“This is not something with which I’m familiar.”
“It’s an apple dipped in melted caramel.”
To her surprise, he doesn’t make a face. “And this improves the apple?”
“Well, I like it.”
“It sounds...messy.”
“Yes. But worth it.”
“Are you certain?”
She shrugs. “I’ll help you clean up after. If you get too sticky.”
He eyes her warily. “I believe this is another trap.”
“Is it working?”
When he continues to look skeptically at her, she slides her hands to his chest again. “How about this? We’ll make you one, and if you decide you don’t want it, you can eat a plain apple instead. Deal?”
He doesn’t respond right away, and she lets him think everything through without hurrying him.
“I suppose I can live with that. But I don’t like being sticky.”
“I promised to help you wash up.” She smiles sweetly at him, and he sighs dramatically again.
“How do we do this?”
“I assume we melt caramels and dip our apples in it. Is there a metal bowl in here? Something we can hang over the fire?”
Cerian leans near her ear. “Fire wielder. Remember? We don’t need the hearth.”
Right.
“Perhaps you’d better take the lead, then.” Her voice hitches when his teeth tease her earlobe.
“So a bowl to melt caramels in?” His breath tickles her neck, and she nods, though it’s hard to focus on apples and candy when he’s so near.
“And...and sticks to poke in the apple cores so we can hold on to them without getting sticky,” she breathes.
“This I approve of.” He presses his lips to the dip at the base of her neck before letting her go. “I’m not certain I can draw life from the wood in here to create the sticks and bowl we need.”
Oh. He was planning to grow them. That’s convenient.
“You grow vines all the time in here, though.”
He glances toward her, his cheeks a little pink. “My magic is eager when it comes to you. Less so about apples.”
She tries not to smile, but her lips twitch enough for him to notice, and he shakes his head and smiles a little himself.
“So you need a better motivation than caramel apples to grow what we need from the wood in this room?”
His eyes snap back to her as she realizes how that sounded. Stars above.
Although...it’s not a bad idea, is it? She’s his wife. She can help him awaken his plant magic, can’t she? There’s no reason she shouldn’t.
Other than the blush creeping up her face at the thought.
