He reached out to run the edge of his index finger along the apple of her cheek. “Okay, Mar.”
“And I like you, Eli. I like you a lot. I don’t know where we’re going to end up. If I’m totally honest here, I don’t know that I’ll ever want to get married and plan a wedding again. But I like who I am when I’m with you. And I like who you are. And maybe that’s enough?”
“Is it enough for now?” he asked.
“Yeah.” It really was.
“Then that’s all that matters.” He took another step toward her.
“Scotty used to say all the time that he loved me more. That I was the best thing that ever happened to him. But Scotty didn’t like the messy. He liked things to be precisely how he liked them. I feel like I’m still recovering from all that, from trying to be exactly who he wanted and still not being enough.”
“You’re enough for me,” Eli said.
He seemed to mean it.
“And right now, I’m enough for you,” he continued. “So what do you say we do this relationship thing moment by moment?”
“No future?”
“There’s no future. There’s no past. There’s just who we are because of the things that made us this way. I’m not erasing the past. I’m not planning the future. I’m just letting this moment be what it needs to be for both of us.”
Wow. Eli could be really deep when he wanted to be.
“Okay,” she said.
He wrapped her in a hug, and it made the world fall away. In that moment, things were fine. And that was enough.
Palms against his chest, Marlee pulled back so she could see his face. “I know you’re not planning the future, but do you think you could make me some more of that chicken stuff from the other day? It was really good.”
He chuckled. “Yeah, Mar.”
Standing on her tiptoes, she brushed her lips against his. The light kiss only lasted half a second before it heated up.
His tongue slid against hers. Eli might not always have much to say, but boy, oh boy, could he use his mouth for other things.
She gripped the collar of his chef jacket, fisting her hands in the polyester. She wasn’t paying attention to anything other than his mouth, his body, and the way her nerves were hot-wired for his touch. So she missed that he’d been backing her into his office.
To the couch in his office.
She made quick work of unbuttoning his jacket, pulling his white undershirt out from under the belt around his jeans, and unhooking the belt.
“I have to go back to work,” she said against his mouth.
“After,” he replied in that chef tone of his that pissed her off in the kitchen but, here in his office, didn’t have the same effect. Here? It just added kindling to the fire already building. “I want you naked.”
Right then, she decided not to argue with Chef Eli when he told her what to do—as long as it involved sex, him, and immediate access to both.
She shimmied out of her panties, thankful that she’d decided to dress cute that day. He had his jeans around his thighs, boxers right there with them, and dug through his wallet, emerging with a yellow condom and that goofy grin on his face.
She giggled. “That’s not…”
He couldn’t be serious. They weren’t actually going to use it.
“It’s what we have.” He ripped open the package.
Apparently, they were going to use it. Yellow was the color of the day.
“On the couch, chef.” It was Marlee’s turn to order him around.
