Chapter 1 #2
She launched off the counter and grabbed the bag of flour before I could pull it away.
What followed was the kind of destruction that would make a hazmat team weep.
She flung flour at my face. I shook it off and grabbed the olive oil and drizzled it down the back of her neck.
She screamed and retaliated with a fistful of crushed tomato straight to my jaw.
I hooked an arm around her waist, lifted her off her feet, and she kicked and thrashed and got tomato sauce in my ear.
"Put me down, you blown out asshole!"
"Say please."
"Fuck you!"
"That's not please."
She bit my shoulder. Not a love bite. A real bite, the kind that broke skin and sent a jolt of pain down my arm that I felt in places pain had no business going. I dropped her and she landed on her feet immediately grabbed an egg from the carton on the counter.
"Don't even think—"
She cracked it on my head. I felt the yolk slide down my forehead, into my eyebrow, down the bridge of my nose. She watched it travel with the kind of satisfied fascination that most people reserved for sunsets or fireworks. Lakey reserved it for causing me physical distress.
"Lakey: one. Cam: zero." She held up a finger, keeping score. Of course she was keeping score. "You're losing, baby."
I dragged my hand down my face, wiping egg and flour into a paste across my jaw.
The kitchen looked like a bomb had gone off.
There was flour on the ceiling. Tomato sauce on the cabinets.
A rogue piece of penne stuck to the window.
The pot of water was still boiling away on the stove, steam rising into the chaos like it had accepted its fate.
And Lakey.
Lakey was standing three feet away, covered head to toe in flour and tomato, her hair stuck to her face in wet, red streaks, my shirt clinging to her body where the olive oil had soaked through, and she was grinning at me.
Breathing hard, chest heaving under the ruined shirt, teeth white against the mess of her face.
Fuck.
That was the thing about us. Every fight circled the same drain.
Every argument, every shove, every thrown object and bitten shoulder and score kept on invisible tallies.
It all ended the same way. It had to. The friction between us wasn't the kind that burned out.
It was the kind that burned down, and whatever was left standing after was ours.
She saw it in my face. The second the game changed. Her grin didn't drop but it shifted, from victory to invitation. Her chin tilted up. She took one step backward, and her lower back hit the edge of the counter.
"Cam." My name in her mouth was always half threat, half prayer. Right now it was a lit match.
"You've got shit on your face." My voice came out a rasp.
"You've got shit on yours."
"Come clean it off."
She crossed the distance between us in two steps.
Her flour-caked hands grabbed the front of my shirt and pulled me down to her level.
The height difference meant I had to fold nearly in half, but I'd been bending for this woman since I was nine years old and I didn't plan on straightening up anytime soon.
I’d lay across a puddle if it meant she could cross without getting her feet wet.
She kissed me there was tomato and garlic and the blood on her lip where she'd bitten it while she was laughing. Her tongue swept across my lower lip, licking the sauce off, and the sound she made was a groan in the back of her throat.
"Mm. Sauce is good, actually."
"You are unbelievable."
"And yet here you are." Her hands slid under my shirt, nails dragging up my stomach. She found the scar above my hip and traced it. "Believing."
I kissed her hard enough to push her back against the counter.
Her spine hit the edge, and she gasped into my mouth, her fingers tightening on the hem of my shirt.
She yanked it up and I helped, pulling it over my head and tossing it onto the floor where it landed in a puddle of olive oil and crushed tomato.
She was already running her hands across my chest, her palms flat against the ink that covered me, and every place she touched burned through the mess on my skin.
Her fingers traced the tattoo over my heart.
She always lingered there. I'd gotten it in juvie, a cellmate who traded body art for commissary, and it was rough and dark and nothing a real artist would claim, but Lakey touched it the way people touched holy things, and I let her, because she was the only church I'd ever walked into willingly.
"Take this off." I tugged at the shirt she was wearing.
My shirt. Everything she wore became mine and then hers in a cycle of ownership that neither of us kept track of anymore.
She lifted her arms and I pulled it over her head.
No bra underneath because she had a personal vendetta against underwire.
