"Guilty." I slid the scored loaf into my preheated Dutch oven. "Thirty-five minutes, then we can eat it warm with butter and honey."
I set the timer and washed the flour from my hands. WhenI turned around, Izzy was still sitting on the counter, watching me with an expression I couldn't quite read.
"This is nice," she said eventually, swinging her legs back and forth.
"What is?"
"This. The quiet. Usually after..." She gestured vaguely. "Usually I'm ready for them to leave. Or I leave."
I looked up at her, understanding exactly what she meant. "And now?"
"Now I'm thinking about what it would be like to wake up next to you."
The words hit me square in the chest. I stepped between her legs, my hands settling on her thighs.
"I'd like that," I said. "A lot."
She leaned forward and kissed me, soft and sweet.
"Come home with me," she said against my lips. "When this is done. I want to show you my place."
I thought about her neat, precise apartment, about seeing her in her own space, about waking up in her bed instead of mine.
"Yeah," I said. "I'd like that, too."
The bread would take another thirty-five minutes to bake, then needed time to cool. Plenty of time to fall into each other again, to explore this new territory we'd discovered. And then I'd follow her home, to her carefully controlled world, and maybe find new ways to make her fall apart in my arms.
For the first time in twenty-four hours, the future felt bright with possibility.
chapter
seventeen
I'd been sittingon Jimmy's kitchen counter for twenty minutes, and I was pretty sure I'd broken him.
It had started innocently enough — well, mostly innocently. I'd wandered into the kitchen wearing nothing but his t-shirt and my panties, genuinely curious about the sourdough process. But the moment I'd hopped up onto the counter and seen his eyes go wide, something wicked had awakened in me.
For the first time in my adult life, I had a man's complete, undivided attention, and I was enjoying every second of it.
I'd watched him feed his starter with methodical precision, explaining the process like he was teaching a class. Then he'd pulled out this gorgeous round of dough from the fridge and scored it with quick, confident strokes that made me think about his hands doing other things. And when he'd slid it into the Dutch oven and set the timer?
That's when I decided to make his waiting timeverydifficult.
I crossed my legs, letting the hem of his shirt ride up slightly, and watched his eyes track the movement. He was cleaning flour from his hands at the sink, trying to act normal, but I could see the exact moment he lost focus.
"So how long did you say this takes?" I asked innocently, uncrossing my legs and letting them swing slightly apart.
"Uhhh..." Jimmy's voice came out rougher than intended. He cleared his throat, his hands stilling under the running water. "About thirty-five minutes to bake, then it needs to cool for a bit."
I leaned forward, ostensibly interested in the oven, but really giving him a better view down the loose neckline of his shirt. "That's a long time to wait."
His hands gripped the edge of the sink. "Izzy."
"Mmm?" I stretched my arms above my head, arching my back slightly, watching his eyes follow the movement of my body beneath the thin cotton.
"You're doing this on purpose."
"Doing what?" I asked, all innocence, as I recrossed my legs in the opposite direction.
