Chapter 8 #2
She startles at the endearment, cheeks flushing a soft pink, large faded blue eyes studying me with curiosity. She’s not pushing me away or running screaming from the house, so she’s definitely interested in prolonging this conversation.
I’m not eager to continue it, though not because I’m not interested in her.
The second this conversation tipped toward sex, my pants started getting tight.
I have no idea how dangerous it would be to stand at a hot stove with an erection poking the front of my sweatpants, but my instincts say very.
But I’d rather deal with open flames too close to my dick than have Maisie see my erection and start worrying that I’ll push her into something she isn’t ready for yet.
When we have sex, I want her willing, ready, and as eager to explore my body as I am to explore hers. I don’t want her to look at me with fear in her eyes. I want her to embrace sex—and me—with no hesitation about whether she’s doing the right thing.
“You want to have sex with me,” she says, her eyes wary but with enough heat in her gaze that she can’t quite hide.
I clasp her right hand, lifting it to my mouth to press a kiss at the center of her palm, smiling when her breath hitches.
“I very much like the idea of sex with you, Maisie Lucas. You’re sexy and so damn beautiful, and I’d have to be half-blind and half-dead not to want to spend the night with you.
But it isn’t just sex I want from you. I want you to feel safe around me, to want me as much as I want you, to share things with me because you trust me. ”
“That sounds an awful lot like a relationship.”
“It does.” My hand slips from hers as I offer a handshake. “How about we try being friends first? If our bad habits don’t make us run screaming from each other, then I’d say that’s a good place to start, wouldn’t you?”
Her first wide smile has me wanting to rub a fist over my heart. The impact hits that hard. I don’t know how anyone could put their hands on this woman; she radiates a sweet innocence that makes me want to put myself between whatever thing wants to hurt her.
“I think I’d like that,” she says, taking my hand and giving it a squeeze.
“Good.” Relieved that this conversation went better than I expected, I push myself to my feet. “How about those pancakes?”
“Okay,” she says with a shy smile. “Can I help?”
I’d been hoping to impress her with my extremely limited cooking skills before Hunter swoops in and shows her how it’s done. But she looks excited to help, and I’ll agree to anything that puts her in close proximity to me.
Even in my mind, it sounds pathetic. I’m more than half in love with Maisie Lucas, so I don’t care all that much.
I’ve had a month of quietly watching over her at the diner and making sure she gets home safe afterward, noting her quirks, her different smiles, the habit she has of tucking her hair behind her ear when she’s nervous or nibbling her lower lip when she’s deep in thought.
Fuck. I’m not a man half-in-love; I’m an alpha obsessed.
“Sure.” I offer her my palm. When she takes it, I help her to her feet and lead the way to the counter, walking slowly for the sole excuse to keep hold of her hand much longer than I need to.
“How about you get started on the batter, and I’ll get the bacon out?
Blueberry pancakes with maple syrup and bacon sound pretty good to me. ”
“Me too,” she agrees happily.
I get the bacon out, and when I spot the milk we need for the pancake mix, I grab it too and turn to give it to her. “Here.”
The egg she was about to tap on the side of the bowl slips from her hand and cracks against the floor.
My joke about which came first, the chicken or the egg, dies on my lips when I see her face.
She’s bone white and trembling as she backs away from me. Her eyes bounce from my face to the mess on the floor, and she’s too busy stuttering that she’ll clean it up for her to hear me when I tell her I’ll do it.
I reach out to her, and she flinches away from me.
I stop immediately, sensing I know what’s happening here.
“Maisie?” I soften my voice, but I keep my distance. She doesn’t respond, so I say her name again, a little louder this time. “Maisie?”
As if waking from a dream, she blinks twice and looks at me. Really looks at me.
“I’m sorry,” she stutters. “I’ll clean it up. Where are the paper towels?” She turns around.
They’re literally right in front of her face, which speaks to how frayed her nerves are.
“Forget about the paper towels.”
“But I—”
I pick up an egg from the container and drop it on the floor.
Crack.
She stops looking for paper towels.
A tiny furrow forms between her brows as her eyes bounce from me to the mess on the floor. “Why’d you do that?”
“You weren’t listening to me when I said I don’t care about the eggs or the mess. You could throw an egg in my face, and I wouldn’t care.”
She raises an eyebrow at me.
“Okay,” I concede with a wince, imagining how painful that might be. “I would care about getting egged in the face. Eggshell in the eye is gonna sting.”
The tiniest flicker of amusement tells me she’s no longer reliving a memory where someone hurt her for making a mess. Whoever it was did it so often that she immediately assumed I’d lash out at her.
“I would never egg you in the face,” she says.
I step around the mess we made on the floor, and when she doesn’t flinch away from me, I let out a quiet sigh of relief.
“Good.” I offer her my palm, and when she takes it, I give her a gentle tug toward my chest, wrap my arms around her, and rest my chin on top of her head.
