It’s dark and thick and trailing from his collarbone down the center of his chest in a slow, obscene line, and for one unhinged second, my brain supplies a single thought:blood.
He’s murdered someone. The night move-in. The living alone. The cat. It all makes sense. He’s a handsome murdererwith good bone structure and a fluffy white accomplice, and I should call the police. Except I can’t move.
Then he drags his index finger through the trail on his chest, slowly, deliberately, and lifts it to his mouth.
Not blood. Chocolate, and I exhale.
He sucks his finger clean and grins at the cat, who is watching him with an expression of absolute contempt, and he says a word I can’t hear, but the shape on his lips looks a lot liketaste. He scoops a fingerful from a separate small bowl of cream and holds it out. The cat leans forward, sniffs, and licks it delicately off his fingertip, making me assume he’s got cat-friendly cream just for his cat. He throws his head back and laughs again, and the chocolate is still on his chest, still trailing a dark line down the grooves of muscles.
Damn, who is this guy?
My glasses are fogging at the edges because my face is pressed against the window, and I’m breathing heavily, which is not the image I want associated with this moment but is technically accurate.
He moves again. Spinning back to the counter, hips shifting with the kind of unconscious rhythm that suggests music is playing. He’s having the time of his life while he cooks. Half naked, chocolate-smeared, dancing in his kitchen with a judgmental cat and a mixing bowl. Whatever this is—baking, performing, a private ritual involving confectionery and a complete absence of shirts—he’s radiating a joy so unfiltered that my chest aches in a way that has everything to do with the fact that I can’t remember the last time I felt that free.
He bends to open the oven, and the jeans dip lower and the muscles along his back contract, and I gasp. I mean, I’m alone in my living room committing light voyeurism against a man who doesn’t know I exist, and I need to stop.
I don’t.
He straightens up, pushes the hair off his forehead with the back of his wrist, and the chocolate has spread. It’s on his jaw now, a smudge near his ear, and across three of his knuckles.
He grabs a cloth and wipes his hands, then tosses it over his shoulder and turns toward the window. My window. My corner of blinds where I am standing, having pushed the blinds slightly aside, breathing on the glass, fogging up my own view, with one hand pressed flat against the window and the other clutching the blinds.
His gaze lands on the exact gap in the blinds where my face is.
He pauses. Tilts his head. And the corner of his mouth curves up, those blue eyes glinting… Eyes I’ve seen before.
Oh my fucking God!
It’s the sexy ManBaker from the book signing event!
I throw myself sideways so hard I clip the bookshelf, and a paperback falls on my head.Ouch.
My heart is hammering, my cheeks are on fire, and my glasses are crooked enough that the kitchen is leaning suspiciously to the left. There’s a copy ofCooking for People Who Definitely Have Their Lives Togetheron the floor that just assaulted me, and Mr. Unreasonable Jaw definitely, absolutely, without question caught me watching him through my window like some kind of lace-curtain goblin. Did he recognize me? Of course he would have… right?
I can never show my face again, which is going to be a slight problem, considering the ManBaker from the bookshop, the baking blogger sensation, now lives next door to me. The universe is taunting me. There’s no other explanation.
I crawl over to the kitchen, then get up only when I’m safely out of sight of every window and drink a glass of cold water like hydration might undo the last five minutes of my life. My breathing rushes, my skin flushes, and my pulse is on fire.
That’s when my phone buzzes on the counter, and I flinch hard enough to nearly baptize myself with the water.
I glance at the screen, expecting Katie, hoping for Katie, because I need to tell someone about the shirtless confectioner next door before I combust.
It’s not Katie.
Hey, doll. See you at Betty’s wedding. I know you won’t have a date, so I’ll save you a dance. It’ll be like old times. —L
The heat drains from my body in one cold rush.
I set the phone down, pick it up, and read it again.Doll.He knows I hate that nickname. Yet he used it anyway, casually, designed to remind me that he’ll be there, watching, and the one in control.
My gaze drifts to the fridge. The invitation for Betty’s wedding is pinned under a magnet shaped like a lobster, cream card stock with gold foil lettering, and I’ve been staring at it for weeks, trying to manufacture an excuse to not go. Stomach flu. Family emergency. Spontaneous relocation to another continent. Betty is my old friend from high school. Her mother and my mother have been close since before either of us existed, and not attending would create a cascade of concerned phone calls and disappointed silences. I’m expected to attend.
But Louis is the best man. And I’ll be there alone. Again. Still. The Omega who can’t keep an Alpha and can’t hold a conversation on live television without detonating her own career.
The tightness flares back in my chest, spreading outward. I press my fingertips to the counter, ground myself against the cold marble. I count backward from twenty. I name five things I can see: fridge, lobster magnet, invitation, phone, my own reflection in the dark kitchen window, a woman in oversized glasses with flushed cheeks and frightened eyes staring back at herself.
That’s six. Extra credit.