“I like baking!” That sunny smile re-emerges, and I’m yet again aware of what a sweet, good person she is, and what a grumpy monster I am, and how these two things cannot go together. “And I don’t mind looking after your wound.”
I shake my head at her. “You should. You’re a remarkably accepting captive.”
“Or you’re a very bad kidnapper,” she teases. “I managed to stay in my own house, didn’t I?”
I don’t take the bait. I’m secure in my kidnapping prowess. “Excellent negotiation skills, yes, but you’re too kind for your own good.”
“Puhhssh.” She waves my observation away as she pulls ingredients out of her cupboard, and places them onto the table before me. Sugar, flour, butter from the fridge. A dozen food colourings, and some flavourings, just placing them randomly, the small bottles scattered around the butter and the different types of sugar not even next to eachother.
She pores over the recipe.
I shift the little colouring bottles first, putting them in a neat line. Then the flour packet, I fold the top more neatly. One handed.
The frustration of being incapacitated is unbearable. What else wouldn’t I be able to do properly?
Pleasure Callie.
I push the thought away.
“What…” Her hand pauses mid-air, reaching for something then does a double take.
All of her ingredients are tidied. They’re in neat little rows on the table.
She’s giggling even before she meets my gaze.
“You said I should help.” I nod at the perfectly logically laid out ingredients. Admittedly, I’d prefer sealed tubs with labels, but we can’t have everything. Compromises have to be made.
“I meant more with mixing things, or washing up!”
“Sure. What do you need washing?” I have this odd sensation that I’d do anything for Callie. Move the world. Stop time. Bring her the moon.
She looks at me thoughtfully. “Mm. But if you splash dirty, sugary water on your wound…”
“I can’t be static for the rest of my life.”
“You’d make an excellent statue,” she teases, smiling that sunny smile at me. “Good job change. I’d look at you.”
“A Greek one with no clothes?” I say deadpan, but it’s a bomb into the conversation.
The air grows hot between us, and she becomes a statue herself, totally stationary apart from the fast pulse at her elegant throat. I’m insane, but I’d like to bite her there. She looks delicious. Cake is nice, but I bet Callie tastes fantastic. Especially between her legs.
“Or a brass statue that’s touched for good luck and has a polished, bright section because of it.” That would be hell for me, of course. But the blush that’s creeping up Callie’s neck is worth it. “Do you think people would like to touch my?—”
“What were you doing to get shot?” She bites her lip as soon as she’s asked, as though she’s attempting to gnaw the words back.
There’s another taut silence.
I preferred the sexually charged one about me being a naked object.
“Are you sure you want to know that?” I ask eventually. “You might decide you’d rather not, given the danger being involved could put you in.”
“You’ve moved in with me. Concern about your life affecting mine has already been made an irrelevant point, since we’re living together.”
I like that phrasing. Married would be even better, and for a second I let myself imagine it. She’s in my arms when I wake up, then I shuffle down under the covers to wake her with my tongue. She’s there when I’ve had a hard day, and eats dinner opposite me. Maybe we’d have a kid or seven. We’d have so much time together, and I’d learn to laugh and smile like she does. Or I’d just bathe in her sunshine every day.
Except, I’m a murderous mafia boss whose territory on the edge of Essex is at constant risk. And she’s more than twenty years younger than me.
I nod grimly. “It was a dispute with Loughton, the Essex territory that borders this one. I thought we were meeting for peace talks. We were, in fact.” I might not like the terms that were being proposed—my marriage to Loughton’sdaughter. But they were peace talks. “And then someone fired.”
