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“I can help⁠—”

“Jubilee.” I froze. He pointed at my bare feet before grabbing my hips.

“What are you doing?”

“I am putting you on that countertop like the toddler you’ve been impersonating. Stay.”

He spent fifteen minutes sweeping, vacuuming, wiping, and vacuuming again while muttering violations of several commandments. I apologized at least eight times. I genuinely felt awful. Then I caught him staring at my tits while I was perched on the counter, and my guilt diminished significantly.

My punishment arrived that evening: write fifty repetitions of I will not ambush Gage while he is in pastry mode. I opened my laptop, pasted the sentence fifty times, numbered each line, and emailed him a PDF.

He charged in, crumpled paper in hand. “That’s cheating.”

I shrugged. “That’s how I write. Trust me, you do not want handwritten repentance. You’d think a toddler forged a prescription.”

“You’re a menace.”

“I prefer innovator.”

The next afternoon, I opened my laptop to find tiny pastry stickers covering everything—even the damn screen. Croissants. Cannoli. Cupcakes. An extremely judgmental cartoon chef’s hat. His own merch brand. He denied involvement. It roughly took the same time as another sourdough proof to restore my poor sticker-smothered computer. Those tiny pastry bastards had the adhesive strength of military-grade weapons.

Yesterday, he caught me eyeing a cherry tart cooling on a rack. When I asked if I could have it, Gage stared me dead in the eye and shoved it into his mouth.

I’m falling for him. So inconvenient.

That’s the part I haven’t figured out. For two months, this has become less casual, but neither of us admits it. Gage still keeps one strange boundary: he touches me everywhere, but never crosses into full nudity. He’ll kiss me like he wants to consume me whole, then fall asleep on my shoulder halfway through a movie while I run my fingers through his hair.

He looks younger asleep. Less controlled. Sometimes I catch myself watching him and wondering what exactly he’s waiting for.

I know I shouldn’t push. Two months is practically a loading screen. But considering we met over a corpse, normal relationship progression left the building a long time ago.

So, I poke. Just a little. Because every time I get under his skin, the control freak Gage cracks, and something hotter looks back at me. Something…primal.

Gage points. “Do you see those?”

I follow his finger. “The little square things?”

His nostrils flare. “The coasters.”

“Sure. There are a lot. Seems excessive. Were they on discount?”

A vein throbs in his neck. “They were custom-made.” Of course. “I seem to now live with a woman who needs a flowchart, a checklist, and a blazing neon sign that reads USE THE FUCKING COASTERS.”

“I don’t live with you.”

His expression changes so slightly, and his chin juts out. “Right.”

Well. Fuck. I didn’t mean it like that. I close my laptop halfway. “I meant technically. I’m in the carriage house.”

“I’m aware of where you sleep, Princess.” The casual way he says it curls warmth in my stomach.

I should stop. Instead, because emotional self-preservation has never been one of my marketable skills, I glance at the nearest glass. Then…at the coaster two inches away.

His eyes narrow. “Don’t.”

I wrap my fingers around the glass anyway.

“Jubilee.”