“Oh, good grief.” The sound she makes around her first bite goes straight to my groin. “This is pornographic.”
“The pizza?”
“Everything. This whole night.” She gestures with her slice, and a piece of cheese lands on my chest. She leans over to lick it off, and I forget how to breathe. “You show up. We fight. We destroy the bedding. Now there’s cheese. It’s perfect.”
I chuckle. “Your standards are concerningly low.”
She bites my chest. I jerk hard enough to upset a pizza box.
“My standards are exactly where they should be.” She settles back against the pillows, stealing a piece of my prosciutto. “Right here. In bed. With you. And roughly seventeen pounds of carbs.”
The casual way she says it—like this is obvious, like we’re obvious—does something to my chest. We eat in comfortable silence for a minute, just the sound of chewing and the distant harbor bells.
“Tell me something,” she says eventually, wiping her hands on a napkin.
My guard comes up automatically, walls starting to rebuild themselves. “What?”
“Something real. Something you haven’t told anyone.” Her voice is soft, coaxing.
I watch her lick sauce off her thumb. My brain short-circuits for a second before I can answer.
“I hate my house.”
Her hand stills. “What?”
“Always have.” The admission feels weird in my mouth. True but foreign. “It’s too big. Too quiet. Bought it because it seemed like what I should want.”
I shrug, but she’s watching me now with that look. The one that strips me bare.
“Turns out, ‘should’ is bullshit.”
“Huh.” She goes back to her thumb, and I have to look away. “What do you actually want?”
“In a house?”
“In general.”
Dangerous question. Especially when she’s sitting there in my shirt with sex hair and pizza grease on her fingers, looking like everything I never knew I needed.
“Noise,” I say finally. The words come slow, careful. “Chaos. Someone to fight with over dinner. A dog that steals the covers. A goat that commits crimes.”
“That’s oddly specific.” She’s trying not to smile.
“Wonder why.”
She’s on me before I see it coming. Pizza boxes fly. She pins me in place, straddling my hips, and I could flip us in a heartbeat but why would I want to?
“You’re a closet romantic,” she accuses.
“Am not.” But I can feel my defenses crumbling under her gaze.
She shifts her weight, settling more firmly against me. “Are too.” She pokes me in the chest. Then she grinds down just enough to make me groan. “Dean Whitaker wants a family.”
“I want—”
The word sticks. You. Too much. Too soon. Too real. I don’t say it. Not yet. Not tonight.
“What?” Her face softens.
