I laugh. “You deserved it.”
He pulls back to smile at me. “I probably did.” He kisses me and lifts me off the counter and sets me onto my feet. “Now let's get baking. You have to tell me how you’re a shit cook but a good baker, `cause we’ve talked about it and it doesn’t make sense to any of us.”
“They are two completely different skills,” I tell him as Callum and Torin line up, ready to help me bake up a storm.
“They’re kind of not,” Archer says.
“He has a point,” Callum says. “If anything, I thought baking was harder.”
Torin holds up a silver food scale. “If you’re required to weigh your ingredients, it’s harder. Weighing or measuring of anything automatically levels a skill from like a three out of five to a four.”
“Yeah, well, it’s not,” I say. “I’d say I’m a four as a baker and maybe a one as a cook.”
Callum’s eyebrows shoot up. “One? What’s the worst thing you've made?”
“Just one thing?” I ask. “Like yesterday or farther back?”
They stare at me.
“Yesterday?” Torin asks, eyebrow raised.
I scrunch my nose. “I got distracted talking to River and forgot to add water to the pasta I was making for our lunch.”
Their lips twitch.
“When did you remember?” Callum asks, clearly trying not to laugh.
Cheeks burning, I dip my head to hide my red face. “How about we make a chocolate fudge cake? Or chocolate chip cookies? What do you want to bake?”
“Uh oh, now I’m curious.” Callum loops his arm around my waist, tugs me against his side, and kisses me. “When, beautiful?”
“When the pan started smoking and River had to tell me I was about to burn down my apartment,” I admit.
No one says anything for a good long time.
I let out a sigh. “Go on. Get it all out. You all look like tomatoes.”
They explode into laughter, and I can’t help but smile as tears run down their cheeks.
We spend a couple of hours baking, laughing, and learning more about each other at the start of a day jam-packed full of fun things.
This new life with my mates feels like it’s exactly where I’m supposed to be.
And I’m happy. So much happier than I ever thought I could be.
Chapter 45
June
Two weeks later…
Torin has me pinned to the wall outside my bedroom, and he’s nuzzling my throat.
It’s more ticklish than hot, so I spend more time giggling and nudging him away from my sensitive spots than I do grinding up against him, unlike the last time he did this to me.
“What happened to kissing her goodnight, man?” Callum appears at the top of the stairs, scratching his head. “You’ve had her giggling like that for the last fifteen minutes.”
Because I’m not trying to push Torin away as hard as I should, and not just because of the thing he does with his tongue that I like a lot. His palms feel hot and possessive clamped around my hips, and he has one thigh tucked between my legs. Every now and again, he grinds his thigh against my pussy, which he has to know is slowly driving me crazy.
