Chapter 25: Chapter 25

I SHOWER while he makes phone calls about the Ten.

I dry off and put on one of his soft, beautifully made dress shirts. When I wander out of the bathroom, the smell of garlic and cheese hits my pleasure center full blast.

I find him cooking. Shirtless. Bare feet. Jeans hugging his hips just so.

“What are you making?”

He turns. His eyes go dark. “What are you wearing?”

I give him an innocent look. “This?”

He swears and turns back to the stove. “Alfredo sauce. And I’m at a critical point in this operation. There’s wine breathing. Why don’t you pour us a glass.”

It’s breathing. He’s so nerdy about doing everything perfectly.

I pour two glasses and go back. Set his by the stove top.

“You have to add the cheese to the sauce so slowly,” he says, adding a microscopic amount of cheese to the pound of melted butter and heavy cream he’s been stirring slowly and methodically. “So slowly.”

“It smells amazing.”

He adds another micro amount, and another, and another. “Most people don’t do it like this.”

But Henry does.

I set down my wine and put my arms around him, making contact with the muscles and hard planes of him.

“You are so going to ruin dinner.”

I kiss his back. “I’m trying not to.”

“Trying.” I can hear the smile in his voice. “Trying is not doing.” He flicks off the stove, smashes a lid onto the pan and turns. “Look at you,” he says, advancing on me.

I back up. “Look at me what?”

He reaches out but I move just out of his grasp and turn. And run. His place is huge and you can run in it. I make it to the living room.

Rough hands grab me, turn me around to face him. He grabs the shirt and rips it open, then pushes me down to the couch.

A condom appears. We fuck furiously, hands grasping, teeth grazing. His hot weight pins me.

He pulls up my leg to get deeper.

I hold his hair, taking him, pain and pleasure mingling.

He smashes his sweaty forehead to my chest when he comes. I stop pulling his hair and just kiss it, coming down from my orgasm and enjoying his.

I kiss his hair as he comes. He’s everything.

He flops over at my side.

He gets this serious look. “It was never like this.” He slides a hank of my hair through two fingers, with an expression like it’s the most amazing hair he’s ever felt.

“Me, too,” I say.

He seems to like that. He watches me with such warmth and affection. It feeds my soul. “I’m glad,” he says. “That was unbelievable. I wanted to do everything to you.”

“You kind of did.”

“Oh, hardly.”

“Oh, hardly.” I smile. “I love to feel you come inside me. I love how your body feels.”

“I love how you breathe,” he says. “Sometimes you just breathe and I want you.”

I kiss him on the nose.

“And that biting thing…”

“Yeah?” I smile.

“Yeah,” he says. “And that wet finger thing.”

I narrow my eyes. “What wet finger thing?”

“You know. The touch.”

I furrow my brow, trying to think what he means.

“When you lightly touched my asshole with your wet finger? It was…hot.”

I frown. God, was I in that much of a fugue state? “I wasn’t doing anything like that.”

“You just touched it, really lightly.”

I study his eyes, trying to figure out if he’s joking or what. That’s when Smuckers jumps up and runs over the back of the couch, looking down at us, tail wagging, tongue hanging out. “Oh…” I say.

“What? What’s wrong?” He follows the direction of my gaze, and a look of horror comes over him.

Horror.

I snort and smash my face to his chest.

“So not funny,” he says.

“It’s a little funny,” I say into the sweaty pillow of muscle on his chest.

“Go away, Smuckers!”

I’m just laughing. “I honestly don’t know if that clinches your Most Eligible Bastard status or destroys it,” I say.

“Don’t even,” he says, rolling on top of me, caging me.

I snort. “And to think I imagined you didn’t like dogs.”

“That has to be the last joke you make about that.” He leans down, biceps bulging.

I frown. “The last? Isn’t that a little extreme?”

He kisses my neck. “I mean it. Or I might retaliate in the most excruciating way.”

“I might like it,” I say. “But okay. Last joke.”