She was covered in flour. Her breasts, her stomach, the dip of her waist. It clung to the olive oil on her skin and turned her into something so fucking sexy it made my cock rock solid. I ran my thumb across her nipple and the flour smeared, revealing pink skin underneath, and she shivered.
"You're filthy," I said as I turned to the stove and turned off the elements. No use burning our place down and no use cooking. Everything was literally everywhere but where it should be.
"Literally or figuratively?"
"Both."
"Good. I was going for both."
I gripped her waist and lifted her onto the counter. She wrapped her legs around me immediately, crossing her ankles behind my back, pulling me between her thighs. The counter was cold under her ass and she hissed, but she didn't move. Her hands went to my belt, and she worked it open.
"Eager, are we," I said.
"I don’t know about you, but I’m fucking starving." She shoved my jeans down my hips and her hand closed around my cock through my boxers. She squeezed and I grunted, my hips rolling forward into her grip.
"How do you want it?" I asked, because I wanted to give her control before I took it back, the same way I always did.
She tilted her head, pretending to think about it. Flour rained from her hair. "I want your cock in my mouth first. Then I want you to eat me out on this counter."
"And then?"
Her grin split her face. "Then I want you to bend me over and fuck me so hard I forget what day it is."
"It's Saturday."
"Not for long."
Jesus fuck, this woman.
She slid off the counter and dropped to her knees on the kitchen floor.
I looked down at her and the visual hit me somewhere deep.
Lakey on her knees in the wrecked kitchen, flour in her hair, tomato on her collarbone, looking up at me through those lashes with her hand already pulling my cock free.
She wrapped her fingers around the base and stroked, slow, watching my face the whole time.
"You know," she said, her breath warm against the tip, "most guys would say thank you."
"I'll thank you when you earn it."
Her eyes narrowed. "Oh, you're going to regret that."
She took me in her mouth in one smooth motion, her lips stretching around my girth, her tongue pressing flat against the underside.
The heat of her mouth, the pressure, the way she hollowed her cheeks and sucked on the upstroke.
I braced one hand on the counter and the other went to her hair, fingers threading through the flour-caked strands, letting her pick the pace.
She pulled back until just the head was between her lips and swirled her tongue around it, flicking the ridge where the shaft met the tip.
Pre-cum leaked into her mouth and she hummed, the vibration traveling through my cock and up my spine.
Then she sank back down, taking me deeper, until the back of her throat tightened before it relaxed so she could take more.
"Fuck, Lakes." My voice was wrecked. She'd barely started and I sounded like I'd been going for an hour. She did that. Undid me fast and without warning and left me scrambling to keep up.
She set a rhythm. Slow, deep strokes, her hand working what her mouth couldn't reach, twisting on the upstroke, squeezing at the base. Her other hand gripped my thigh, nails biting into the muscle. She looked up at me while she worked, and her eyes were dark and wet and focused.
I tightened my grip in her hair, and she moaned around my cock, the sound muffled and filthy and so fucking good that my hips snapped forward on instinct.
She gagged, her throat convulsing, but she didn't pull back.
She grabbed my hip and pulled me deeper, her fingers pressing bruises into my skin, telling me to do it again.
So I did.
I fucked her mouth with controlled thrusts, my hand firm in her hair, watching my cock disappear between her lips and reappear slick and swollen.
Spit ran down her chin, mixing with the flour, turning it into a paste that dripped onto her bare chest. She was a mess.
A gorgeous mess, and every sound she made reminded me how completely this woman owned me.
"Stop." I pulled her off by her hair. She released me with a wet pop, her lips swollen and red and shining, a string of spit connecting her lower lip to the tip of my cock. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and left a streak of flour across her chin.
"What's wrong, Cam? Can't handle it?" She was breathing hard, and she looked so fucking proud of herself that I thought about letting her finish me off.
But she had a vision and I wanted to see it through.
"Up." I hauled her to her feet and she yelped. My hands gripped her waist, lifted her, set her on the counter with enough force that the flour bag toppled off the back and hit the floor with a soft thud. "Your turn."
I hooked my fingers into the waistband of her underwear, and dragged them down her legs. She leaned back on her palms, flour handprints ghosting onto the counter behind her, and spread her thighs. No hesitation. No shyness. Lakey didn't know what shyness was. She'd been born without the gene.