didn’t complain in the dark.”
I take my first sip before answering and nearly groan. It’s good. Strong enough to matter, which means he remembered exactly how I take it.
That realization shows on my face because he looks unbearably pleased with himself.
“Stop that,” I say.
“Stop what?”
“Looking like you won something.”
He leans closer, boxing me lightly against the counter without using his hands this time. “My king,” he says, voice gone lower and dirtier in an instant, “I woke up with you in my bed and my marks on your skin. I absolutely won something.”
Heat crawls up my throat under the bruises he’s admiring.
“You are insufferable.”
“You adore me.”
The answer is already in my mouth before I can stop it. “Unfortunately.”
His grin turns almost boyish for a second, so familiar it hurts. “That’s my favorite kind.”
I shake my head and look down into the cup because otherwise I’m going to do something reckless like kiss him hard enough to spill coffee on both of us and call it his fault.
He uses the opportunity to let his eyes drag over me openly now, returning the stare with interest that has nothing polite in it.
“You look very pleased with yourself,” I say.
“I am.” His gaze lands on my mouth again. “You walked out of that bathroom smiling.”
“That was private.”
“Nothing about you smiling because of me has ever felt private.”
The line is so shameless and so sincere under the tease that it steals whatever smart answer I had.
“Also,” he adds, “you’re still walking a little carefully.”
I choke on my coffee. He actually laughs this time, full and delighted and entirely too happy about my suffering.
“I hate you,” I mutter, wiping at my mouth with the back of my hand.
“No, you don’t.”
“No, I really do in this exact moment.”
His grin doesn’t fade. “Liar.”
I set the cup down before I throw it at him and take a step into his space instead, pushing him back into the counter with one hand on his chest. He lets me. Of course, he lets me. The bastard likes it when I remember I’ve got teeth too.
“You are disgustingly smug,” I tell him.
“And you’re very pretty when you’re trying to intimidate me.”
“Trying?”
He looks down at my hand splayed over his chest, then back up at me with pure amusement. “You’re using one hand and a hangover.”
I narrow my eyes.
He leans in until his mouth is just beside my ear. “If you want me on my knees before breakfast,” he murmurs, “you’re going to have to ask better than that.”
The sound I make is deeply unkingly.
He smiles against my skin like a man who already knows he’s won the morning.
The familiarity of it all nearly breaks me open again.
The easy filth. The rhythm of the teasing.
The way we slide from tenderness to mockery to want and back without ever losing the thread.
It feels so old and so immediate that, for one dangerous second, I forget there were eight missing years at all.
Then he kisses the side of my jaw softly, as if to make up for the dirtier line, and the whole room goes warm.
“Drink your coffee,” he says. “You look like you need strength for whatever terrible ideas you’re about to have.”
I look at him, at the stupid grin still playing at his mouth, at the shadows of old pain and new peace somehow coexisting in that face and can’t stop my own smile this time.
“You are absolutely one of my terrible ideas,” I say.
He tips his cup in a mock toast. “And still your favorite.”
I hate how easily I laugh.
I hate it even more that he’s right.