11. Home Cooked #4
"Watch it." She swatted at my chest, not even trying to sound offended. "I make excellent reservations. That's a skill."
I kissed the top of her head, still laughing.
"I was distracted." She looked up at me, grinning. "I kept thinking about you instead of the timer."
"That supposed to make me feel better?"
"A little." She kissed my jaw, quick, then pulled back toward the ruined bird like she was still somehow proud of it. "I really did try, though."
"I know you did." I kissed her lips and looked past her at the disaster still smoking gently in the oven. "Go sit down. I got dinner."
You always got dinner." She whined, climbing up onto the stool to watch.
"Somebody's gotta."
"You cook all day. I wanted to cook for you, for once. You're always so tired, and I know you like having dinner together, and I just… " She shrugged, a little embarrassed, a little defiant about being embarrassed. "I wanted to do something for you."
"Cooking is my job, baby." I picked her up off the stool and set her on the counter instead, hands at her waist, standing between her knees. "Your job right now is passing that program and not burning my kitchen down in the process. I can handle dinner.
"I know." She looped her arms around my neck, still a little sheepish about the chicken, glancing toward the oven like it might still be judging her. "I just wanted one night where you got to sit down and somebody took care of you."
"You do take care of me." I kissed her forehead. "How was class? Second week now, right?"
She lit up in a way I'd been watching happen more and more since the program started.
Light that had nothing to do with me and everything to do with her finally getting to want something out loud.
She'd been eyeing the interior design certification program at Bellemere University for years, and now she was in it.
"We started on space planning today. Actual floor plans, traffic flow, how a room's supposed to breathe depending on what you're asking it to do.
" She was talking fast now, hands moving with excitement.
"My instructor pulled up this before-and-after of a house that used to be all closed-off little boxes, and by the time she was done explaining what they'd knocked down and opened up, I actually understood why it worked. Not just that it looked nice. Why."
"That's my girl. You always did have an eye for this kinda thing."
"I remember hearing I was wasting my time with all that." She said it light, but there was an old bruise somewhere under the lightness, that had nothing to do with me and everything to do with a man who used to tell her that it was a waste.
"I never told you that."
"No." She looked at me and forced a smile. "You didn't."
I paused for a moment and thought about telling her I'd run into him. Thought about it hard for about half a second, then set it down the way you set down a knife you don't need for this particular cut. What was the point? She was done with him. I was done with him.
Whatever that man still had left to say about broken wrists and stolen women, he could say it to an empty alley for all I cared.
She didn't need one more reminder of years spent making herself small for somebody who never once looked up long enough to notice she deserved bigger.
Not while I was doing everything in my power to hand her a future built entirely out of what she wanted instead of what she'd learned to settle for.
She'd been wanting this a long time. Now she had it. And I intended to spend the rest of my life watching my wife become exactly the woman she was always supposed to be, floor plans and traffic flow and all, whether she ever burned another chicken in the process or not.
"Well." I kissed her. "I ain't him. And I think you're gonna be better at this than you are at chicken."
"Rude." But she was laughing again, the old bruise tucked back away until I could fully remove it. "Give me five years. I'll redesign this whole penthouse and you won't even recognize it."
"Long as you leave my kitchen exactly how it is."
"Obviously." She kissed me back.
"Mmhmm." I looked her over, the apron still dusted with flour, her hair still a mess on top of her head, looking like a disaster and somehow like the best thing I'd seen all day at the same time.
"What you need to do is get out these clothes by the time I get out the shower.
Keep the apron, though. Kinda like you looking all chef-like. "
"Oh, is that right?" She raised an eyebrow, arms still looped around my neck, not moving an inch, daring me to make the next move happen. "Since when do you like amateurs in your kitchen?"
"Since the amateur's my wife." My hands found her waist, and I lifted her off the counter in one motion, her legs locking around me like they'd been doing it for lifetimes instead of just seven years.
"Convenient how that works." She giggled as I carried her through the kitchen.