“Why are you hugging me?” she asks, so confused that I almost smile.
“So you’ll start getting used to what will happen every time you make a mess or drop something.”
I can’t see her face, but I feel her surprise. “You’ll hug me?”
“Yup. Maybe even kiss you.”
She peels her face from my chest and peers up at me, her forehead furrowed. “Why?”
“So you’ll want to drop things and make a mess,” I explain.
“Yes, but why?”
“I want you to understand, consciously and sub-consciously, that you’re in a place where no one will punish you for making a mess.”
A mask comes down over her expression. “Then you’ll stop the hugs and kisses?”
I give her a long look, working out if I said something right or wandered into a mistake that will chase her out the door. “Would you like me to stop the hugs and the kisses?”
She doesn’t respond, which is answer enough for me.
Maisie likes the idea of me hugging her and doesn’t want me to set a time limit on when it will end. I can’t say I blame her; she feels fucking amazing in my arms. As if that’s where she was always meant to be.
She chews on her lip, and I let out a groan as my cock jerks in response. “You have to stop doing that around me, baby.”
“Doing what?”
I dip my head so inches separate my mouth from hers. She doesn’t lean away, an interesting development when I was almost positive she would. “Biting down on your lip like that.”
She exhales, and my stomach clenches at her warm breath hitting my lips.
“Why?” she whispers.
“Because it makes me want to do this…” I brush my lips against hers, soft and light, catching her almost silent moan. I hold still for a bit, unsure if she’ll push me away or tell me to stop.
Her eyes flick from my eyes to my mouth. The tip of her tongue wets her lower lip, and before I can warn her not to do it again, she’s rising to her tiptoes, her hands sliding up my chest to loop behind my shoulders.
With a groan, I deepen the kiss, crushing her against me as my hands roam over her back.
Her lower belly cushions my cock, and her pebbled nipples dig into my chest. Tucking her tighter against me, I stroke my hands down over the soft swell of her ass, down over her bare upper thighs, up again, and my heart stops.
She’s not wearing panties.
Fuck.
Groaning, my hands mold her ass, and she whimpers into my mouth. My cock is throbbing between us. It’s growing thicker and harder at the thought of spreading Maisie’s thighs and sliding deep inside her.
I’m lifting her up onto the counter when the loud slam of a car door returns me to my senses.
We break apart, panting.
Her cheeks are flushed, and when she licks her lips, I yank my gaze away, or I’ll stop caring about who's outside and carry her up to my bed.
“Wait here.” I set her gently on her feet, and it takes brute force to lift my hands from her hips. “I’ll go see who it is.”
I walk to the front door and pull it open, grinning at the dark-haired man in his late fifties pulling a large brown box from the back of his truck. “Hey, Elias!”
Nico, Maisie’s boss, has his hands too full to wave back, but he grins from over the large box he’s cradling in his arms.
“Need a hand?” I call out.
“I’m good. It’s big, but the contents are light. Winston started early so I could make the drive out here to drop these off for Maisie.”
He manages the porch steps with the oversized box in both arms, and I step aside, pushing the front door wider for him.
“We were just about to have a late breakfast,” I say, closing the door once he’s inside. “Keep walking straight and you’ll hit the kitchen.”
This is his first time at our farmhouse. He’s almost always at the diner, cooking in the kitchen.
Maisie is tossing paper towels into the trash, having finished cleaning the eggs we cracked on the floor. Damn. I’d completely forgotten about the mess we’d made, and guilt swirls in my gut that I left Maisie to deal with it since half that mess was mine.
“I could have done it,” I tell her.
She smiles at me. “It’s okay. I didn’t mind.”
A chair wobbles. Maisie jumps into action, saving a falling chair when Nico sets the large box down on the kitchen table.
“Sorry,” Nico says.
“That’s okay.” Maisie glances at the box. “Sorry, I didn’t work today, and I’m sorry about your niece’s apartment.”
He waves a hand at her. “The fire wasn’t your fault. Insurance will take care of it. And don’t you worry about the diner. It was fine before you started, and it’ll be fine while you take time off to recover.” To Maisie’s wide-eyed surprise, he hugs her. “I came here to make sure you were okay.”
It’s a short hug, and Maisie is too shocked to return it. “But you’re short-staffed without me.”
“People go to the diner more to talk than anything else. Almost no one is ever in a rush. We’ll be fine without you.
” He pats the box on the table. “This is for you. Once the locals heard what happened, they stopped in at the diner with whatever they had to help you get back on your feet. We got a good selection of clothes for you, some toiletries, and other women’s things.
Not sure what all is in there, but everyone wanted to help. ”
I’m getting a little better at reading Maisie. One look at her too-wide eyes and I’m across the kitchen and handing her a paper towel before the first tear hits her cheek.