He pulled up the recipe on his phone. Seth had made cinnamon rolls a bunch of times for his old bakery in Seacliff, but the ingredients were slightly different with this variation. Orange zest and juice in the batter, more orange juice in the icing. He’d found a manual juicer in the cabinet, and oranges on the counter, so he was making his own juice. He didn’t want to consider that he might be trying to impress the moms. They were vampires; what did they care if he used store-bought juice?
Plus, they’d kidnapped him. One heart-to-heart with Sybil and he kept conveniently forgetting that.
Anyway. The orange rolls were going to be delicious, was thepoint, and Seth would get to redirect some of his aggression into kneading bread dough.
He turned to grab his first mixing bowl and yelped when he ran into a warm, hard obstacle. Riley was standing right beside him. Lurking. “Jesus!”
Riley only grinned at him, the lost puppy act well and truly set aside. “What’s first?”
“Getting you a bell.” When Riley’s smile didn’t falter, Seth shook his head. “We’re mixing our yeast.”
They got to work.
Riley was a good helper. Of course he was. He was always attentive, homed in on Seth like a fox with a rabbit. It translated well in the kitchen. The second Seth asked for an ingredient, Riley had it in his hand, fingers brushing lightly against Seth’s palm or wrist with the exchange.
And Riley—pretty predictably—seemed very pleased to have an excuse to stand right next to Seth, or directly behind him, breathing on Seth’s neck in a way that should have been annoying but only left Seth red-cheeked and flustered. Twice, Riley had to correct Seth when he almost put in the wrong measurements.Twice.
Could he even call himself a baker?
But still, even with him suffocating under the weight of sexual tension, the familiar pattern of putting ingredients together did help lift Seth’s mood a bit. He found himself releasing some of the turmoil of the last twenty-four hours, the stiffness in his frame slowly loosening.
Could he do what Riley had suggested? Let go ofwe’re meant for each otherand focus ondo we even want each other?
The problem with that question was, of course, that the answer was a resounding freaking yes.
Because once Seth let go of the constant refrains he’d been using to protect himself—We’re just friends; he’s too young; he has anancient monster inside him who feeds on blood and wants to claim me for a consort—then it was just…Riley.
And Riley was beautiful, and he smelled like the woods after the rain, and he was…standing very, very close. Always. It wasn’t fair, since his very presence shot little bits of electricity into the air, heating Seth’s skin and setting his nerves alight.
Good assistant or no, Riley made it very hard to focus.
Seth poured the dough from the mixture onto the flour-dusted counter, clearing his throat. “Riley?”
“Yes?” Riley answered from directly behind him, his nose practically pressed against the back of Seth’s head.
Had he been sniffing Seth again?
“Don’t you wish you’d gotten to…experiment more? Before meeting me?”
Riley didn’t even take a pause to think. “No.”
“Why not?” Seth asked as he began kneading the dough.
“I guess partly because…desire isn’t like that for me. I don’t think about fucking random people. I don’t think about abstract body parts or, like, isolated acts. I think about you. Your skin and your scent and what’s under your clothes. I think about how it would feel to touch you. To slide into you.”
Seth’s lower belly tightened without warning, and he let out a harsh breath. His voice when he spoke came out huskier than he would have liked. “That’s…intense.”
Riley’s sigh ruffled Seth’s curls. “I know. You hate it?”
Seth wanted to lie, but he couldn’t meet that raw honesty with anything but more of the same. “No, I don’t hate it. I’m uncomfortable with how much I like it. I don’t know what it says about me.”
“It says you’re my match.”
Ugh. Seth slapped the dough against the counter. See? Kneading wasgreatfor aggression. “Does it? Or do most people thrive off attention? Especially from someone who looks and acts like you?”
“How do I look and act?” Riley asked, all guileless innocence.
Punch. Knead.“Beautiful.”Punch. Knead.“Otherworldly.”
