“What?” I yelled back, spatula in hand, the egg popping in the hot skillet.
“Come back to bed!” His voice sounded groggy.
“Come down to breakfast!” I tossed my yell up the stairs, then moved quickly back to the skillet, stirring the eggs before they browned. I heard a response, some words bellowed out, and ignored them, a smile eating at the corner of my mouth. A few seconds later, feet hit the floor, and I heard the stumble of him out of the bedroom and down the stairs.
“Morning.” His voice still held cobwebs, and I turned with a smile, one hand holding the skillet, the other spooning scrambled eggs onto a plate. I almost dropped the iron skillet when I saw him.
He was naked, his right hand unsuccessfully over his junk, half of it peeking out from said hand. His abs were on full display, his body beautiful, the lines and cuts of his shoulders, the hard plane of his chest, the clench of his forearm as he adjusted his grip and still didn’t wrangle it all. “Morning.” I grinned.
“You can’t cook breakfast in my shirt unless you want a fucking.” He growled out the words and pulled at himself, his eyes doing a full sweep of me.
“You can’t eat my breakfast if you don’t put on some pants.” I pointed with a spatula at his shorts, which lay in a pile by the fridge. Ah… yes. The whipped cream. He was worried it would spoil due to the lack of refrigeration. I had suggested we stick it in the outside freezer. He had popped off the cap with his teeth and grinned at me, turning his head and spitting it out, and if that hadn’t been the sexiest thing ever, I didn’t know what was. Possibly what happened next, his slow wander behind me, his mouth dropping to my neck, his teeth gentle when they closed on my shoulder, his hands dropping from Summer’s Favorite Organ Ever and running up my hips, under his big shirt and settling on my waist, his head tilting as he looked under the shirt. “Oh… Summer…” he tsked his tongue, his fingers sliding under the edges of my underwear. “These are going to get in the way.”
“No they’re not,” I warned, setting down the spatula and turning to face him, fixing to tell him off for interrupting my cooking. But when I turned around, he bumped against my thighs, and my eyes dropped and stared and when I looked back up, at his cocky face, his hands pulling me forward, his mouth dropping for a kiss… Well, a woman could only be so concerned with eggs when a man was that naked and hard for her. I reached back and flipped off the burner.
CHAPTER 105
Cole was done for. He’d kept thinking, after sex, that it’d fade. That he’d come to his senses and find his footing. Realize that she was a normal girl and that they’d had one night of fun and now filming should be smoother, his life in Quincy less antagonistic. But he was still crazy in the middle of the night, when he fought sleep just so that he could enjoy holding her just a little bit longer. And he was definitely still crazy when he woke up, a morning chub out of control, and craved her. Smelling food, finding her in his shirt, in his kitchen, a spatula in hand, had made it even worse. He’d been attracted to women before, had loved fucking Nadia, but had never had someone crawl under his skin like this. He looked at this woman and saw her bouncing his child on her hip, saw her running through the field on his Montana ranch, saw her sitting in a velvet seat at the Academy Awards, her hand light on his arm, her mouth warm against his ear. And all of those images scared the hell out of him.
Now, sex in the kitchen completed, breakfast eaten, dishes washed, he watched her. She stood in the living room, her hands on adorable hips, frustration in her stance when he rounded the couch and faced her. “What’s wrong?”
“I can’t carry all of this stuff home.” She gestured to her haul from last night, a pile that included a popcorn machine (she’d never had one), iPad (he’d insisted on it), and minion pajamas, among four bags of other things. She had been planning to wear the pajamas to bed, thank God she hadn’t.
“I can drop you off.” He didn’t want to drop her off. He wanted to drive over to her house, pick up all of her cheap shit, and move it in. He wanted to sit down and work out their shooting schedule, their next fifty years, find out every dream she’d ever had and then make them realities. He wanted to fly Brad DeLuca up here and personally hug the man for putting him in Quincy early, for putting him on her doorstep, for saving the rest of his life.
“The reporters,” she reminded him, chewing on a thumbnail as she reached down and shifted through the closest bag.
“Fuck the reporters.”
“Ha.” She pulled out a pack of gum, Bubblicious, and ripped it open, holding it up before shaking one out. “Want one?”
“No.” He watched her unwrap it and pop the pink cube in her mouth. A children’s gum. She chewed children’s gum. Her jaw worked, and she glanced up at him, popping a bubble before speaking. “What?”
“Can we talk about this?” A stupid question. He should have kept his mouth shut. Taken her home. Let everything play out properly. Or not play out properly. And in that risk laid his worry.
“About us?” She popped her gum again, and he fought the urge to kiss it out of her mouth.
“Yes.”
“Are you freaked out by what I said last night?” She tossed down the gum and turned to fully face him, her arms crossing in front of her chest. Not defiantly, her arms were tight, as if she was giving herself a hug, her hands under her armpits. Nervous Summer. A new side. Nadia would never have responded in this manner. She would have played games, been cool, skirted direct conversation while he chased her down with questions and insinuations. Their fights were exhausting, which is probably why they both avoided them—him working out his anger on their gym’s punching bag, her on, apparently, other men.