Chapter 4 #2
He laughed. He couldn’t help it. Then he reached his hand up and wrapped his hands around both her wrists, drawing her close to him.
“I can’t be shamed, Laney. You ought to know that right out the gate.
” He leaned in, his mouth so close to hers he could taste her.
“I’m not anything close to a virgin,” he said, releasing one wrist and wrapping his hand around the back of her neck, drawing her firmly up against his body.
“Trust me. What I am is a man who lost himself. Lost his control, lost his restraint. But guess what.” He grinned at her, knowing that the grin was laced with danger, “I found it. Trust me when I tell you, I am a man with a steady hand. A man of precision. I always weigh out my ingredients, because it’s the right thing to do, but I can look and tell if I have the correct weight of flour.
Just the right amount of sugar. I know exactly how much I need to work the dough to make sure that I have perfect lamination, and I know that because I have experience.
Instinct. Time away from the kitchen hasn’t changed that. And do you know what else I’m good at?”
“What?” She was looking at him with large, shining eyes, her breath coming in short bursts. Her voice, a whisper.
“I can look at you and know exactly how close you are. And it’s pretty damn close. I know just how to take a woman right to the edge, and when to back off. I know just how much to work you. Just where to touch you. And by the end of the night, you’ll be saying yes, Chef, to me.”
He thought that she might melt into a puddle at his feet, and damn it all, if he didn’t feel good because he still had that.
But with her, it was different. With her, it mattered more.
With her, he knew he was going up against a connoisseur.
An alpha. A woman who knew what she wanted and knew how to get it.
If he was the precision pastry chef, then she was the passionate cook who did everything by feel.
And he knew that could be deadly to him.
He couldn’t wait.
She moved toward him, cupped his face and kissed him.
Then whimpered as he backed her up against the wall, luxuriating in the press of her body against his.
She moaned, her head falling back, and he angled his head, kissing his way down her neck. He loved this. Loved the taste of her, of her skin.
He needed to taste her everywhere. And he was going to. But first he needed to see her. All of her.
She was wearing a casual black top and a pair of black pants, her white coat discarded somewhere in the kitchen. But she was about to lose it all, because he couldn’t wait another second to get her naked.
He’d been trying not to fantasize about her. Trying not to obsess about her and how much he wanted her. He’d been trying to just get on with things as they’d been for the last ten years.
But he couldn’t.
And right now he was damn glad of that.
He gripped the hem of her shirt and pulled it up over her head, throwing it onto the floor. Then he made quick work of her bra, his breath hissing through his teeth as he got a good look at her.
She was inked, from the top of her shoulder down to just below her elbow, and along the left side of her body, creeping vines that went down her rib cage, and disappeared beneath the waistband of her pants.
“How far down does the ink go?” he asked, breathing hard.
She smiled, a little bit playful, some of that confidence coming back, where only a moment ago she had been all need. “You’re going to have to keep going to find out.”
“Don’t challenge me, Laney. I’ll explore every bit of ink on your body.”
“Good,” she said.
He undid the button on her pants, pushed them down her hips and took her underwear along with them.
The sound he made was more beast than man when he got a good look at her.
Her wide hips, the trail of flowers that went all the way down her leg.
The blonde curls right there at the apex of her thighs. He wanted to bite that thigh. And hell, he was going to. After he tasted the rest of her. He wrapped his arms around her, planted his palms on her back, drew her forward as he sucked one nipple deep into his mouth.
He couldn’t wait. He wasn’t having an appetizer, he was getting down to the whole feast.
She groaned and tangled her fingers through his hair as he continued his journey down her body, kneeling in front of her and parting her thighs roughly, going right for what he wanted.
He tasted her there, sweet and musky and perfect, and spread her wide so that he could get a deeper taste.
She arched her hips against the wall, holding on to him as he devoured her.
Until she was shaking, until he could feel her muscles quivering, until she cried out her release against his face.
And then he kissed his way up her thigh and bit her.
“Shit,” she breathed, her knees giving, the wall the only thing holding her up, he was pretty sure.
“Did that work for you?”
“Oh, shut up,” she said, her voice shaky.
“Was your ex a chef?”
“Yes,” she said, and he could hear the bitterness and the eye roll layered into those words.
“And he didn’t like to eat?”
She made a shocked sound.
“What?” he asked. “You seem like a woman who’s been too deprived. Of that basic human need.”
“Not ten years deprived. But... some.”
“Well, I promise you I’ll be doing that again.” He stood up, brushed her hair out of her face and kissed her, let her taste her own desire on his lips. “You’re amazing,” he said against her mouth.
“I haven’t even made you come yet,” she said, gripping his shirt and tugging him toward the bed. “And you’re still distressingly clothed.”
He chuckled and pulled his shirt off. He knew that he had scars on his body. Ugly ones, and he hadn’t shown them to another person while sober. But he refused to make that into something momentous.
He wanted to get off. More than anything.
He liked Laney an awful lot, and he respected her. It was part of what had made him feel so attracted to her.
She was that type that he liked. And she cared about food.
But he didn’t need to go making it into something all that deep.
The only thing going deep was going to be him when he entered her body.
Everything else could just be this.
Him helping her with the gingerbread. Them helping each other scratch an itch. They’d both been celibate for too long.
She looked at him, and he chose not to decode the layered expression there on her face. The lust, concern, pity, even. Interest.
“You have a tattoo,” she said.
He touched the mountain that was tattooed across his pectoral muscle, extended over to his shoulder. “Yeah,” he said.
“What does it mean?”
“What do yours mean? They let me take control over something on my body, and I like the way that it feels. I can fix something by adding a flower to it. Make myself feel more me if I’m ever losing sight of who I am.”
“I haven’t heard that. I mean, usually people have a meaning for the specific tattoo.”
She shrugged. “It’s more about how they make me feel.”
“Well, what does yours mean?”
“The only thing that I could find and hold onto when I was at my lowest was the mountains. You look out there, and there they are. They don’t move.
They’re not going to crumble. They’re older than me, they were here before I was ever a thought, they’ll be here long after I’m gone.
It’s a reminder that I’m small. And that my pain is so very manageable in the grand scheme of things. ”
“That’s kind of beautiful and kind of awful,” she said.
“I find insignificance comforting. Because I used to be the center of my own world. My ambition was the only thing that mattered. I was the thing that mattered most, what I wanted, what I was going to get, and then what I couldn’t have.
And that made my pain feel unmanageable.
But once I recognized that I actually don’t matter all that much, and the world isn’t going to fall apart if I never win all the awards I wanted.
If my career doesn’t go the way that I planned.
All that stuff can crumble and fall away, the only thing you’re left with are your family connections.
The people that love you. It’s the thing that lasts. ”
“Well, I have my career. So I’m not sure that I want to delve too deeply into that.”
“I’m not saying you have to adopt my philosophy. But it keeps me on the straight and narrow. And you asked what the tattoo meant.”