"I write the goddamn rules." I shouldered through our bedroom door, not breaking stride. Her laughter vibrated against my neck when she said, "You still have to deal with that chicken eventually…looks like we’re gonna do left overs tonight. Why you wouldn’t warm some up instead of trying to cook, I don’t know.
The microwave is right there and you know how to use that. "
"Dillion."
I set her on her feet, my hands already working the knot of her apron. "Now strip for Daddy and be ready when I get out."
I took the quickest shower of my life and ran through my hygiene routine before re-entering my bedroom in just a towel.
Aurelia was bent over the bed in nothing but the apron, and I dropped into my favorite chair and just smiled at her.
She knew exactly what she was doing, making her ass shake while the rest of her stayed perfectly still, my dick rising to the occasion without so much as being asked.
That little wiggle, the glance back over her shoulder, biting her lip like she was shy about it, like we hadn't done this exact dance a hundred times already.
"Come here," I said.
She turned slow, the apron barely covering anything worth covering, her tits pressed against the fabric, nipples showing through like they were trying to reach me from across the room.
She stopped just out of reach, playing with me, playing with the power she had and pretending she didn't. I grabbed her wrist and pulled her between my knees, my hands sliding up the back of her thighs, thumbs grazing the curve of her ass where the apron ended.
"Tease," I said against her stomach, breathing her in.
"Learned from the best."
My mouth found her hip, her ribs, the underside of her breast where the apron gaped open. She tasted like smoke and sweat and home, and I was starving for it. Starving for her. I pushed the fabric aside and took her nipple into my mouth, sucking hard enough to make her gasp.
"Dillon—"
"Sssshhhh." I switched to the other breast, rougher than I meant to be, but she arched into it anyway, her hips rolling against nothing, seeking friction, seeking me.
I bit her just hard enough to stop the words in her throat, enough to feel her whole body shudder against my mouth.
"Sorry, Daddy."
Fuck. That word in her mouth, breathless and wrecked already, went straight through me, like the first pull off a good bourbon.
"What's on the menu tonight, Mrs. Dillion Duckworth the Third?"
She dropped to her knees in front of me and slowly pulled my towel open. I was already hard and aching for her, her mouth damn near watering at the sight of it. She licked her lips once, before she looked back up at me through her lashes.
"You," She looked down again, tilted her head like she was appraising a cut of meat at the butcher counter.
"Though if we're being honest, this reads less like an appetizer and more like a bratwurst situation.
One of them foot-long ones from the state fair.
The ones two people gotta share because ain't no way one person finishing that by themselves. "
I couldn't help it. I threw my head back and laughed, real loud. "Did you just compare my dick to a state fair bratwurst?"
"I'm just saying." She walked her fingers up my thigh, biting back her own grin now. "A woman's gotta know what she's working with. Prepare accordingly. Stretch first."
"Stretch first." I was still laughing, shaking my head at her, at the two of us, at how she could turn me all the way inside out and then have me cracking up thirty seconds later without missing a beat. "Bellemere's about to teach you interior design and you out here doing food science on my dick."
"Multitalented." She shrugged, entirely too pleased with herself. "Now hush and let me get reacquainted with the menu."
"I'm all yours to do as you please," I encouraged, one hand still tangled loose in her hair.
"Yes, Chef." She teased, right before she took me into her mouth.
I groaned, head instantly falling back against the chair, one hand instinctively tightening in her hair.
"This mouth, Ru." My voice had already gone rough. "Been dreaming about this mouth all day."
She hummed around me like that pleased her, took me deeper. Her hand followed what her mouth couldn't reach, twisting just right at the base, and I felt my whole body go tight trying to hold onto some shred of control.
I wasn't a small man, and she was still getting used to all of it, taking her time to study me the same way she was studying interior design.
My wife had never once in her life half-stepped anything she decided to master, and apparently that included this.
She worked me like a recipe she intended to perfect.
She was patient, adjusting by feel until she found exactly what made my hips jump and filed it away for next time.
Her mouth had a heat and a pull to it that didn't feel real. Felt engineered somehow, built specifically to take me apart one nerve at a time.