“Yeah.” Riley padded over to his dresser, still completely nude. God, he was handsome. And that was a good butt. Areallygood butt. He’d need to keep that butt to himself, or Seth was going to be agreeing to a monthlong kidnapping just to stay and ogle it.
Riley came back with gray sweats and a black T-shirt. Seth accepted them eagerly. Clothes would be good—a fabric barrier to his own horny thoughts.
Speaking of. Seth cast a sideways glance at Riley’s bobbing erection. “Does that thing ever go down?”
Riley shrugged. “You look good in my bed.”
Well, then. Seth cleared his throat and stood, getting dressed as quickly as his shaky legs would allow. Apparently he needed to get back to running to improve his endurance if he was going to keep up with his young, supernatural lover.
Or let him turn you.
Nope. No. Nuh-uh. Seth was not giving that any brain space. He was still trying to come to terms with thedestined loversportionof the mate thing—he didn’t have any room for theone-day-becoming-a-vampirepart.
What if turning into a vampire ruined his palate? He’d have to switch from pastries to blood sausages.
He and Riley made their way to the kitchen, and Seth was grateful for the lack of vampire moms in attendance. He needed to get his wits about him before attempting any semblance of chill after what had just happened. Twice.
Hadn’t Seth started this day off determined to cling to normalcy? Since when had his normal routine included getting ravaged by impossibly beautiful monster-men?
Seth punched the air out of his dough, then floured the counter and started rolling it out. Baking. Baking was normal.
But if Riley had been hovering before, he was now completely incorrigible. He kept wrapping his arms around Seth’s waist as Seth mixed the filling, or pressing kisses to Seth’s neck, shoulders, and ears as he cut the rolls to size.
Seth camethisclose to giving in and abandoning the orange rolls in favor of more debauchery. Instead, he made Riley sit at the kitchen table, where Seth could keep an eye on his shamelessly horny ass.
Riley sat meekly enough, although he kept biting back a grin, so he couldn’t have been too chastised. “My moms said your grandma taught you to bake?”
“Mm.” Seth had somehow managed to pop the rolls into the oven despite the distraction, and now he was filling a bowl with simple icing ingredients. “Yeah, she was amazing in the kitchen.”
“What about your parents?”
Seth shrugged. “They weren’t as interested. They…I mean, they’re great, I love them, but they didn’t always…get me, early on. They kept buying me toy cars and action figures for every holiday and wondering why I would hardly play with them. And then we’d go to my grandma’s, and she’d take me into the kitchen with her,and everything smelled amazing, and she had these frilly vintage aprons.” Seth smiled at the memory. “She’d let me choose one for both of us, and we’d put them on and make something delicious. Plus, she had some of my mom’s old toys, and she and I would dress up the dolls and stuff while we waited for our creations to bake. I was well fed there, in more ways than one. I still use her recipes.”
Riley’s dark eyes were soft. “She sounds amazing.”
“She was.” Seth ignored the familiar pang of loss and set his icing aside. They had a few more minutes for the rolls to finish. He glanced around the beautiful kitchen. He could imagine his grandmother here, poking through the cabinets and testing out all the high-quality vintage appliances. “She would have loved this kitchen. The whole house.”
“I wish I could have met her.” Riley ducked his head suddenly, his gaze dropping to his folded hands. “Do you—do you think she’d have liked me?”
God, he was cute. It was ridiculous that he could be so bashful after turning Seth inside out hardly an hour before.
Seth scoffed, although he couldn’t completely hide his smile. “Are you kidding? She was totally weak for a pretty face. She would have flirted with you shamelessly, tried to steal you away.”
“I wouldn’t have let her.”
Riley sounded so fierce about it that Seth had to laugh. “You wouldn’t have let my elderly grandmother seduce you? Your loyalty is unmatched.”
Riley lifted his head again to grin at Seth’s teasing, but his next words were solemn, with that perfectly serious Riley edge to them. “You have no idea.”
19
RILEY
Riley still couldn’t believe he got to do this. It felt illicit. Stolen. A dream he was going to wake up from at any moment.
“I’m pretty sure my back is very, very clean now.”
Riley hummed, maneuvering Seth under the showerhead to rinse off the soap Riley had been so carefully working into every bit of naked skin he could reach. “That icing got everywhere.”
