“Well, that would be okay too. I mean, I’ve never been super tight with Noah, but I’m willing to get up close and personal if that’s what you want.”
“You are?”
“It might even be fun.”
His grin made it clear he knew it would be fun. The thought of it — the fact that he was giving me permission to do the thing I didn’t even know for sure I wanted to do — went straight to my pussy.
And made it clear that I did, in fact, want to do it.
He tucked a piece of hair behind my ear. “The main thing is, I can’t have you avoiding me because you’re embarrassed. Nothing we could ever do together is embarrassing. Plus, it makes me kind of crazy to have you so close and not see you.”
“It does?”
He stroked my lower lip with his thumb, his gaze locked on mine. “It does.”
I heard the torment in his voice, could believe that during the nights I lay in bed, my body hungry for him, he’d been feeling the same way in one of the other rooms on the second floor of the house.
He leaned in, hovering over my lips, his brown eyes liquid with desire, and when he closed his mouth over mine, it was like coming home.
I opened eagerly when he touched his tongue to the seam of my lips, his big hand cradling my head as he stroked his way through my mouth. The sweeps of his tongue sent sparks to the darkest corners of my body, lighting me up like a fuse to the stick of dynamite at my core.
I knew what it felt like to have his fingers inside me now. My body knew too. It remembered him. Wanted more of him.
I wrapped my arms around his waist and met the parry of his tongue with my own, completely forgetting we were standing in the kitchen where Malcolm might walk in at any moment.
But in the end it wasn’t Malcolm who ended our tryst, it was the oven timer.
It dinged loudly enough to make me jump, and I pulled away from Beck like I’d been caught with my hand in the proverbial cookie jar.
Again.
Beck’s laughter was low and knowing. “It’s all good. It’s just the cupcakes…cupcake.”
He winked and the heat at my center turned to butterflies in my stomach. They took flight as he reached for the oven mitts sitting on the worktable, my desire morphing into something that somehow felt a lot more dangerous.
Because I didn’t just want Beck. Ilikedhim.
And that was a lot more complicated.
26
AVERY
Beck taughtme how to make croissants, giving me a piece of buttered dough to roll into thin layers, one on top of the other, and explaining that the key to flaky pastry lay in rolling it out fast and keeping the butter cold.
I was never going to be as good at baking as Beck — my dough looked sloppy and inelegant next to his neat square — but it was fun to learn. It was also surprisingly relaxing. There was something almost meditative about the repetitive motion: roll out the dough, fold, roll again, fold.
I tapped out once Beck put the croissants in the oven and spent the next hour with Malcolm, who danced around the bakery as he worked to a playlist he’d labeledBakery Beatsand called me “girl” like we were old friends.
We ordered lunch from Field & Fork and ate at one of the tables during the bakery’s afternoon lull while Malcolm and Beck answered my questions about the bakery: whether it was profitable (modestly), which seasons were busiest (spring, fall, right before Christmas), and whether there was any competition (nothing in town, although there was a bakery ten miles away in Carleton).
By the time we finished lunch, customers had started filing in: teenagers after school, moms picking up cookies and cupcakes for their kids’ afternoon activities, and the occasional older person who seemed as interested in a chat as they were a cookie.
I learned how to work the register and by four p.m. I was moving easily around Malcolm in the front while Beck came in and out from the kitchen to replenish the case. It was a kind of dance, Malcolm and I taking turns plating croissants or wrapping cupcakes in the Golden Crumb pastry boxes as Beck dipped and dodged around us with sheets of scrumptious scones, cookies, and pastries.
I enjoyed it more than I expected, and I was surprised when I realized it was almost five p.m. when the bakery emptied out.
Beck high-fived Malcolm, then me. “Good job, team!”