His mouth falls open, and his mask raises a little bit, like he’s raising his brows behind it. “Oh! I googled that a few days ago.”
“A few days ago?” I squeak out. I don’t think just how often Seth had been in my house has really quite hit home yet.
“Yeah, he follows me around a lot when I’m here, so I was curious. I was pretty sure chocolate was a no-no… I once had to play the vet in a nightmare about it… so that made me think there might be other things he couldn’t eat.”
Well, if that isn’t the cutest thing I’ve ever heard. If I think about it too hard, I’ll cry, so instead I shift the subject. “Do you have google, then… where you are?”
He laughs, leaning on the doorframe. He still doesn’t have a shirt… or socks… but hehasfound an apron… like he’s trying to be my dream man for real. There are flour handprints on the torso portion he’s left hanging down, so his massive pecs are out in their full glory. His black hair falls over the front of his mask, and I shiver. I’m covered in goosebumps, and I just know my nipples are standing at attention. How is he evenreal?
“Not Google, no, but we haveour own tech. Apparently, if I go through some weird technological hoops it’spossibleto connect to your internet, but I just uh… used your computer.” His mask brightens, the red shining out from behind what I assume are eyeholes… like he’s blushing.
“Oh, yeah… makes sense!” I say, because apparently a masked monster blushing in my doorway is enough to render me almost entirely speechless.
“So, pepperoni is okay, right?”
“It’s actually not.” I scramble up from the floor. “It probably wasn’t on the list you looked at before, but he’s an older dog, so I tend to be pretty conservative with what he eats.”
“Good to know. I’m glad you woke up then. I was debating whether I should wake you up or not…”
“Mozzarella’s okay though!” I say, trying to put myself to rights now that I’m standing. I grab my bathrobe off the door and put it on. When I turn back, he’s still standing there, leaning on my doorframe, staring at me.
Me. He’s staring at me, Ada Kimball, of all people. He was right, hewashere when I woke up… and if I’m still dreaming, this is the longest dream of my life. It fills my entire body with heat, bubbling up until I can feel my entire chest flushed with it.
For the past several years, I’ve been so focused on succeeding out here on my own, on establishing my business and making my home that I haven't dated, or even really thought about it, in years. Now, when it’s the last thing on my mind, Seth appears, literally the man of my dreams.
I cock my head at him, raising a brow and smiling.
“What?” he asks, shaking his head.
“He can have mozzarella instead.”
“Oh! Great!” His bright red tongue flicks out to lick his lips, and I swear my pussy weeps at the memory of it. The memory of that tongue teasing my swollen center, of how he soothed my sore, sensitized skin with such abject devotion.
Hoo boy, down girl, we’re not jumping his bones again.There are so many questions hanging in the air between us that I need to focus on literally anything else.
“So,” I say, breezing past him in my best impression of being nonchalant. “You’re a baker?”
“Actually, no… but you had a cookbook and fresh dough and I needed to do something with myself. I thought you might be hungry when you woke up, and you dreamed about pizza once.”
I stop in my tracks at the entrance to my kitchen. Sure enough, my favorite cookbook, over four hundred pages and no longer quite clean, sits open on the counter. Tomato sauce is splattered over it and the counter, flour dusting almost every surface and settling in the air. A plastic bag of pepperonis is ripped open, and little shreds of mozzarella are strewn about like confetti.
It’s messy… and it’s so sweet that I squeeze my eyes shut. The back of my throat is thick, so I swallow past the thickness and the sting of overwhelming gratitude along with it. My dad grilled. He barbecued or smoked. My dad did not, and would notever, bake. My brothers would literally never. And now, this impossible monster of a man is shirtless in my kitchen poring over my favorite recipe book just because he “thought I might be hungry” and I once had a dream about pizza.
“Your timer is done,” my adorable little corporate spy chimes in. Seth passes behind me, drawing his hand across my back in the most achingly domestic touch in the history of ever.
He bends down, opening the oven and shocking me out of my reverie.
“Stop! You need an oven mitt!”
He frowns, but reaches one long grey arm toward where they hang on a hook under the cabinets. Before he puts it on, though, he inches his arm inside the oven and tapsa single finger on the rack.
“Ouch!” he says, beaming. “It hurts!”
“Of course it does!” I can’t help but giggle at the bemused look on his face. “Did you not expect it to hurt?”
“…I guess not. Normally, it’s hot but not painful. When I made the cookies, I didn’t use one…” His face falls as he pulls the pizza from the oven.
“And that’s bad?”
