"Yes," I say, looking up at her.
"The pasta," she starts.
"Is on the bench," I say. "Under the cloth. Resting. It cannot see us. It has no feelings about this." I press a kiss to the inside of her knee. "You have my complete attention."
She looks down at me with those green eyes and the flour still on her jaw and something warm and certain in her expression, and then she reaches down and puts her hand in my hair.
"Okay," she says.
I take my time.
Her breathing goes uneven and her strawberry fills the kitchen air so completely I can taste it, and her knees part wider and her head tips back and the hand in my hair tightens.
"Santos," she says, differently this time.
"I know," I say, and I stay exactly where I am and I take my time and I let the wave build the way it builds when you have given it the whole ocean to work with.
When it arrives it arrives completely.
The sound she makes is full and warm and belonging entirely to this kitchen at this hour, and her thighs tremble and her hand grips my hair and her voice says my name in the low certain register that I would recognize anywhere and that doessomething to my saffron scent it has never done around anyone else.
Afterwards I stand and she presses her forehead against my shoulder and breathes.
Then she laughs.
Soft and real, the laugh that catches her off guard, the one she keeps for moments she did not plan for, and I feel it against my neck and it does something to my chest that I have completely stopped trying to name.
"The pasta," she says, when she can breathe again.
"It will keep," I growl against her neck, and I feel her shiver.
She pulls back just enough to look at me, her hair half down and flour on her jaw and her green eyes warm and not remotely interested in the pasta.
"We could finish it," she says, without conviction.
“Perhaps,” I reply.
We don’t move toward the bench.
She looks at me and I look at her and her strawberry is warm and open in the kitchen air and my saffron goes bright and certain and my alpha has completely lost interest in pasta.
I growl low against her ear. "Or I could carry you to bed."
She makes the sound. The soft one, the one she tries to contain and never quite manages.
"The pasta really will dry out," she whispers.
"Jennifer," I say, against her jaw. "We can make pasta any night of our lives."
She is quiet for a moment.
Then her hands slide into my hair and she tips her head back and the corner of her mouth does the thing, the almost smile, the real one, the one I have been collecting since a kitchen at nine in the morning.
"Right now," she sighs, and I know this means she’s surrendering to me, "I just want to be in your arms."
I wrap one arm around her back and the other under her knees and I lift her off the table, and she loops her arms around my neck and her strawberry is everywhere and warm and certain, and I carry her out of the kitchen and down the corridor and I close the door behind us with my foot.
The pasta rests under its cloth on the bench.